Mountains

Beshbarmag and Candy Cane Mountains

Pir Khidr Zinda – or Khidir Zunja – is a sacred place for Muslims, located at the foot of the Beshbarmag Mountain in the district of Siyazan, Azerbaijan.

The word ‘zinda’ means ‘alive’ or ‘immortal’, which is a sign of Prophet Khiḍr who is found to be immortal to be linked with some of the most ancient legends known to us today, because he drank from the water of life. Therefore, the people used to call Beshbarmag Mountain, five naked peaks, ‘Khidr-Zinda Baba’ or ‘Khidrzinda Mount’ located in the Siyazan district on the coast of the Caspian Sea. Various legends of Beshbarmag live on: Ramzi Yuzbashov, a researcher, manifests that the word ‘barmag’ in ‘Beshbarmag’ means a ‘shish hill.’ According a another theory, Beshbarmak denotes a ‘finger’. So, in the etymology of the people, a ‘big toe’ means an elder brother.

In the map of the Caspian Sea created in 1375 in the Spanish province of Catalonia, Beshbarmak is known as Barmag, while as “Marmakh” on the map of Adam Oleari, a duke in the feudal county of Holstein in the 17th century. The second volume of the Encyclopedia of Azerbaijan is written as follows: “Beshbarmag was a defense gate belonging to the IV-VII centuries. This barrier lies from the skirts of Beshbarmag to the Caspian Sea. At the foot of the mountain, the large barbed bricks were composed of two walls with two hundred meters apart. Albanian historian Movses Kalankatli noted that the Beshbarmag barrier was built under Sasani King Yazdegir (437-457). It was built to prevent the attack of normadic people… ”

So, Khidr-Zinda is a sacred place, as well as one of the indescribable heritage of our glorious history.

Candy Cane Mountains

One of Azerbaijan’s most beautiful stretches of road leads for about 40 kilometres from the Guba-Baku highway west towards the mountain village of Altiaghaj. Roughly mid-way between the two one passes through a dramatic valley flanked by rolling shale mountains whose astonishing red, orange, pink and chalk-coloured swirls led British travel writer Mark Elliott (author of the very popular ‘Azerbaijan’ guidebook) to dub them the Candy Cane Mountains, a name that’s stuck with travellers ever since. The astonishing colours are said to be due to groundwater that’s altered the oxidation state of iron compounds within the rock.

If taking an organised hike here, which can be booked through tour companies in Baku and is preferably undertaken in autumn or spring, glance down beneath your feet: you may discover tiny fossils and perhaps even a squid-like belemnite from the cretaceous period.

The Candy Cane Mountains are shale mountains in the Khizi and Siyazan districts of Azerbaijan, part of the Greater Caucasus mountain range. The mountains’ colours are produced by groundwater that have altered the oxidation state of the iron compounds in the earthThe Candy Cane Mountains contain numerous belemnites from the Cretaceous period.