Qualla: Azerbaijan Museum

Azerbaijan Museum: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was M karzarj at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0. Stone lions guard the entrance. Inside, the corridors stretch back through seven millennia. The Azerbaijan Museum in Tabriz, established in April 1958 and designed by the French architect and archaeologist Andre Godard, is the oldest museum in northwestern Iran. It sits beside the Blue Mosque, known locally as the Turquoise of Islam, in the heart of the city's ancient Khiyaban district. What the museum holds is nothing less than the material record of civilization in this corner of the world -- pottery shaped by hands that lived five thousand years before Christ, jewelry worn a millennium before the Common Era, and Sasanian silver plates that gleam as though they were polished yesterday.

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Image: The original uploader was M karzarj at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Azerbaijan Museum: Three Galleries, Seven Thousand Years

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fabienkhan, CC BY-SA 2.5. The museum divides its collection across three main halls. The first gallery holds the oldest objects, a chronological journey from fifth-millennium BC artifacts through the Urartian kingdom, the Achaemenid Empire, and into the Sasanian era, which lasted from roughly 224 to 651 C...

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Image: Fabienkhan | CC BY-SA 2.5

Azerbaijan Museum: Artifacts from the Deep Past

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alborz Fallah (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The objects here come from excavation sites scattered across Iranian Azerbaijan. Pottery from Esmail Abad dates to the fifth millennium BC -- rough, utilitarian shapes made by people who farmed this plateau when it was still a frontier of settled life. Rock weights from the Jirof...

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Image: Alborz Fallah (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Azerbaijan Museum: The Heist of 2013

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit داود مجتهدی, Public domain. On May 7, 2013, five silver plates from the Sasanian era were stolen from the museum. The theft of objects more than a thousand years old sent shockwaves through Iran's cultural heritage community. Iranian police arrested the thieves in November of that year, but the plates thems...

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Image: داود مجتهدی | Public domain

Azerbaijan Museum: Beside the Turquoise of Islam

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AmirAK, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum's location in central Tabriz, next to the Blue Mosque, places it at the intersection of the city's historical and cultural life. Tabriz has been a capital of empires, a hub on the Silk Road, and a city destroyed and rebuilt by earthquakes more times than anyone can cou...

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Image: AmirAK | CC BY-SA 4.0