(Act Daily News) — “This fire has burned 4,000 years and never stopped,” says Aliyeva Rahila. “Even the rain coming here, snow, wind — it never stops burning.”
Ahead, tall flames dance restlessly throughout a 10-meter stretch of hillside, making a sizzling day even hotter.
A aspect impact of the nation’s plentiful pure fuel reserves, which typically leak to the floor, Yanar Dag is one in every of a number of spontaneously occurring fires to have fascinated and frightened vacationers to Azerbaijan over the millennia.
It’s why the nation earned the moniker the “land of fire.”
Ancient faith
Such fires had been as soon as plentiful in Azerbaijan, however as a result of they led to a discount of fuel stress underground, interfering with industrial fuel extraction, most have been snuffed out.
Yanar Dag is without doubt one of the few remaining examples, and maybe probably the most spectacular.
At one time they performed a key function within the historical Zoroastrian faith, which was based in Iran and flourished in Azerbaijan within the first millennium BCE.
Visitors head to Ateshgah Fire Temple and the burning mountainside of Yanar Dag to witness Azerbaijan’s historical relationship with the ability of fireplace
For Zoroastrians, fireplace is a hyperlink between people and the supernatural world, and a medium via which religious perception and knowledge will be gained. It’s purifying, life-sustaining and a significant a part of worship.
Today, most guests who arrive on the no-frills Yanar Dag guests’ middle come for the spectacle fairly than non secular success.
The expertise is most spectacular at evening, or in winter. When snow falls, the flakes dissolve within the air with out ever touching the bottom, says Rahila.
Despite the claimed antiquity of the Yanar Dag flames — some argue that this explicit fireplace might solely have been ignited within the Nineteen Fifties — it is a lengthy 30-minute drive north from the middle of Baku simply to see it. The middle affords solely a small cafe and there is not a lot else within the space.
Ateshgah Fire Temple
For a deeper perception into Azerbaijan’s historical past of fireplace worship, guests ought to head east of Baku to Ateshgah Fire Temple.
“Since ancient times, they think that [their] god is here,” says our information, as we enter the pentagonal complicated which was constructed within the seventeenth and 18th century by Indian settlers in Baku.
Fire rituals at this web site date again to the tenth century or earlier. The identify Ateshgah comes from the Persian for “home of fire” and the centerpiece of the complicated is a cupola-topped altar shrine, constructed upon a pure fuel vent.
A pure, everlasting flame burned right here on the central altar till 1969, however as of late the hearth is fed from Baku’s foremost fuel provide and is barely lit for guests.
The temple is related to Zoroastrianism nevertheless it’s as a Hindu place of worship that its historical past is healthier documented.
Merchants and ascetics
Built like a caravanserai-style vacationers’ inn, the complicated has a walled courtyard surrounded by 24 cells and rooms.
These had been variously utilized by pilgrims, passing retailers (whose donations had been a significant supply of revenue) and resident ascetics, a few of whom submitted themselves to ordeals corresponding to mendacity on caustic quicklime, carrying heavy chains, or preserving an arm in a single place for years on finish.
The temple fell out of use as a spot of worship within the late nineteenth century, at a time when the event of the encompassing oil fields meant that veneration of Mammon was gaining a stronger maintain.
The complicated turned a museum in 1975, was nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998, and in the present day welcomes round 15,000 guests a 12 months.