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 The history of linguistic Turkicization of Azerbaijan and Caucasus was a long and multi-stage process that started from the Saljuq era and culminated 
 during the Safavid era with smaller number of native Iranian speakers (e.g. Talysh people, Tats, Kurds) now remaining in the Eastern Caucasus and Iranian Azerbaijan. An Azerbaijani Turkic language and ethnos began to stablize around XIV-XV with migrations of in the Caucasus and North-Western, with a heavy Iranian contirubtion and layer. Up until the 20th century, the concept of an ""Azerbaijani identity"" did not exist, and the ethnic term ""Azerbaijani"" and linguistic term ""Azerbaijani"" were not used by the general masses of the Turcophone speakers in Eastern Transcaucasia. Azerbaijan was a simple geographical area. The general masses were called by the Russians as Tatars while they considered themselves as ""Muslims"", ""Turks"" and sometime Persian while their language was generally called ""Turki"" by their Muslim neighbours. 
 After the establishment of Soviet satellite states, it was determined by Soviet authorities that each Soviet client state must build up its national culture and identity. The Soviets discouraged the usage of the terms ""Turks"", and ""Muslims"" and encouraged a formation of a new Azerbaijani identity that had little to do with Turks and more to do with the non-Turkish Caucasian Albanians and Iranian Medes. As part of this new nation-building and based on mainly the territorial principle of ethno-genesis, historic Iranian factors including Nizami Ganjavi, Babak Khorramdin, Medes and even the Avesta were now considered part of the new Azerbaijani identity and literatureGreat Soviet Encyclopaedia, “Azerbaijan SSR”, 3rd edition, pp 467.. As an example, the Avesta became known as the earliest form of Azerbaijani literature by the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia. Thus, the Azerbaijani identity created under Soviets was not necessarily a Turkic based identity, as it started is ethno-genesis with the Medes during the Stalinistic era and later on in the post-Stalinistic era it claimed descent from the Caucasian Albanians and Medes for the Azerbaijanis. In later Soviet period and specially post-Soviet Azerbaijan, the role of Turkic groups in the ethno-genesis is now emphasized while revisionist authors actively try to Turkify non-Turkish groups such as the Caucasian Albanians. 
 Until the Soviet Anniversary of 1930s, all Russian specialist sources like their specialist Western counter part considered Nezami Ganjavi to be a Persian poet. The USSR campaign for Nezami's 800th anniversary in the 1930s and 1940s was a political campaign that proclaimed Nezami an ""Azerbaijani poet"". However, Soviet scholars such as Bertels only claimed that Nezami's mother was Kurdish and did not write much about his father's ethnicity. At the same time, the Soviets referenced the works of Nezami as ""Azerbaijani literature"" and him as an ""Azerbaijani poet"" based on the territorial principle. In this Soviet era, the role of Turkic identity of Azerbaijanis was de-emphasized and the Medes and Caucasian Albanians were given the primary role of Azerbaijani ethno-genesis. Nizami Ganjavi considered his work as Persian poetry and Persian pearl, and outside of former USSR and modern Azerbaijan, he is considered as a representative of Persian poetry. In Western Nizami scholarship and mainstream specialist Encyclopaedias about the region (e.g. Encyclopaedia of Islam), Nizami Ganjavi is considered a Persian poet and thinker, and within the realm of Iranian culture of his time; while Ganja at that time is considered an outpost of Persian culture with an Iranian population. Lornejad et al. mention that besides the Persian culture, and the native Iranian words recorded from the speech of Ganja at that time, Nezami references himself as Persian Dehqan. They also mention that the term ""torkzad"" used for Nezami by his son from his first wife (who was given to him as a gift and was of a Turkish Qifchaq background) excludes the possibility of Nezami being a Turk, since this term in the literature of that time was used for a person with an Iranian father and Turkish mother. They also con