Pirallahi Island or Pirallakhi Island (

Azeri Azeri or Azeri Turk may refer to: * Azeri people, an ethnic group also known as Azerbaijanis * Citizens of Azerbaijan * Azeri language, the modern-day Turkic language * Old Azeri, an extinct Iranian language * Azeri Turk (journal), Academic jour ...

: ''Pirallahı adası'') is an island in the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

. The island is part of

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

and lies off the north-eastern shore of the

Apsheron Peninsula The Absheron Peninsula () is a peninsula in Azerbaijan. It is the location of Baku, the most populous city of the country, and the Baku Metropolitan Area, with its satellite cities Sumqayit and Khyrdalan. It extends eastward into the Caspian S ...

, to the east-north-east of

Baku Baku (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Azerbaijan, largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region. Baku is below sea level, which makes it the List of capital ci ...

Geography

The island is long and has a maximum width of . Administratively, Pirallahi Island belongs to the Pirallahi district of Baku.The total square of the island is 14.6 km². In 1968 the population of the village of Artyom-Ostrov reached 14.4 thousand people. The population of the island is 17,281 people (according to the 2020 census), the density is ~ 3000 people / km².

Environment

The island forms part of the Absheron archipelago

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

(IBA), designated as such by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding i ...

because it supports significant populations of wintering

whooper swan The whooper swan ( /ˈhuːpə(ɹ) swɒn/ "hooper swan"; ''Cygnus cygnus''), also known as the common swan, is a large northern hemisphere swan. It is the Eurasian counterpart of the North American trumpeter swan, and the type species for the genu ...

common pochard The common pochard (; ''Aythya ferina''), known simply as pochard in the United Kingdom, is a medium-sized diving duck in the family Anatidae. It is widespread across the Palearctic. It breeds primarily in the steppe regions of Scandinavia and Si ...

tufted duck The tufted duck (or tufted pochard) (''Aythya fuligula'') is a small diving duck with a population of nearly one million birds, found in northern Eurasia. They are partially migratory. The scientific name is derived from Ancient Greek , an unide ...

great crested grebe The great crested grebe (''Podiceps cristatus'') is a member of the grebe family of water birds. The bird is characterised by its distinctive appearance, featuring striking black, orange-brown, and white plumage, and elaborate courtship displa ...

s and

common coot The Eurasian coot (''Fulica atra''), also known as the common coot, or Australian coot, is a member of the rail and crake bird family, the Rallidae. It is found in Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and parts of North Africa. It has a slaty-bla ...

s, as well as breeding

Caspian gull The Caspian gull (''Larus cachinnans'') is a large gull and a member of the herring and lesser black-backed gull complex. The scientific name is from Latin. ''Larus'' appears to have referred to a gull or other large seabird, and ''cachinnans'' ...

History

Pirallahi literally means "the shrine of Allah", from the word pir - a shrine / holy place. In ancient times, there was a place of worship and pilgrimage on the island, but there is no exact data on which religion it belongs to. According to one version, it was a shrine of the Zoroastrians, and according to others,

Muslims Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

During

Russian Imperial The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

times the island's name was Svyatoy (from

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

: Святой - "The holy one"). It is said that undersea booty from a 1660 sea battle between

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

ns and

Cossack The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borders of Ukraine and Rus ...

leader

Stepan Razin Stepan Timofeyevich Razin (, ; c. 1630 – ), known as Stenka Razin ( ), was a Don Cossack leader who led a major uprising against the nobility and tsarist bureaucracy in southern Russia in 1670–1671. Early life Razin's father, Timofey Ra ...

lies off the northern tip of the island. Pirallahi Island is said to be among the first places where oil was extracted in

, and in the 1820s it was divided into two separate areas, one residential, and another where oil was refined into paraffin. In 1934, oil explorers dropped metal drills off piers from the island, which at the time was considered an advancement in offshore oil exploration.

Artyom Island

While Azerbaijan was part of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, the island was renamed as Artyom Island in the 1936 () after the pioneer revolutionary ''Comrade Artyom'' (

Fyodor Sergeyev Fyodor Andreyevich Sergeyev (; ; March 19, 1883 — July 24, 1921), better known as Comrade Artyom (), was a Russians, Russian Bolsheviks, Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet Union, Soviet politician, agitator, and journalist. He was a close friend ...

). Pirallahi Island still has a settlement called

Artyom Artyom (also Artiom) () is a male given name common in Russia and other Slavic languages, Slavic-speaking countries. The name uses the "ё" letter, which can be transcribed to English as "e" but still has the "yo" sound. The Belarusian language, ...

. The old Artyom village was evacuated due to rising water levels of the Caspian Sea and residents moved to a series of apartment towers built by German prisoners in 1948 .On 5 October 1999, the current name was returned. In the early 1950s, by the construction of a dam, the island was connected to the mainland and thus transformed from an island into a peninsula. In 2016, a road bridge was built on the site of the dam, under which ships can pass

Infrastructure

* The Pirallahi Lighthouse, the biggest lighthouse in Azerbaijan, is the Absheron lighthouse, located in the territory of Gurgen settlement. The lighthouse, built on hard rocky cliffs at Pirallahi Island in 1859, was commissioned on 23 October 1860. * Oil and gas production is carried out on the island.

Oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

deposits on the northern part of Pirallahi are estimated at 1.2 million tons. * Fishing is widespread among the population and there is a fishing port on the island. * Flights to other Caspian isles are available at the heliport on the southern tip of the island. * In order to increase the production of alternative and renewable energy and improve its quality, the Pirallahi solar power plant with a capacity of 2.8 megawatts was commissioned in the Pirallahi district of

. The construction of the Pirallahi solar power plant was launched in 2014. After completion of construction by the end of 2020, the plant's capacity will be 12.8 megawatts. * A 50-hectare

industrial park An industrial park, also known as industrial estate or trading estate, is an area zoned and planned for the purpose of industrial development. An industrial park can be thought of as a more heavyweight version of a business park or office par ...

, High-Tech Park, dedicated to the ICT industry, is being established on the island by the Azerbaijan Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies.High-Tech Industrial Park
website, accessed 4 November 2014.

Gallery

Pirallahi-rayonu1.jpg, Pirallahi District Pirallahi körpüsü.jpg, Pirallahi Bridge Pirallahi yolu.jpg, Pirallahi Road Pirallahi az.gif, Map of Pirallahi

References

History of the oil industry

Artyom town

External links

Great Soviet Encyclopedia entry

Weather reports for Pirallahı Island

{{Caspian Sea Islands Islands of Azerbaijan Important Bird Areas of Azerbaijan Important Bird Areas of Caspian Sea islands Islands of the Caspian Sea Absheron Archipelago