High up in the rocky, velvety green mountains of northern Azerbaijan lies a tiny village with its own language that sees itself as the homeland for an entire ethnicity – even if many others do not.

It is the village of Jek (Cek in Azerbaijani). And its 300-some inhabitants, predominantly Sunni Muslims, consider themselves ethnic Jeks, descendants of the Caucasian Albanians, an ancient, semi-legendary people. Their language, part of the northeast Caucasus’ Lezgin group, is their calling card, they say.

Many Azerbaijani researchers, though, call them Kryz, members of another Lezgin-language-speaking group from around northern Azerbaijan’s Mt. Shahdagh, near the border with Russia’s Dagestan.

But when asked who he is, the former principal of Jek’s school, 70-year-old Aydemir Qaflanov, does not hesitate: he is Jek. Remaining so, though, is a struggle.

As with other mountain villages in the Caucasus, Jek’s residents are heading elsewhere for work – if they have the money, to the large regional towns of Quba or Sumgayit or to the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, itself.



Cattle herding provides the main income for those who have stayed.

Their life is rough. Electricity and weak WIFI exist in the village, but standardized water and gas supplies do not. Instead, as elsewhere in these mountains, locals pipe springwater into their houses and, for heat, buy canisters of propane gas or burn bricks of cattle manure in stoves.