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Caucasian Albania is a modern exonym for a former state located in ancient times in the East Caucasus, mostly in what is now Azerbaijan, partially also Dagestan and Georgia. The prefix "Caucasian" is used purely to avoid confusion with modern Albania of the Balkans, which has no known geographical or historical connections to Caucasian Albania.
Little is known of the region's prehistory, including the origins of Caucasian Albania as a geographical and/or ethnolinguistic concept. In the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, the area south of the Greater Caucasus and north of the Lesser Caucasus was divided between Caucasian Albania in the east, Caucasian Iberia in the center, Kolchis in the west, Armenia in the southwest and Atropatene to the southeast. Albania first appears in history as a vassal state in the empire of Tigranes the Great of Armenia (95-56 BC). Albania is also mentioned by Dionysius Periegetes (2nd or 3rd century AD) who describes Albanians as a nation of warriors, living by the Iberians and the Georgians. In 252 AD, Caucasian Albania acknowledged the suzerainty of the Sasanian Empire. By the end of the 3rd-century, the kings of Caucasian Albania were replaced with an Arsacid family, and would later be succeeded by another Iranian royal family in the 5th century AD, the Mihranids. The Mihranid dynasty survived under Muslim suzerainty until 821-22 AD.
Originally, at least some of the Caucasian Albanians probably spoke Lezgic languages close to those found in modern Dagestan; overall, though, as many as 26 different languages may have been spoken in Caucasian Albania.
Strabo wrote of the Caucasian Albanians in the 1st century BC:
At the present time, indeed, one king rules all the tribes, but formerly the several tribes were ruled separately by kings of their own according to their several languages. They have twenty-six languages, because they have no easy means of intercourse with one another.
After
the Caucasian Albanians were Christianized in the 4th century, part of
the population was assimilated by the Armenians (who dominated in the
provinces of Artsakh and Utik that were earlier detached from the
Kingdom of Armenia) and Georgians (in the north), while the eastern
parts of Caucasian Albania were Islamized and absorbed by Iranian and
subsequently Turkic peoples (modern Azerbaijanis). Small remnants of this group continue to exist independently, and are known as the Udi people.
Map of Caucasian Albania in the 5th and 6th centuries (Hewsen, 2001).
Map of Caucasian Albania in the 5th and 6th centuries (Hewsen, 2001).