The Gazakh region, located in the basin of Agstafa and Kura rivers in the northwest of Azerbaijan, was inhabited by the Gazakh tribe, which was part of the Hun tribal union from the first centuries of our era. The greater influx of the Gazakh tribe, which gave its name to the north-western region of Azerbaijan, took place in the XI–XII centuries at the invitation of the Georgian tsars who tried to free themselves from Seljuk dependence. During this period, the Gazakh tribe, which was part of the large Kipchak tribal union, lived in a part of the Kuban steppes. That area was called ‘Gazakhia’ after the name of the Gazakh tribe. Tens of thousands of Gazakhs who came to the South Caucasus at the invitation of the Georgian tsars settled in Georgia and converted to Christianity, while the other part began to live in the present-day Gazakh and Borchali regions. The Gazakhs living in the latter areas have preserved their national identity by mixing with their compatriots since the early Middle Ages. The Gazakh region, a part of the Safavid province with the status of a county, came under the influence of the Kartli-Kakheti kingdom in the second half of the XVIII century. During this period, a large part of the Gazakh tribe, who did not want to live under the rule of the Georgian tsars, moved to Ganja, Karabakh, Iravan khanates and the eastern provinces of Turkey.

Thrasco rex Abodritorum or why the Franks tried to transform an acephalous society of the Obodrites into a gens

The purpose of this article is to explain why the Franks established Thrasco (Drożko) king of the Obodrites in 804. In the considerations, I try to present arguments indicating that the actions of the Franks were attempts at transforming an acephalous community into the so-called “secondary tribe”. This transformation allowed the Franks not only to control the Obodrites but also to coordinate their military activities. We may believe that the designation of Thrasco as king of the Obodrites in 804 was a carefully planned move by the Franks to transform the loosely connected segments of the Obodrite community, polyphalous in nature, into a gens – a community under a king’s authority. The Frankish policy in the northeastern Slavic dominion was intended to establish a central decision-making centre of the Obodrites that would make commitments binding on all its members on behalf of the entire community. What is more, it allowed for a mechanism to mobilise all the Obodrite segments for coordinated military action conducted within the Frankish-Obodrite alliance. On the other hand, granting the lands of the displaced Nordalbingians to the Obodrites resulted from, among other things, an attempt to drive a wedge between the Danish communities hostile to the Franks and the newly conquered Saxon territories. This ‘Obodrite buffer zone’ (let’s give it a working name) was intended to secure the Franks’ hegemony over the lower Elbe.