Yerevan to host Second International Conference on Talishi Studies

The second international conference on Talishi Studies will be held in Yerevan between November 11-12.

The discussion is a sequential gathering in the series of academic events organized by the international journal Iran and the Caucasus (BRILL, Leiden-Boston, Editor-in-chief Prof. Dr. Garnik Asatrian). The co-organizers are the Modus Vivendi center (Yerevan, president Ara Papyan), the Caucasian Center for Iranian Studies (Yerevan), the International Society for Turkic, Iranian and Caucasian Studies, and the Armenian Association for Academic Partnership and Support, (ARMACAD, President Khachik Gevorgyan). The sponsor of the event is the Hyksos foundation (president: Hrach Gabrielyan).

In his opening speech, Professor Garnik Asatryan (YSU) will address the contemporary problems of Talishi Studies. Other keynote speakers include Professor A Granmayeh (Great Britain; "The language and culture of Talish. How to save them?”), and a prominent historian and writer, Kave Farrokh (Canada; "The process of de-Iranization of the Caucasian Azerbaijan"). Professor Vardan Vosaknyan from the YSU Department of Iranian Studies will make a special presentation of a new Talishi alphabet based on Avestan scripts.

The conference will also bring together scholars from Russia, Iran, Georgia, the Netherlands, Great Britain, USA and Canada. It has already boosted a great interest among Iranian studies experts and received the most positive feedbacks from the Talishi intellectual elites of deferent countries.

The first international conference on Talishi Studies was held in Armenia's resort town of Tsakhkadzor in May 2005. The organizers were the Yerevan State University's (YSU) Department of Iranian Studies, and the Caucasian Center for Iranian Studies.

Talishi are an Iranian people indigenous to a region shared between Azerbaijan and Iran which spans the South Caucasus and the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea. They speak the Talishi language, one of the Northwestern Iranian languages. It is spoken in the northern regions of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern parts of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Northern Talishi (the part in the Republic of Azerbaijan) was historically known as Talish-i Gushtasbi. In Iran there is a Talesh County in Gilan. Anthropologically they belong to the Caspian type of the European race.