Caucasian Albania

Caucasian Albania, Aghwank to its own Udi remnant, was the east Caucasian kingdom lasting from about the turn of the era to 461 AD. Greeks misheard its Armenian name and called it Albania, a confusion with the Balkans that clings to this day; it has no kin there. The realm covered today's Azerbaijan and Dagestan's south, first at Gabala, then at Barda, squeezed between Armenia, Iberia, Colchis, Atropatene and the steppe mouth. Rome and Parthia took turns as overlords; in 252 the kingdom entered the Sasanian order, standing in Shapur's own victory inscription among the empire's lands. Its kings took Christianity in the fourth century, building a national church unlike either neighbour's, and held it through Khazar raids and Armenian annexations that twice swallowed most of the country. The Arabs ended the old order in the eighth century, Udi villagers keeping the language and the memory while Oghuz newcomers took the land. No Balkans, no eagles' nest of the Adriatic: an eastern Christian kingdom the maps misnamed.