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/* History */
Little is known about Azerbaijan's history until its conquest and conversion to Islam by the Arabs in 642 AD. Centuries of prosperity as a province of the Muslim caliphate followed. After the decline of the Arab Empire, Azerbaijan was ravaged during the [[Mongol]] invasions but regained prosperity in the 13th-15th centuries under the Mongol II-Khans, the native Shirvan Shahs, and under Persia's [[Safavid]] Dynasty.<ref>http://www.mfa.gov.az/eng/azer/history.shtml</ref>
Due to its location astride the trade routes connecting [[Europe]] to [[Central Asia]] and the Near East and on the shore of the [[Caspian Sea]], Azerbaijan was fought over by [[Russia]], [[Persia]], and the [[Ottoman]]s for several centuries. Finally, the Russians split Azerbaijan's territory with Persia in 1828 by the Treaty of Turkmenchay, establishing the present frontiers and extinguishing the last native dynasties of local Azerbaijani khans. The beginning of modern exploitation of the oil fields in the 1870s led to a period of unprecedented prosperity and growth . [[British]] [[capital]] first began to flow into the Baku oil industry in the late 1890s, when [[crude oil]] and [[kerosene]] prices were rising on the world market. In order to gain control over the Caucasian oil fields, ten companies with a total capital of 53 million [[ruble]]s were established in the years before World War I[[City of London]] between 1897 and 1901. By 1904, Baku had become a major oil provider, supplying 74% of Britain's oil needs.
At the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, an independent republic was proclaimed in 1918 following an abortive attempt to establish a Transcaucasian Republic with Armenia and the [[Republic of Georgia]]. Azerbaijan received de facto recognition by the [[Western alliance|Western Allies]] as an independent nation in January 1920, an independence terminated by the arrival of the Red Army in April. Incorporated into the Transcaucasian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922, Azerbaijan became a union republic of the U.S.S.R. (Soviet Union) in 1936.
