Talish-i Gushtasbi

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Talish-i Gushtasbi is the historical name of the northern Talysh area, presently a part of the Republic of Azerbaijan. People of northern Talysh are of Iranian stock and speak a northwestern Iranian language called Talysh. The chief cities of the area are Lankaran, Lerik, Masally and Astara.

"Ancestors of Talish people were partly of Armenian ethnicity," claims Gurgen Melikyan Foundation of the Yerevan-based Caucasian Iranian Studies Center had funded the publication. Turkish invaders from Central Asia were able to Islamize most of the Talish and did destroy some of their Indo-European linguistic structures, but there remains a strong connection between the Armenian and Talish grammars and lexicons.