Derbent Lighthouse
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How it came to be
Derbent stands on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, where the gap between the sea and the foothills of the Greater Caucasus is narrowest. A fortress already stood on the hill in the 8th or 7th century BCE to command this passage, the Caspian Gates. The Sasanian Persians conquered the site at the end of the 4th century CE.
The present fortifications and town date from the 6th century, when they were built as part of the Sasanian northern frontier against the nomads, and most historians credit the bulk of the work to Khosrow I. Two parallel stone walls ran from the shore up to the Naryn-Kala citadel on the hill, and the town grew between them. The walls are 2.3 to 3.8 metres thick, reached about 500 metres into the sea to protect the harbour, and a mountain wall continued some 40 kilometres west.
Arabs ruled Derbent from the 7th century, the Mongols from the 13th and the Timurids from the 14th, and the Safavid Shah Abbas took it back for Persia in the early 17th century. Persia and Russia fought over it in the 18th century, and Russian sovereignty was recognised in the early 19th. In 1820 much of the south wall was demolished for new building in the lower town, but the upper town kept its medieval fabric, and the site was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2003.
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