Reflection of the Language Stand of the names of Azerbaijan in hitorical Resources (Safvata-al-Safa and Sarih-al-Molk)

Geographical names are reflections of cultures and beliefs in names of places, in fact human communities borrow from treasure of their culture, history and beliefs in the selection of names for human-made and natural phenomenon. Rarely we can see that names of places are not borrowed from culture and history from meaning and concept point of view. So, name of places are often reflective of spatial patterns of linguistic distribution and historical events of geographical areas. Azerbaijan area is one of those areas that we can profit from it’s geographical names to study it’s historical and cultural realities. In historical debates, this area holds two different attitudes to clarify its cultural and geographical realities and geographical names are one of those elements that can be used in clarifying linguistic and cultural realities of this area. Historical stand of Azerbaijan in Iran’s changes and record of its names in the historical books and documents, gives researchers the chance of studying ancient history and culture of Azerbaijan through names of places recorded in these resources.
This paper explores the features of geographical names of Azerbaijan area in historical texts of Safavid period and the changes they have faced. Research methodology used in this paper is descriptive-analytical and information collecting tool is librarian studies. Results of investigating historical texts especially Sarih-al-Molk states that geographical names of Azerbaijan area are mainly Non-Turkish and the process of change of some of these names to Turkish suggest it’s following of political and social changes during this period.