Salyan

Salyan stands on the lower Kura, where the river winds across the plain towards the Caspian Sea. The shifting river helped shape settlement in the district, whose older inhabited sites included Mahmudabad and Qırxçıraq. By the late Middle Ages Salyan lay on routes connecting Shirvan with Mughan and the towns of Iran.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries merchants passed through Salyan on routes to Iran, the North Caucasus, Turkestan and Russia. Fish and caviar from the river and sea traveled outward alongside tobacco and woven cloth. The town also had a mint producing silver and copper coins in the eighteenth century. In 1795 the army of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar plundered and destroyed Salyan after meeting resistance during its advance towards Shamakhi.