SACRED TIME AND ORDINARY TIME: CAUCASIAN ALBANIAN AND MOUNTAIN JEWISH TEMPORAL CONCEPTS IN THE RELIGIOUS CULTURE OF AZERBAIJAN

Abstract

Azerbaijan, as a multi-confessional space at the crossroads of East and West, has preserved distinct religious perspectives over time, as evidenced by the practices of both indigenous Christian (Albanian) and Jewish (Mountain Jewish) communities. In contemporary scholarship on the region’s religious history, the question of time – its sacralization, cyclicality, linearity, and ritual function – is largely overlooked. Understanding how different religious tradition’s structure sacred and profane time can help us gain a better understanding of Azerbaijani culture, identity, and interreligious interaction.

The purpose of this article is to analyse and compare the religious concepts of time among Albanian Christian descendants (particularly within the Udi community) and Azerbaijan’s Mountain Jewish community. The goal is to reveal how differences and similarities in temporal frameworks influence ritual practices and liturgical calendars; religious education and tradition transmission; social and religious communication; and interaction with state-imposed temporal structures.

Special attention is paid to the boundary between “sacred time” and “ordinary time”, as well as the mechanisms of transition between these temporal regimes in the context of local religious cultures. The study seeks to reconstruct the specific “grammars of time” in the religious lives of these two communities and demonstrate how sacred time contributes to stable models of collective identity and social order.

The research is based on a comparative religious studies approach, combining historical-analytical methods (study of religious calendars, community statutes, oral traditions), ethnographic fieldwork (participant observation of rituals), and elements of the phenomenology of religion (time as religious experience).