Quba: the town of apples and carpets at the foot of the Caucasus, with the Jewish town across the river and the road to Khinalig

Where the dry Caspian plain ends and the apple trees begin, 170 km north of Baku, is Quba, the town of northern Azerbaijan that serves as the gate to the mountains: behind it the slopes of the Greater Caucasus climb to Khinalig and Laza, and in front, across the Gudialchay river, lies Qırmızı Qəsəbə, an entire town of Mountain Jews who have been here since the 18th century. Quba has carpets with a school of their own, a red-brick mosque, the best air in the country in August and apples in October, and it is the base for the whole north. This guide tells what there is, what is around, how to get there and how many days.

The town

Quba was the capital of a khanate in the 18th century, that of Fatali Khan, who united northern Azerbaijan before the Russians arrived in 1806, and from then it keeps its layout and the Juma mosque of 1802, octagonal, in red brick with a metal dome, which is the building to see. Beside it, Nizami park with its old plane trees, the bazaar with the district's apples, walnuts and honey, and at the southern exit the genocide memorial, built over the mass grave found in 2007 with the victims of the 1918 massacres, which Azerbaijan commemorates every 31 March. Quba carpets, with their medallions and geometric borders, are one of the schools UNESCO included in 2010 in its intangible heritage, and they are bought in the workshops of the town and the villages, where they are still woven by hand.

Qırmızı Qəsəbə, the Jewish town

Across the bridge over the Gudialchay, Qırmızı Qəsəbə, the red village, Krasnaya Sloboda in Russian, is a town of some three thousand people almost all of whom are Jewish: the Mountain Jews, who have been in the Caucasus since antiquity, speak Juhuri, a Judaeo-Iranian language, and settled here in 1742 when the khan of Quba gave them land across the river. It is the largest all-Jewish town outside Israel, with two working synagogues, the six-domed one of 1888 and the Giləki, a Museum of Mountain Jews opened in 2020 in a restored synagogue, big houses of families who made fortunes in Moscow and come back in summer, and an atmosphere that stops on the Sabbath. You visit on foot in an hour, with respect in the synagogues, and the museum explains the rest.

Around it

The Qechresh forest, 8 km away, with oaks, wooden houses from the sixties and the chaykhanas where Baku people spend the weekend. The road to Khinalig, 57 km of tarmac up the Gudialchay canyon to the village at 2,200 m with its own language, World Heritage since 2023, an hour and a half in an ordinary car in summer, which is the northern excursion. Laza, with its waterfalls and the walking route to Khinalig. And, to the south, the Tengi gorge and the Afurja waterfall, in the Velvelechay valley.

The apples

Quba is Azerbaijan's apple: the district produces most of the country's, in orchards surrounding the town on every side, and in October the markets and roadsides fill with boxes of local varieties, the jir haji, the Quba red, sold by the kilo and sent to Baku and Russia. They go into compotes, juices and the region's sweets; on the Quba table there are also lamb, plov and tandir bread.

How to get there and how many days

From Baku, marshrutkas and buses from the northern bus station every half hour, two and a half hours by motorway; by car, the same. Quba has hotels of every class and guesthouses, and is the logical base: a day for the town and Qırmızı Qəsəbə, another for Khinalig, and a third for Laza or the Velvelechay valley. On a day trip from Baku you see the town and the Jewish town, but not the mountains.

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