Culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be "understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another"
Culture can be defined as all the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that are passed down from generation to generation. Culture has been called "the way of life for an entire society." As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behavior such as law and morality, and systems of belief as well as the art.
The Azerbaijanis are an ethnic group mainly in the Republic of Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran. Commonly referred to as Azeris or Āzarīs, they also live in a wider area from the Caucasus to the Iranian plateau. The Azeris are typically Muslim and have a mixed cultural heritage of Turkic, Iranian, and Caucasian elements. Despite living on both sides of an international border, the Azeris form a single ethnic group. However, northerners and southerners differ due to nearly two centuries of separate social evolution in Russian/Soviet-influenced Azerbaijan and Iranian Azarbaijan. The Azerbaijani language unifies Azeris and is mutually intelligible with Turkmen and Turkish (including the dialects spoken by the Iraqi Turkmen and by the Qashqai). All of these languages are traced to the Turkic Oghuz, who moved into the Caucasus from Central Asia in the 11th century. Following the Russian-Persian Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, Persian territories in the Caucasus were ceded to the Russian Empire. This included parts of the current Republic of Azerbaijan. The treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 finalized the border between Russia and Persia (today known as Iran). As a result of this separate existence, the Azeris are mainly secular in the Republic of Azerbaijan and religious Muslims in Iranian Azerbaijan.
