[16][17] The Talyshis have traditionally inhabited the Talish[a] district in the southwestern part of the Caspian Sea, which is usually considered to extend more than 150 km.

Today, the northern part of Talish is located in the Republic of Azerbaijan, encompassing the districts of Lankaran, Astara, Lerik, Masally, and Yardimli.

[18] According to Al-Tabari (died 923); "In the mountains surrounding Azarbaijan there used to live such peoples as the Gels and the al-Taylasan, who did not obey the Arabs and mastered their freedom and independence".

[18] The native transliteration of Tāliš first appears in the 16th-century, in the Armenian version of the Alexander Romance; "And he related that he is a refugee from the Caspian gates, near the country of Talish, in the province of Gilan.

According to Garnik Asatrian and Habib Borjian; "this is one of the rare cases when a folk self-identification with an ancient people can be, at least tentatively, substantiated with historical and linguistic backgrounds.

[27] The Safavid shahs (kings) of Iran attempted to control local Talysh chiefs by subordinating them to obedient officials.

The familial succession of the chiefs gave rise to dynasties that dominated local affairs and sought to consolidate their influence whenever the national government weakened.

The latter was unable to provide them with military or material support; all he could do was give them an ineffective permit that allowed them to collect the taxes of Rasht.

He rose to important posts in Nader Shah's army and was assigned the task of putting down Kalb Hoseyn Beg's uprising in southern Talish in 1744.

[35][36] Jamal al-Din preserved his fathers correspondence with Russia, sending a letter to its empress Catherine II (r. 1762–1796) that pledged his allegiance to her and offered the Russian troops access to his domains.

[38] He issued threatening letters to the khans who had established connections with Russia in an effort to reestablish Iranian dominance over the border districts.

By doing this, the Russian government helped to create and spread a new Turkic identity that, in contrast to the previous one, was founded on secular principles, particularly the shared language.

As a result, many Iranian-speaking residents of the future Azerbaijan Republic at the time either started hiding their Iranian ancestry or underwent progressive assimilation.

[5] In the 19th century, there was a migration of Talyshis towards the north of modern Republic of Azerbaijan in search of work in the oil industry and fisheries.

As a result, several Talysh-speaking settlements have been continued to exist since that time on the Absheron Peninsula, in particular in Baku, as well as a significant Talysh community in Sumgait.

[42] Talish was an economically important region for the Soviet Union, as it supplied a wide variety of products, including fruits, vegetables, tea, grains and meat.

[62] Subsequently, there followed the production of a large amount of encyclopedic, ethnographic, linguistic, historical-geographical and other material that developed and reproduced narratives designed to justify the national "erasure" of the Talysh and strengthen the official myth of their "voluntary assimilation."

"[63] So, for example, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia began to say that "in the USSR, the Talysh almost merged with the Azerbaijanis, who are very close in material and spiritual culture, and therefore were not identified in the 1970 census".

[64][65] According to researchers, "erasing" the Talysh from censuses, like some other peoples, was one of the main ways to increase the "titular" Azerbaijani majority in the republic and homogenize it.

[66][59] This assimilation policy put great social, political and economic pressure on the Talysh and on their daily life, encouraging them to "merge" with the titular Azerbaijani nation.

Others, finding no other way out, accepted Azerbaijani identification in order to avoid discrimination in everyday life, for example, when applying for a job.

Representatives of the Talysh people often internalized these assimilation narratives about themselves that were told to them and which they found in encyclopedias, articles and other printed material.

The census workers sat in the regional or village office and filled in the national composition of the population ahead of time based on orders from above.

[44] According to Hema Kotecha, many Talysh fear being associated with the separatist Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic, with Russia, or with Armenia if they acknowledge or attempt to talk about their beliefs in the public sphere.

[72] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty voiced their concerns about the arrest of Novruzali Mamedov, Chairman of the Talysh Cultural Centre and editor-in-chief of the Tolyshi Sado newspaper.

[75] According to some sources, the Azerbaijani government has also implemented a policy of forceful integration of all minorities, including Talysh, Tat, and Lezgins.

[82] There are two other collections of poetry from the Middle Ages, which are typically regarded as Gilaki, though also occasionally as Talysh; the quatrains by the 13th-century writer Sayyed Sharif al-Din, also known as Sharafshah of Dula or Dulab (i.e. Talishdula[b]); and the poems of Qasim-i Anvar,[83] who lived in the 14th and 15th centuries.

[23] One of the main drivers of the growing Iranian identity of the Talyshis in Azerbaijan was the rise of the Pan-Turkist ideology in the country after the Soviet era.

Even after the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic was abolished, Talyshis in Azerbaijan and Russia's diaspora firmly believe in the possibility of an independent Talysh state.

[96] Another patriline, haplogroup R1, is also seen to range from 1/4 to up to 1/2, while R1a1, a marker associated with Eastern Indo-European, which includes Indo-Iranian peoples of Central/South Eurasia, only reaches to under 5%, along with haplogroup G.[96] Более того, власти проводили откровенную политику принудительной ассимиляции нетюркских национальных меньшинств: лезгин, курдов, аварцев, цахуров, лакцев, талышей.В годы советской власти талыши подвергались усиленной азербайджанизации, что создавало у них сепаратистские настроения.«В СССР Т. почти слились с азербайджанцами, которым очень близки по материальной и духовной культуре, поэтому не выделены в переписи 1970».