Azerbaijan, Baku, June 3 / Trend E.Tariverdiyeva /
Euronews TV channel's website presents the story about one of the regions of Azerbaijan.
The Caucasus region is a crossroads of more than 50 ethnic groups, according to the story.
The World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue held in Baku was an event where religious and opinion leaders gathered to discuss problems relating to the relationship between different cultures and religions, according to the story.
Azerbaijan is one example of the Caucasian cultural mosaic, Euronews informs.
In the Caucasus it is still possible to find extremely isolated communities. Euronews went to Khinalig, a village located at an altitude of 2300 metres on the Azerbaijani side of the Caucasus mountain range.
The people from Khinalig speak both their own dialect and Azerbaijani language.
The village, with around 2000 inhabitants, is the oldest and most remote in Azerbaijan and among the highest human settlements in Europe. A local villager spoke to Euronews about the community saying, "It's very important to preserve the history, the culture and the language of this specific ethnicity , our ancestors lived here for 6000 years and it is important to show the world that we have such small minorities still living here".
The people of Khinalig have started renting rooms to foreigners who like to get off the beaten track, Euronews informed.
Qirmisi Qasaba, meaning red settlement, is just across the river in the city of Quba in the ancient Jewish part of the city, where people also speak their own language.
According to some sources, the Jewish community were brought to Azerbaijan by the Persians and settled around 500BC. For many years they have lived alongside the Muslim people, in this part of the Caucasus the Middle East conflict seems far away.
"We are the branches of this single tree, both Muslims and Jews, here everybody understands that," Rabbi Elazar Nisimov said.
Despite the mutual tolerance, the two communities do not mix, they simply coexist without any tension, according to the story.
The Baku World Forum addressed some of the many challenges that arise in intercultural dialogue, from conceptual frameworks and governance to policy and practice, the author of the story says.
Overall the Forum also hoped to convey the message that tolerance is possible.