Yanar Dag (Burning Mountain)

Yanar Dag ("Burning Mountain" in Azerbaijani) is a natural gas fire that burns continuously along a roughly 10-metre stretch of hillside on the Absheron Peninsula near Baku, Azerbaijan, fed by methane seeping through the porous sandstone from an underground reservoir. The flames, which can reach up to 3 metres high, have reportedly been burning continuously since at least 1958 — when, according to local accounts, a shepherd accidentally ignited a gas seep with a discarded cigarette — though similar natural gas fires have likely flickered intermittently across the gas-rich Absheron Peninsula for far longer, possibly thousands of years, given the region's extensive natural petroleum and gas deposits.

Such "eternal flames" fed by natural gas seeps were historically significant to adherents of Zoroastrianism, the ancient Persian religion in which fire holds central ritual significance as a symbol of purity and the divine; the nearby Ateshgah of Baku, a fire temple where Zoroastrian, Hindu, and Sikh pilgrims once worshipped around a natural gas vent (now fed artificially after the natural supply was depleted by Soviet-era oil extraction in the surrounding area), reflects this tradition directly. Azerbaijan's modern nickname, the "Land of Fire," draws on this long association between the region's natural gas seeps and its religious history, even as Yanar Dag itself — unlike the Ateshgah — has never been the site of a temple and is valued today primarily as a striking natural phenomenon and tourist attraction rather than an active place of worship.