MONUMENTS OF MATERIAL CULTURE AND CONFLICTS IN THE CAUCASUS (A FORTRESS OF IREVAN CASE-STUDY)
THE Caucasus & Globalization
Journal of Social, Political and Economic
Studies
Volume 6 Issue 2 2012
Rizvan Huseynov, Deputy Chairman, Center for the
Protection of the Rights of Refugees and Forced Migrants of Azerbaijan,
Doctorate Candidate, at
the Institute for human rights, NATIONAL ACADEMY of SCIENCES of Azerbaijan. (Baku,
Azerbaijan)
читать статью (стр. 177-191) на русском языке здесь:
Read the article (pp. 156-168) in English here: MONUMENTS OF MATERIAL CULTURE AND CONFLICTS IN THE CAUCASUS \\(A FORTRESS OF IREVAN CASE-STUDY)
A b s t r a c t
The author deals with the destruction and falsification of monuments of
material culture, one of the most painful reper- cussions of the ethnic
conflicts in the Cau- casus. He uses the medieval Fortress of Irevan (Irevan Gala), the now destroyed his- torical
and architectural center of Erevan, to illustrate the sad fate of the monuments
of material culture that became victims of the conflict between Armenia and
Azerbaijan.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
On 23 December, 2011, the Center for the History of
the Caucasus at the Azer-Globe Institute of Social and Political Studies
organized an event in Baku to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Irevan
(Erivan) fortress. Today, this is the place on which Erevan, the capital of the
Republic of Armenia, is situated. The Center presented a rich collection of
documents, archival materials, pictures, and photo- graphs of the medieval
Irevan Fortress (Irevan Gala), now destroyed, that used to be the historical
center of Erevan. It was partially preserved until the 1920s, when the leaders
of newly formed Soviet Armenia decided to liquidate this historical monument of
medieval Azeri architecture.
Armenia picked up the gauntlet and responded to the
issues raised in Azerbaijan with a decision to revive the abandoned Old Erevan
project; the means that the semblance of a historical center will be knocked
together out of several well-preserved buildings of the turn of the 20th
century moved to the center from all corners of the republic’s capital. In
other words, what was once the medieval center of Erevan will be replaced with
an imitation dated to the late 19th and early 20th century. We cannot help but
wonder where the ancient architectural monuments are in a city that claims to
be the oldest on Earth? The answer is obvious: Erevan has launched a wide-scale
architectural-historical falsification of the old city.
Мedieval Irevan as Seen by Painters
and Presented in Archival Documents
Chukhursaad, one of the four beylerbeyliks of the
Azeri Safavid dynasty, predated the Irevan (Erivan) khanate situated in the
territory of present-day Armenia. In 1504, Shah Ismail from the Safavid dynasty
instructed his military leader Revangula Khan to build a fortress in this
territory.
(F i g u r е 1) 1796 y.: View of Irevan and
Minarets
In seven years the fortress was constructed on the
high rocky southeastern banks of the River Zangi (several centuries later the
Armenians who came to settle in these lands started calling it as Razdan). The
new fortress was called Revan in honor of its builder Revangula Khan; later,
due to the phonetic specifics of the Turkic languages, it was called Irevan. It
was a city of minarets; there were 8 mosques in the fortress and 800 houses.
Only Azeris were the city’s residents.
In 1827, after twenty-three years of failed attempts
to seize the fortress, it was finally captured by Russian troops, and it
survived intact until the mid-19th century. Destroying of Irevan fortress took
place only in 1864. Its walls which looked like hedges of the Icheri Sheher
fortress in Baku, were pulled down, the cemeteries destroyed, and the names of
the quarters changed, while all the civilians (Azeris) were driven out.
(F i g u r е 2) 1927. Irevan. These people
call the still standing Palace of the Irevan Sardar the main attraction of the
Caucasus
However, some of the constructions inside the Irevan
Fortress survived until the 1920s when the authorities of Soviet Armenia began
the complete demolition of the fortress, Sardar’s palace, mosques, bathhouses,
and all other buildings reminding about the city’s Muslim and Azeri past. In
1936, when the process was completed, the Armenians renamed the capital, the
ancient Azeri city Irevan into Erevan.
They destroyed the memory of the person who built the city and of those
who lived in this pearl of Azeri and
Muslim architecture. In 2011, the Irevan Fortress would have turned 500.
However, there is a material evidence of Erevan’s
Azeri past. I have in mind a picture by famous Russian artist Franz Roubaud
“Surrender of the Erivan Fortress on 1 October, 1827,” which shows the fortress
with its mosques, minarets, khan’s palace, and dwellers in the Eastern Muslim clothes.
In Armenia, there interpreted as a threat and
challenge the fact that in Baku there
was a presentation dedicated 500th anniversary of the destroyed Irevan Fortress
and this topic was supported in the
articles published in a lot of Azeri and Russian media. The Armenian leaders
hastened to instruct historians, architects, officials, public figures, and the
media to refute the facts presented by the Azeris about the sad fate of the
historical center of Erevan.
(F ig u r е 3) Franz Roubaud’s Surrender of
the Erivan Fortress on 1 October, 1827
The matter here concerns very same medieval Irevan
that was destroyed to support the nationalist Armenian historical concept
claiming that only Armenians comprised the indigenous population of the
territory that is now
Republic of Armenia, and that, therefore, there can be no other
historical and architectural monuments apart from Armenian. The Armenian side,
however, failed to make a more or less coherent contribution to the discussion
raised by Azerbaijan about the destroyed historical center of Erevan.
The Мyth of
Erevan being Older than Rome
For several decades now, Armenian academics and the
Armenian political establishment have been insisting on the fact that the
Armenians built Erevan in hoary antiquity and that it was older than Rome. In
the 1960s, with the Irevan fortress safely out of the way, historians of Soviet
Armenia created a myth that Erebuni-Erevan had been founded in 782 B.C. They
relied on what remained of Teishebaini, an Urartian fortress discovered dozens
of kilometers away from the historical center of Erevan. It was clear since
beginning that the ancient ruins were unrelated either to Erevan or to the
Armenians. However, Armenian scholars stood their ground.
Everything began in the 1950s when Soviet
archeologists found, at some distance from Erevan, Urartian ruins and a
cuneiform tablet, the letters on which were interpreted as RBN. The Armenians
immediately offered their own interpretation: these letters stood for Erebuni
(that is Erevan).
Therefore the cuneiform tablet became part of the history of the
Armenian capital, which invited harsh criticism from prominent Soviet and
foreign scholars, including those who had participated in the digs at the
fortress. Academician Isaak Mints, Soviet historian of world fame who visited
the digs, and equally famous Academician Boris Piotrovsky, archeologist and
historian of the Orient, who had participated in the digs, resolutely objected
to the Armenian interpretation.
The Armenians did not despair: they continued looking
for proof that the fortress was part of the history of the Armenians and
Erevan. Geologist Suren Ayvazian was especially active. After meeting Academician Piotrovsky, he started
arguing about the dates of ancient Armenia. Later, he quoted him as saying: “As
a geologist you should know that no natural process passes without a trace. If,
as you insist, there was an ancient Armenia of Moses of Chorene (Movses
Khorenatsi), I would like to see archeological confirmation of this fact.” (1)
Suren Ayvazian did not go far: he selected Metsamor, a
Bronze Age settlement, to prove its connection with Armenia; he falsified (2)
drawings of coins bearing allegedly Hayassa (old Armenian) hieroglyphs,
which he dated to the 19th century B.C. and supplied them with what he passed
for translations.
In 1968, however, when checked at the department
of numismatics of the History Museum of Armenia, the coins turned out to be
issued in A.D. 1133-1225 by atabeks of Azerbaijan of the dynasty of Ildegizids.
(3)
In the same article, Ayvazian published what he called
“the Hayassa inscriptions” he had discovered on the rocks of Metsamor which, on
closer inspection carried out in 1968 by Prof. V. Krachkovskaya, turned out to
be signs of the Cufic Arab script of the 19th century A.D. (4)
The recently discovered Teishebaini Fortress, the
falsified coins of the Azeri atabeks, and the Arabic inscriptions did not
prevent the leaders of the Armenian S.S.R. from insisting that the
Hayassa-Armenian culture had existed in these lands. In 1968, Armenia
celebrated the 2,750th anniversary of Erevan. Since that time, the republic has
been officially celebrating the mythical age of its capital.
It should be said that many Armenian academics,
including Suren Ayvazian, who try to prove that Armenia has existed in the
Caucasus since hoary antiquity, rely on the work of “father of Armenian
history” Moses of Chorene, who allegedly lived in the 5th century. Back in the
early 19th century, in the second volume of his Mémoires sur l’Armènie (1819),
French Orientalist Jean Antoine Saint-Martin (1791-1832) criticized and exposed
a great number of forgeries, inconsistencies, and falsifications in
“Ashkharatsuyts” (literally, Picture of the World) ascribed to Moses of
Chorene. The French Orientalist published a French translation in the second
volume of his Mémoires sur l’Armènie. (5)
Saint-Martin introduced his work with an article on
the epoch when “Ashkharatsuyts” ascribed to Moses of Chorene was written and
demonstrated that the work contained information, names, and word usages that
could not have appeared earlier than the 10th century; this means that it could
not have been written by Moses of Chorene, who lived in the 5th century. In his
translation of “Ashkharatsuyts,” Armenian academic K. Patkanov partially agreed
with the French scholar. (6) This means that the work ascribed to Moses of
Chorene is not a reliable historical source.
1 S.M. Ayvazian, Istoria Rossii. Armiansky
sled, Kron-Press, Moscow, 2000, p. 78.
2 See: S.M. Ayvazian, in: Izvestia Akademii
nauk Armyanskoy SSR, Nauki o Zemle Series, XVII, 6, Erevan, 1964.
3 See: B.B. Piotrovsky, “Pismo v redaktsiiu,”
Istoriko-filologicheskiy zhurnal, AN Arm. SSR, Erevan, No. 3, 1971, pp.
302-303.
4 See: Ibid., p. 303.
5 See: J.-A. Saint-Martin,
Mémoires historiques et géographiques sur l’Arménie, suivis du texte Armenien
de l’histoire des princes Orphélians, Paris, 1819, pp. 301-394.
6 See:
Armianskaia geografia VII
veka po R.Kh
(Pripisyvavshaiasia Moiseiu Khorenskomu),
Transl. by K.P. Patkanov, Print shop of the Imperial
Academy of Sciences, V.O., St. Petersburg, No. 12, 1877, 9 sheets.
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The Fortress of Irevan as a Victim of Armenian Мythology
As soon as Baku published new facts related to the
liquidation of the Fortress of Irevan, the medieval historical center of
Erevan, the Armenian leaders decided to launch the long abandoned Old Erevan
project. Under the project, the center of the Armenian capital will be filled
with all sorts of buildings dated to the turn of the 20th century brought from
all over the city. It is expected that the result will look like the capital’s
historical center.
This means that the medieval center of Erevan, which
was gradually destroyed by the Armenian leaders in Soviet time and during
independence, will be replaced with a semblance of the architecture of the late
19th-early 20th centuries. Erevan, meanwhile, claims to be the world’s most
ancient city, but where are its ancient architectural monuments and why do the
Armenians need to restore 20 buildings of the turn of the 20th century?
Erevan is clearly launching a huge project of
architectural and historical falsification of the old city because the true
(medieval) makeup of Irevan (Erivan, today Erevan) is strikingly Muslim, Azeri,
to be exact. It cannot be restored without upturning Armenian ideology, which
insists that the Armenians have been the only ethnicity living in the region
for almost 8,000 years. If Erevan wants to regain its old makeup, it can rely
on a vast number of drafts and plans of the old city. There are pictures by prominent European artists
Jules Tavernier and Jean-Baptist Chardin and their Russian colleagues Franz
Roubaud and Grigory Gagarin, the latter painting the Fortress of Irevan in the
minutest detail in the 19th century.
The Armenian leaders declined an offer of help from
Azerbaijan made by Deputy Head of Political Studies Sector at the
Administration of the President of Azerbaijan Fuad Akhundov: “Even if buildings
100 to 150 years old are disassembled somewhere brick by brick and reassembled
in the center of Erevan they will not have any architectural or historical
value… We can offer the Armenian side these pictures and drawings. I should say
that Erevan with the status of the world’s only ancient city without a
historical center will become the world’s only city with a newly built
historical center.” (7)
The fact that Armenia declined the offer added an edge
to the problem of liquidation of the Azeri architectural monuments and
deportation of the Azeris from the Republic of Armenia. By their mere presence, the monuments of Azeri
architecture bitterly reproached those who had gradually and consistently been driving the Azeri
population out of Armenia and were visible confirmation of the fact that the
Azeris had been living in these lands since time immemorial.
For 300 years, the Fortress of Irevan was an
administrative and political center of the Irevan
Khanate and the source of its power, until czarist
Russia moved into Transcaucasia in the 19th century. This started a series of
bloody wars between the Russian, Ottoman, and Persian empires for regional
domination. For twenty-three years, the Russia Empire tried to capture the
strategically important Fortress of Irevan at the junction of the two other
empires. In 1804, ruler of the Irevan Khanate Muhammed Khan, supported by Khan
Kelbali of Nakhchivan, managed to defend the fortress against General
Tsitsianov’s troops that besieged the fortress. Several years later, on 25
September, 1808, an eight thousand-strong czarist army under General Field
Marshal Gudovich besieged the fortress once more; Huseyngulu Khan and his
brother Hasan Khan demonstrated no mean military talent in organizing defenses.
Gudovich retreated empty-handed.
Nicholas I, who ascended the throne in 1825, sent a
large army of 12 thousand under General Paskevich armed with powerful
long-range guns to take the fortress in October 1827. The guns partly ruined
the walls; after bloody fighting the fortress was finally captured. Franz
Roubaud’s Surrender
7 Fuad Akhundov: “My mozhem
predostavit Armenii starye chertezhi dlia vosstanovleniia tsentra Erevana” IA
REGNUM, 7 February, 2012, available at [http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1496663.html].
_____________________________________________________________________________
of the Erivan Fortress on 1 October, 1827 shows the
moment when the Russian troops entered the fortress.
After taking the fortress, the Russian army did not
destroy it. Even when the khanate had been abolished and an Armenian region and
then the Irevan Gubernia established, the fortress remained the heart of the
city and its main attraction. The fortress was destroyed in 1864. The walls, which looked very much like the walls
of the Fortress of Baku, were ruined, the cemeteries destroyed, and the names
of the quarters changed, while the Muslims (Azeris, Kurds, and Persians) were
driven out. Total destruction of the fortress and monuments of medieval Azeri
architecture started when the Armenian S.S.R. was established on the former
Azeri lands.
In the 1920s, what still remained of the Fortress of
Irevan was destroyed by the Armenian authorities together with the Sardar
Palace, mosques, bathhouses, and other buildings that retained memories of the
city’s Muslim past. In 1936, after completing their self-imposed task, the
Armenians started calling the city Erevan: they finally wiped out the memory of
the city’s founder and of those who lived in this pearl of Azeri and Muslim
architecture.
Erevan, the World’s Only “Ancient”
City without a Нistorical Center
The Irevan Fortress and its buildings looked very much
like Icheri Sheher in Baku, the khan’s palace in Sheki, and the khan’s palace
in Shusha that has now essentially been destroyed by the Armenians on the
Azerbaijani territory they occupy. These and many other architectural monuments
(including the Fortress of Irevan) clearly outline the area of the Azeri
medieval culture, which still irritates the Armenians who have found no better
remedy than to destroy the historical center of their capital. Many ancient
cities (Moscow, Tbilisi, and Baku among them) have historical centers protected
by the state and loved by the people.
If the Fortress of Irevan, the historical center of
the Armenian capital, had any, even the slight- est, connection with the
Armenians, it would have survived. The center was ruined because it looked
like, and was, a monument of Azeri medieval architecture which could not be
passed for Armenian. The fact that in 1827 exiled participants in the uprising
of December 1825 put on a performance of Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit in the
Sardar Palace, which the author, a prominent diplomat of his time, was involved
in, did not save the fortress. In his notes, Griboyedov wrote in enthusiastic
terms about the sumptuous palace and its hall of mirrors where he stayed in his
diplomatic capacity.
President of Armenia Serzh Sargsian had to admit that
the fortress did exist. In October 2008, when opening the Russia Square in
Erevan with President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, he said that it had been built
on the site of the Fortress of Irevan, a monument (surprise, surprise!) of
Armenian- Russian friendship.
The attempts of certain Armenian authors to shift the
blame for the destruction of the historical center of Erevan to the period of
“fighting the remnants of the past” under Soviet power do not hold water. Many
other Soviet cities—Moscow, Vilnius, Tbilisi, and Baku—suffered but managed to
preserve their historical cores, conceptual forms, and medieval architecture.
It is common knowledge that at first Soviet power demonstrated no mean zeal
when removing the memory of the past—all sorts of religious buildings and old
churches—but stopped short of razing the entire medieval heritage to the ground.
In Erevan, however, in the 1930s and, later, in the 1960s, the republican (not
federal) authorities destroyed the historical center with its medieval
structures, mosques, bathhouses, the Sardar Palace, and even the walls. This is
nothing more than an act of unrivalled vandalism.
In the history of Russia and other countries, the
Mongolian onslaught is depicted as the most destructive: much was burned down
and ruined, but the architectural treasures of Central Russia (Yaroslavl,
Suzdal, Vladimir, etc. that form part of the Golden Ring tourist route)
survived 300 years of the so-called Tatar-Mongol yoke. The Armenian authorities
have obviously outdone the Mongol invaders in terms of their treatment of
Erevan’s historical monuments and others throughout Armenia.
The Fortress of Irevan in Russian, Armenian and Other
Sources, on Мaps, Drawings, and Pictures
It is extremely important to study in further detail
the destroyed historical center of Erevan, which means that despite the
Armenians’ refusal to accept Azerbaijan’s assistance, it would be expedient, in
terms of shedding light on the matter and restoring memory, to show old photos,
maps, and drawings of the Irevan Fortress, as well as its buildings and
environs.
Here is how the Irevan Fortress (8) and the Sardar Palace,
the place where Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit was first performed, looked in the
early 20th century.
(F i g u r е 4) The Fortress of Irevan. View
from the River Zanga
(F i g u r е 5) The Palace of the Khan
(Sardar) of Irevan where
in 1827 exiled Decembrists performed Woe
from Wit in the presence of its autho
The “Plan of the Fortress of Erivan” drawn on 25
September-1 October, 1827 during the siege of the city by Russian troops led by
General Paskevich (9) offers a more detailed picture of how the
Irevan Fortress and its buildings looked at that time.
The plan shows the buildings inside the fortress
situated on the high rocky banks of the River Zanga; it should be said that the
Azeri khans, who allowed an Armenian church to be built next to the mosques and
their palace, demonstrated a lot of tolerance. The fact that Persian and
Armenian inns were situated outside the fortress meant that they were guests in
Irevan; they came to sell their merchandise and had to remain outside the
fortress.
Those Armenian academics who insist that Irevan was a
Persian khanate and that, therefore, the fortress was a monument of Persian
culture are wrong. Indeed, in one of his
messages to the rulers of Shamshadil,
the Khan of Irevan said that the lands of Irevan, Baku, Sheki, Nakhchivan, and
other northern khanates gathered force to fight the “infidels” and that the
Persian Shah marched on Azerbaijan together with his army to support
Azerbaijan: “Until the infidels are all destroyed the Shah’s army will remain
in Azerbaijan.” (10)
8 See: “The Fortress of Erivan. View from the River Zanga,” in: Utverzhdenie russkogo vladychestva na Kavkaze, Ya.I. Liberman Print Shop, Tiflis, Vol. IV, 1901, p. 164.
9 See: “Plan of the Fortress of Erivan with
Indication of What Should Be Done and Where from 25 September to 1 October,
1827,” in: Utverzhdenie russkogo vladychestva na Kavkaze, Vol. IV, p. 306.
10 “An address of Husein Khan of Erivan to the
Shamshadil elders Nasib bek, Ali bek, Emir Kuli bek, Mamed Has- an bek, and Ali
Kuli bek,” in: Akty, sobrannye Kavkazskoy arkheograficheskoy komissiey, Vol.
II, Print shop at the Ad- ministration of the Caucasian Viceroy, Tiflis, 1868,
Document 1204, pp. 603-604.
_____________________________________________________________________________
(F i g u r е 6) “Plan of the Fortress of
Erivan” with indication of what should be done and where between 25 September and 1 October,
1827
A report by two Persian Armenian turncoats to Russian
General Tsitsianov speaks about the Azeri (Adderbeyjan Tatars or simply Tatars)
population of Irevan. The report pointed out the best method for capturing the
fortress and said that Tatars lived in the fortress, while Armenians lived
outside it and could be moved back to Persia, their homeland, which they left
in 1804-1805 to move to the Caucasus and to become Russian subjects. “Even if
the new Khan of Erivan intended to move the Armenians to inland Persia where
they once lived, according to the old historical books … we inform you that
today there are few soldiers in Erivan, no more than 3,000 infantry. The Erivan
people are the Tatars, who live in the fortress and outside it… Today, all
Tatars of Erivan have risen up against the mentioned khan (Mekhti Kuli Khan of
Erivan.—R.H.).” (11) The letters are dated to the fall of
1805 when General Tsitsianov tried, with little success, to take the Irevan
Fortress.
Under Soviet power, the Church of the Intercession,
the first Russian Orthodox Church built in the newly acquired lands inside the
fortress, was destroyed.
(F i g u r е 7) The Church of the
Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God
The
Russian troops took Irevan on 1 October, 1827, the holyday
of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God; one of the local mosques
was trans- formed into an Orthodox church and dedicated to the Intercession of
the Most Holy Mother of God to commemorate the victory. It was reconstructed in
1839; ac- cording to information dated to 1913, the church had not been used
for some time, but remained standing. It was destroyed later.
The Armenians were doing their best to steer the
discussion in a different direction and refute the fact that the Irevan
Fortress and other monuments of medieval architecture in Armenian territory
belonged to the culture and history of Azerbaijan. Today, Erevan insists that
all the Muslim monuments in Armenia were built either by Persians or even
Turks, and not by Azeri khans and rulers. However, the Armenians have so far
failed to explain why they destroyed these “Persian” and other Muslim
monuments, mosques, and other buildings.
B y W a y o f a C
o n c l u s i o n
I believe that the best way to conclude this article
is to quote from archival documents that disprove everything what the Armenian
side is trying to prove. It insists that until the early 20th century no
Azerbaijan existed as a geographic and administrative entity and, therefore,
there were no Azeris; this means that there are no medieval Azeri monuments
either in Armenia or in the Caucasus.
Let me refer to the book Opisanie pereseleniia Armian
adderbijanskikh v predely Rossii (Description of How the Armenians of
Adderbijan were Moved within the Borders of Russia) by Sergey Glinka. The
author was personally involved in moving Armenians to the Azeri khanates that
Russia acquired in its wars with Persia. The title suggests that there were
Azeri lands; Armenians were de- scribed as Adderbijans, in accordance with the
place where they lived. (12)
In Azerbaijan, however, no one tries to exploit the
book to insist that all Armenians were ethnic Azeris and that everything they
had done so far was also Azeri. In this context, the statements by the
11 “Letter of melik Abram and yuzbashi Gavrila
to Prince Tsitsianov,” in: Akty, sobrannye Kavkazskoy arkhe- ograficheskoy
komissiey, Vol. II, Document 1205, p. 604.
12 See: S.N. Glinka, Opisanie pereseleniia
Armian adderbijanskikh v predely Rossii: s kratkim predvaritelnym izlozheniem
istoricheskikh vremen Armenii, Print shop of the Lazarev Institute of Oriental
Languages, Moscow, 1831.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Armenians that everything was Persian, including
Nizami, a medieval Azeri poet who wrote in Farsi, and the architecture of the
Irevan Fortress built by Azeri khans, look extremely flimsy. If we extend this
logic, all Armenian scientists, poets, and people of art who lived and worked
in the Soviet Union were Soviet and, therefore, unrelated to the Armenians.
It should be said in all justice that the Armenians
found an elegant way out of the situation caused by the name of the country
Azerbaijan. They argue that before 1918 it referred to Persian Azerbaijan and
that there was no Azerbaijan in the Caucasus. Numerous historical sources,
however, show that the name of the place and administrative term “Azerbaijan”
were related to the lands stretching from Iranian Khamadan to Derbent,
Karabakh, Ganja, Irevan, Nakhchivan, and other territories within the Caucasus.
Stepan Burnashev (1743-1824), a Russian diplomat who
represented Russia at the court of Georgian King Heraclius II, travelled far
and wide across the region; he left a complete description of the Azeri lands,
as well as a detailed account of the region’s geography, administration, and
ethnic composition in the latter half of the 18th century. Here is what he had
to say about Azerbaijan: “On division of the Adrebijan possessions. Today,
Georgia in the north, that is, the Kingdom of Kakhetia and Kartli (which in the
past were also part of the lands of Adrebijan), the Caspian Sea and the
province of Gilan in the East, the Arak area in the south, and Turkey in the
west belong to the lands which are called Adrebijan.” (13)
This means that, according to the Russian diplomat,
Azerbaijan, as an administrative, geographic, and historical region, occupied
part of the Northern Caucasus, practically the entire Central Caucasus, up to
and including some of the Georgian territories, the entire territory of the
present-day Republic of Armenia as far as Turkey, the north of Iran (known today
as Southern Azerbaijan), and almost the entire eastern coast of the Caspian
Sea. He also described the khanates of Azerbaijan, each in a special section:
“There are the Derbent, Nukhis-Shaki, Shirvan, city and port of Baku, Shaisevan
(Shakhsevany of Ardebil), Shusha, Genja (Ganja), Erivan, Nakhchivan, Karadag
(in Iran), Talish (Talysh), Myshkin, Maraga, Urumiya (Urmiya), Khoy” and other
khanates. He also wrote that most of the Azeri khans were independent and did
not depend on Persia since they had their own armies and entered into political
unions with other khanates and states. (14)
Similar information can be found in European sources.
In 1864, British Consul in Tabriz Keith Abbott wrote in his memorandum for the
Royal Geographical Society: “The country known to the Persians as Azerbaijan is
divided between them and Russia, the latter Power possessing about five- eighth
of the whole, which may be roughly stated to cover an area of about 80,000
square miles, or about the size of Great Britain; 50,000 square miles are
therefore about the extent of the division be- longing to Russia, and 30,000 of
that which remains to Persia. The Russian division is bounded on the north and
North-East by the mountains of Caucasus, extending to the vicinity of Bâkou on
the Caspian. On the West it has the provinces of Imeretia, Mingrelia, Gooriel,
and Ahkhiska (now belonging to Russia); on the East it has the Caspian Sea, and
on the south the boundary is marked by the course of the River Arrass (Araxes)
to near the 46th parallel of longitude, thence by a conventional line across
the plains of Moghan to the district of Talish, and by the small stream of
Astura which flows to the Caspian through the latter country. In this area are
contained the following territorial divisions: Georgia or Goorjistan,
comprising Kakhetty, Kartaliny, Somekhetty, Kasakh; the Mohammedan countries of
Eriwan, Nakhshewan, Karabâgh, Ghenja, Shirwan, Shekky, Shamachy, Bâkou, Koobeh,
Salian and a portion of Talish.” (15)
13 Opisanie oblastey Adrebijanskikh v Persii i
ikh politicheskogo sostoianiia, sdelannoe prebyvaiushchem pri E.V. tsare
Kartamenskom i Kakhetinskom Iraklii Temuradoviche polkovnikom i kavalerom
Burnashevym v Tiflise v 1786 g.,
Burnashev Stepan Danilovich, Kursk, 1793.
14 See: Kh. Agaeva, R. Huseynov, The Toponym of
Azerbaijan in Medieval and Later Sources, Collection of arti- cles, Elm ve
Tekhsil, Baku, 2011, pp. 229-246 (in Azeri).
15 K.E. Abbott, “Extracts from a Memorandum on
the Country of Azerbaijan,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of
London, Vol. 8, No. 6, 1863-1864, pp. 275-279.
_____________________________________________________________________________
There is an even earlier source—the diary of an
Armenian merchant Zakaria of Akuliss written in 1647-1677—which suggests that
at that time the territory known as Azerbaijan covered more or less the same
territories: “The year 1677, 18 December. I, Zakaria, son of Mgdisi of Akuliss
Agamir, started from Tabriz to Maraga. The Khan of Maraga was son of Aga Khan
Huseyn guli khan married to the daughter of Mirza Ibrahim, the vizier of
Adilbeyjan. This country has been always densely populated and very fruitful. Here
they grow excellent rice which is better than Indian and is taken as far as
Spain as a present. This country grows good cotton, a lot of tobacco; there are
raisins and doshab.” (16)
I have presented here archival documents, photos, and
drawings from different sources to clarify the question of who built the
numerous Muslim monuments in Armenia and help to restore the old initial image
of Erevan-Irevan. There are over a hundred drawings, maps, and
photographs that can be used for the purpose; Azerbaijan is ready to help
Armenia because old Erevan is a cultural and historical treasure that be- longs
to the Azeri, Russian, and other peoples.
16 Dnevnik, Publishing House of the Armenian
SSR, Erevan, 1939, pp. 90, 94, 111, 119.
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