Our history Masterpieces of Azerbaijani architecture

Mashadikhanim NEMAT Vafa GULIYEVA Corresponding member of ANAS Doctor of History

THE AZERBAIJANI PEOPLE ARE A PEOPLE OF RICH CULTURE AND ANCIENT HIS- TORY. THIS HISTORICAL MEMORY LIVES IN THE EXTANT ARCHITECTURAL MONU- MENTS, REFLECTING THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE NATION AND THE PEOPLE.

Inscription on the mausoleum in Jafarabad

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Heritage_4_(11)_2012_last.indd 28 11/23/12 10:03 PM Inscription on the mausoleum in Jafarabad rtifacts and place names are direct witnesses to the set- Atlement and formation of a particular ethnic group in a specifi c geographical area. They are the most reliable sources of the belonging of a territory to a particular ethnic group. For this reason, Armenians start mis- appropriating foreign territory, fi rst of all, by renaming settlements and destroying architectural monuments. For example, the place name Almali turns literally into Ar- menian Khndzorek, Urud into Oront, Jafarabad into Argavang, Zeyva into Metsamor, etc. It is aimed at destroy- ing the traces of Azerbaijani culture in these areas. In the era of globalization and integration, no other people would think of making completely un- founded territorial claims against its neighbor in such an uncivilized form. Azerbaijan has more reason to put forward such claims against because the Armenian Republic is located on the historical Azerbaijani land of the Iravan province and Zan- gazur, where the Bolshevik regime established the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1920. Prior to that, there was no Armenian state- hood in any historical period in the South Caucasus. Azerbaijani scien- tists came to this conclusion based on rich source materials (epigraphic material, medieval sources and archi- val material). ate Sunni and Shiite religious boards which was carried out periodically. The establishment of the Arme- in the 1880’s in order to maintain Today being an “outpost of Russia nian state in the Caucasus was due to their power in the region and involve in the Caucasus”, the Armenian Re- the policy of Christianization pursued the clergy in the state administrative public is successfully implementing by tsarist Russia. It was impossible to structure of the region. The creation its mission. Christianize the Caucasus, because of a Christian Armenian state in the In Western Azerbaijan (the area there was a very strong Islamic fac- Caucasus was aimed at separating now occupied by the Armenian tor. The role and position of the Mus- Turkey from the Turkic world. That Republic), there used to be a lot of lim clergy in the socio-political and was the purpose of the resettlement mosques, madrasas, mausoleums cultural life of Azerbaijan in the 19th of Armenians to the Azerbaijani lands and medieval cemeteries. Until 1915, century and their strong social base of the Iravan province, Zangazur and the Yerevan province had 382 Shiite forced the tsarist government to cre- the mountainous part of , and nine Sunni mosques, while 38

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Salim caravanserai appeared in the South Caucasus in the fi rst half of the 19th century as set- tlers. This is a well-known and indis- putable fact. The historical evidence of this fact is still stored in the archives. Suffi ce it to recall the 15th paragraph of the Treaty of Turkmanchay signed between and Russia in 1828, the documents developed by the then Russian ambassador to Iran, famous Russian writer Griboyedov. In 1828- 30 alone, more than 40,000 Arme- nian households were moved to the Yelizavetpol and Yerevan provinces of Azerbaijan from Iran and 84,000 from Turkey. There were many unoffi cially resettled people. In 1978, in the village of Maragashen, Karabakh Armenians erected a monument to mark the 150th anniversary of their resettlement, which, unfortunately, was destroyed by Armenians themselves after the beginning of the Karabakh events. After the Crimean War of 1854- Shiite operated in Zangazur district and presented as Armenian artifacts. 56, a large number of Armenians left and 40 Shiite mosques operated in In their work, Armenian “historians” north-eastern Anatolia and moved to -Daralayaz. In the early 20th change the geography of Albanian the South Caucasus along with the century, there was the ancient city monuments and move them from Russian troops. mosque Jame, Haji Novruzalibay the mountainous part of Karabakh During the Russian-Turkish war Mosque, Haji Imamverdibay Mosque, to the newly-occupied territories of of 1877-78, 25,000 Armenians from Mirzasafi bay Mosque and Haji Jafar- , , , Gubadli, Anatolia moved to the South Cauca- bay Mosque in Iravan. (GIA, f. 290, in- , districts of Azerbai- sus again. Simultaneously, more than ventory 23, case 15 146 a, l. 91; f. 291, jan and attempt to prove the legal- 60,000 Muslims were expelled from inventory 10, case 6354, ll. 64-67; f. ity of the seizure of foreign territory. Anatolian territories seized by Russia. 290, inventory 1, case 163, ll. 17-19) . Thus, a European who does not know A population census in Russia in At present, the city of Iravan has one the region has a false idea of the es- the 19th century, topographic maps Jame, which has been handed over sence of the case. made by Russians and the names of to the Iranian embassy. Monuments located in the South settlements on these maps indicate Of the rich cultural heritage of Caucasus, including in the territory that the majority of the population Western Azerbaijan, several monu- of modern Armenia, have nothing living in these territories was Azer- mental landmarks have survived. In in common with Armenian history. baijani. As the Armenians settled in the territories where they settled, In connection with this formula- the Azerbaijani lands, local residents the Armenians, as a rule, started the tion, which has long been known were told that the Armenians had systematic destruction of Muslim cul- throughout the scientifi c world, it been placed there temporarily as ture. Architectural monuments were would be appropriate to make a little refugees. destroyed or Armenifi ed. Mosques digression into history. Shavrov wrote: “Of the 1.3 million and medieval cemeteries were razed Armenians consider the current Armenians in the Caucasus, more to the ground, while Albanian Chris- territory of Armenia to be their his- than a million are not indigenous tian monuments are misappropriated torical homeland, while Armenians and were settled here by us.”

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Heritage_4_(11)_2012_last.indd 30 11/23/12 10:03 PM Simultaneously, were temple, keep a piece of Noah’s Ark Azerbaijan in the 19th century are also systematically expelled from these at the Echmiadzin museum, claim- protected by the state. territories. Velichko said: “In the Mus- ing that Noah was Armenian, try to Armenian claims to lim provinces of the Transcaucasia, present tombstones with Arabic in- also have no grounds. Julfa has been they keep talking about the eviction scriptions as Arabic inscriptions of Ar- an Azerbaijani city throughout his- of natives (i.e. Azerbaijanis - V. K.) to menia and claim that the Armenians tory. Located on the Great Silk Road, Turkey and Persia, and partial evic- forcibly converted to Islam during Julfa played the role of a big trade tion is happening continuously ... the Arab conquest of the territory center of international importance, Armenian intrigue is also to blame are buried under them - all this might connecting eastern countries to for this, as they systematically use cause surprise and ironic laughter in Western Europe. Armenian mer- Russian servicemen to displace the an unenlightened reader. But when chants were involved in trade trans- Muslim population from their homes these arguments are given as evi- actions and had trading colonies in order to replace them with Arme- dence that the Armenians are the here like merchants from Genoa, nian incomers... most ancient, civilized and cultured Amsterdam, Venice, and the Middle The numerical superiority of the nation in the Caucasus, and therefore East. No more than that. The burials Armenians in the purely Muslim have more rights to this region than at the Armenian cemetery in Julfa provinces of the Russian Empire, other peoples who inhabit it, it is no belong to the second half of the 19th where their number was insignifi cant laughing matter. century, when Armenians settled in before, was created in this way. In In the Armenian press, Academi- Nakhchivan en masse. general, today, denying their resettle- cian B. B. Piotrovskiy exposed Ayva- We should draw attention to the ment to the lands of Azerbaijan over zyan’s pseudoscientifi c statements fact that during the Soviet period, the past 200 years, the Armenians about the existence of Metsamor Islamic monuments were mostly claim the cultural heritage located script from which all the alpha- destroyed. At that time, the Soviet in these areas. They misappropriate bets of the world originate. As evi- leadership was dominated by Ar- Albanian cultural heritage, declar- dence, he cited an inscription from menians, and they held key posi- ing themselves the most ancient, a gravestone in the village of Zeyva tions in the state apparatus and had civilized and native nation of the in Zangazur and attributed it to the a great infl uence in the Politburo and Caucasus. A lot of monuments were 19th century BC. Academician B. B. in the higher echelons of power. It destroyed. Piotrovskiy proved that it was an Ar- was in the Soviet era that Armenians The belonging of the Christian abic inscription from a 19th century established the Armenian Republic churches of Karabakh to the Alba- headstone. (1918-1920) in the historical lands of nians is confirmed by Armenian As a tolerant country, Azerbaijan Azerbaijan and systematically and medieval written sources. Suffi ce it cares for the monuments of Chris- methodically destroyed the cultural to cite one example. Claiming a 16th tian culture. An example is the res- heritage of the Azerbaijani people in century church in the village of Gar- toration of Christian monasteries in the territory for 70 years. Currently, of naker in District, Armenian Gakh District, the Albanian church in the hundreds of mosques, mausole- authors studied Armenian grave- the village of Kish in Shaki, which was ums, medieval cemeteries, there are stones in the area and found that also restored with the joint eff orts of very few remaining, and they have the most ancient inscription on the Azerbaijani and Norwegian special- been “Armenified”. This spiritual tombstone belongs to the 19th cen- ists and restorers. Churches built in genocide has continued over the last tury. The logical conclusion of these 200 years and taken on an open form studies is that the Armenians came over the last 20 years. The destruction to the area in the last 200 years. of the cultural heritage of the Azer- When they try to make the his- baijani people in Western Azerbaijan tory of the Armenian people more has been become a state policy in ancient, present the remains of an Armenia. In connection with the ancient Roman temple which has above, we should draw attention to existed in the area since the Roman some facts. In 1914, the Tifl is-Kutaisi conquest as an ancient Armenian Provincial Majlis appealed to the

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gazur, there is a Qaraqoyunlu mauso- leum. There is a 22-metre inscription on the mausoleum. The inscription states that the mausoleum was built in 816 AH = 1413 and mentions the names of amirs of Chukhur-Saad (the name of the territory of present-day Armenia in medieval written sourc- es), Pir Huseyn and his father Amir of Saad, descendants of Oguz Turkic tribes. Armenians excavated the base of the mausoleum and came to the conclusion that the mausoleum was built by Armenian masters and is the cultural heritage of the Armenians. They call the Qaraqoyunlu state Irani- an and Qaraqoyunlu amirs Turkmens (identifying them with modern Turk- mens), while the Qaraqoyunlu amirs belonged to the Oguz-Turkic union of Turkemans who lived in Anatolia, north of Lake Van, in the 13th century. In addition to that, by its architectural and constructive form, the mauso- leum is identical to the Momina Kha- tun and Yusif bin Kabir an-Niyaz mau- soleums in Nakhchivan and is a con- Governor to suspend the destruction tures in the form of a ram at a medi- tinuation of the architectural school of a Muslim cemetery by Armenians. eval necropolis in the village of Urud of Ajami bin Abu Bakr Nakhchivani. In Over the past few years, the Muslim in Zangazur. The words “min evladi this place, there were several tombs cemetery in the village of Nuvadi in avgvan” i.e. “From descendants of the and a large Muslim cemetery. Every- Armenia’s Megri District, a medieval Albanians” were engraved on two of thing was barbarously destroyed. necropolis of the 15th-18th centuries them. Also, the headstones carried im- At the Salim pass in Zangazur, in the village of Urud in Armenia’s Si- ages of tamgas and ongons (deities) there is a caravanserai of the Ilkha- sian District, a 16th century necropolis of ancient Turkic tribes. Prior to that, nid period. Above the entrance, there in the village of Shaki in Armenian it was thought that with the advent is a huge sign which says that the Zangazur, the 16th century Haji Baba of Islam, Albanians as Christians took caravanserai was built in 729 AH = mausoleum in Megri District, Zaviya the Georgian cross and Gregorianism. 1328/29 during the reign of Abu Said. Akhi in the village of Alayaz in Arme- The Urud monuments testifi ed to the Inside the caravanserai, Armenians nia and hundreds of historical monu- Turkization of Albanian tribes before put a small inscription in Armenian, ments have been wiped off the face the arrival of Islam. This scientific which states that the caravanserai of the earth. discovery completely brushed aside was built in 781 AH = 1332 by Chesar In 1961, during a joint expedition the idea of the alien Turkic element from the descendants of Orbelyan, of the Institute of History of the Acad- in the South Caucasus. In response, and insist that “Tatars” (i.e. Azerbai- emy of Sciences of Azerbaijan and the Armenians plowed this medieval janis) put up an Arabic inscription Armenia in the village, M. S. Neymat necropolis and after that, expelled the over the door later, misappropriat- found interesting tombstones that Azerbaijanis from these territories. ing the monument. However, it is looked like a chest and stone sculp- In the village of Jafarabad in Zan- undeniable that the inscription was

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installed above the door during the construction of the mausoleum. Thus, the individual monuments that remain in what is now Armenia indicate that it is the historical land of Azerbaijan. It is common knowledge that the concept of the history of the South Caucasus was developed in the mid- 20th century by I. P. Petrushevskiy in his “Essays on the history of feudal re- lations in Azerbaijan and Armenia in the 16th – 19th centuries”. This concept argued that the roots of the Arme- nian state in the South Caucasus go back to antiquity. The hollowness of this concept and the lack of a scien- tifi c basis were proved by Azerbaijani Imam Musei Kazim Seyyed Ahmad. that in Karabakh and adjacent terri- historians. On the basis of archaeo- Now they are destroyed. tories occupied by Armenians, there logical materials, written Greek, Ro- Iravan mosques in various plac- were a lot of mosques, mausoleums, man, Persian and Armenian antique es of the Iravan province had vaqf khanakas, shrines, monumental build- sources, and a comprehensive study property. These were mostly land ings, medieval cemeteries, memorials, of anthropological material, it was plots and shops. Documents show etc. until recently. It is 20 years since proved that there was no Armenian that the boundaries of vaqfs were in we lost control of the territory and state in the South Caucasus in an- contact with the property of Azerbai- have no information about the state cient times. janis. Documents do not name any of this cultural heritage. No written source other than the Armenian. This, in turn, suggests that Inscriptions on these structures works of I. P. Petrushevskiy and Arme- the majority of people in the region provide a wealth of information about nian historians describes the territory were ethnic Azerbaijanis. architects, calligraphers, scholars, Sufi of Western Azerbaijan, where an Ar- All this confi rms the conclusion sheikhs and founders of architectural menian state supposedly existed, as about the historic affi liation of these schools that existed in Azerbaijan. In Caucasian Armenia or Ararat country. territories to Azerbaijan. the valley of the River Khakara, there In these documents, the territory of Currently, monuments from the are several mausoleums that stand present-day Armenia is referred to as territory of Karabakh are also being out for their architectural and con- Chukhur-Saad and is part of the idea massively destroyed and Armenifi ed. structive manner. Among them is the of Azerbaijan. The study of written re- In this way, they are trying to justify mausoleum of Yahya ibn Muhammad cords proves that the history of Azer- their expansionist policy. Christian located in the village of Mammadbayli baijan was falsifi ed by Soviet Russian Albanian monuments from the ter- in ; and the mausole- and Armenian historians. It is with a ritory of the mountainous part of um of Shikh Baba (13th-14th centuries) feeling of deep regret that we would Karabakh are being misappropriated in the village of Shikhlar in Jabrayil like to note that Azerbaijani historiog- by Armenians and declared monu- District, around which there is a me- raphy was dominated by this concept ments of Armenian culture. Whole dieval necropolis. A little way from until recently. “works” are being written about this the mausoleum, there is the tomb Documents of the late 19th cen- and distributed in various languages. of Sheikhzadeh Sheikh Abd al-Salam, tury say that in the village of Pirdavu- (Samvel Karapetyan “Monuments of son of Sheikh Qias ad-Din (759 AH = dan in Zangazur, there was the tomb Armenian culture in the Nagorno- 1358). Around the mausoleum, there of a grandson of the 8th Imam Reza Karabakh zone”, 2000; Shagen Mkrt- are graves of followers of the Sheikh. Mir Davud; in the village of Garavelli, chyan “Treasures of Artsakh”, 2000) From texts, paleographic features and there was the tomb of a son of the 7th However, it should be emphasized artistic design, it was established that

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the Shikh Baba Khanaka belonged to the remains of the foundations of a source was constructed by the son the Sufi tariqat of Qadiriya and oper- mausoleum in Ahsadanbab. This is of the Ganja amir of Gargabazar. The ated in the 13th-14th centuries. the work of an architect from Nakh- marble stele from the headstone of Located in these territories, Arab- chivan, Ahmad bin Ayyub al-Hafi z Panah Khan of Karabakh was moved Persian-Azerbaijani-language epi- Nakhchivani. The epigraphic monu- from its mausoleum in Agdam to the taphs that looked like chests were ments of the village of Khojali de- Azerbaijan History Museum. In the vil- shaped as steles, had the form of a pict animals - mountain goats and lage of Jijimli in , there stone sculpture of sheep and horses various tamgas identical to the rock is a rectangular mosque built of river and had various bas-reliefs carved on paintings of and Absher- stone in 1790-1791. them, highlight issues of life, various on. In the Diridag lowlands in Jabrayil In the city of , there are aspects of everyday life, history, place District, there is a medieval necropo- two mosques and two madrasas names, traditional medicine, the lis with a half-destroyed mausoleum. built by architect Karbalai Safi Khan problem of the ethnogenesis of the Around the mausoleum, there are of Karabakh. This is evidenced by the Azerbaijani people and a number of epitaphs of various art forms, includ- inscription on the mosque. The archi- issues of the cultural life of medieval ing two in the form of a stone sculp- tect’s name appears on mosques in Azerbaijan. ture of sheep similar to monuments Fizuli, Barda and Agdam districts and The image of a tamga (three of foothill districts of Azerbaijan. neighborhood mosques in Shusha. vertical and one horizontal line) Chest-like headstones from a me- All these monuments belong to the characteristic of Oguz Turkic tribes dieval necropolis (16th century) were second half of the 19th century. on the thigh of three fi gures in the concentrated at the Imarat memorial The rich cultural heritage of the form of stone sculptures of horses complex in . On the Azerbaijani people in mountainous in the village of Malibayli in Lachin right side of the road leading to the and lowland Nagorno-Karabakh is District (14th-17th centuries) and in Agoglan temple in Lachin District, now under Armenian occupation. Armaziskhev (14th century) is very there were gravestones in the form We cannot say what condition these interesting. The epigraphic material of stone sculptures of horses and monuments are in, because we have of Karabakh and motifs of art make chests. In the village of Ahmadallar in not had access to them for 20 years. it possible to determine the range Fizuli District, there remains a chest- However, the fate of the monuments of the settlement of ancient Turkic like tomb in place of a medieval ne- of Western Azerbaijan subjected to tribes in the South Caucasus, which cropolis (1024 AH = 1615). Above the genocide at the hands of the Arme- played a big role in the ethnogenesis Shah Abbas caravanserai in the vil- nians in the Soviet era gives us rea- of the Azerbaijani people. lage of Garabaglar, there is the Qias son to conclude that the same fate Epitaphs shaped as stone sculp- ad-Din mosque towering on a rock. most likely befell the monuments of tures of horses in the villages of Mali- It is commonly known as the Shah Karabakh. bayli and Gulabird in Lachin District Abbas mosque. On a source located The primitive vandalism raised to depict the symbol of the sun and a in the village, there is a three-line Ara- the level of a state policy in the 21st man with a bird in his hand. Every- bic inscription, which states that the century by a nation that considers one knows that the bird Humay was itself the most ancient, civilized and a deity of ancient Turkic tribes. A pic- cultured in the world gives food for ture of its monuments, apparently, thought. For the culture of each na- was aimed at saving them from de- tion is unique in its kind and is part struction. of universal human culture. Monuments of Karabakh testify Armenia is pursuing a policy of to the construction work and cul- “scorched earth”, and throughout tural and educational activities of the 20th century, they purposefully the Elkhanids and Karabakh khans. seized Azerbaijani lands and expelled These monuments include the Azerbaijanis from them. “Azerbaijan octagonal mausoleum of Sheikh without Azerbaijanis” is the slogan of Yaqub Baba (13th century) in Fizuli Armenian nationalists. This spiritual District, a mausoleum in Barda and terror will continue as long as the

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Azerbaijani lands are under Arme- nian occupation.

References:

1. A.A.Alizadeh. Socioeconomic . 13th-14th centuries. B., 1956. 2. Bakikhanov A. Gulustani Iram, B., 1951. 3. Bunyadov Z. M. Shirvan in the 12th - fi rst half of the 13th cen- tury. News of the Academy of Sciences of the AzSSR. Series of history, philosophy and law. 1976, № 2. 4. Vagif Piriyev. Azerbaijan in the 13th-14th centuries. B., 2003. of the Academy of Sciences of tory of Azerbaijan. B., 1960. 5. Guliyeva V. A. The role and posi- the AzSSR, series of public sci- 19. V.L.Velichko. Caucasus. Russian tion of the Muslim clergy in the ences, 1961, № 1. business and tribal issues. , socio-political and cultural life 12. Nematova M. S. Memorial mon- 1990, p. 58, 59. of Azerbaijan in the 19th and uments of Azerbaijan (12th-19th 20. Shavrov N. I. New threat to the early 20th centuries from the centuries). B., 1981. Russian cause in the Caucasus. perspective of Armenian-Azer- 13. Mashadikhanim Nemat. The The upcoming sale of Mugan baijani political relations. Baku, khanagahs, caravanserais and to foreigners. News of the Acad- 2003. bridges that existed in the emy of Sciences of the AzSSR. 6. Guliyeva V. A. The role and posi- Azerbaijani Araz section of the Series of history, philosophy tion of the Muslim clergy in the Silk Road which connected Eu- and law. 1988, № 3, p. 55. social and cultural life of Nakh- rope’s door Anatolia to China. 21. Aleksandr Griboyedov. Note on chivan, Erivan province and Erzurum Choban Korpusu con- the resettlement of Armenians Zangezur in the 19th and early ference, 1996. from Persia to our region. News 20th centuries. Baku, Elm, 1999. 14. Papazyan A. D. Persian docu- of the Academy of Sciences of 7. M.S.Nemat, V. A. Guliyeva. The ments of Matenadaran. Decrees the AzSSR. Series of history, phi- object of Armenian terror - the (14th-17th centuries). Yerevan, losophy and law. 1988, № 3, p. material culture of the Azerbai- 1956, edition 1, part 1. 54. jani people. Baku, 2007. 15. Papazyan A. D. Persian deeds of 22. Shchepotyev A. Report on 8. Minorskiy V. F. History of Shirvan Matenadaran. Yerevan, 1968, V. the disputed territories of the and Derbent. 10th-11th centu- 2, edition 1. Caucasus, to which the self- ries. Moscow, 1963. 16. Petrushevskiy I. P. Essays on defi ned Azerbaijani Turks have 9. Mashadikhanim Nematova. the history of feudal relations the right. News of the Academy Epigraphic monuments and in Azerbaijan and Armenia in of Sciences of the AzSSR. Series their importance in studying the 16th – early 19th centuries. of history, philosophy and law. the socioeconomic policy of L., 1949. 1990, № 2, p. 47. Azerbaijan (14th-19th centueis). 17. Petrushevskiy I. P. Azerbaijani Doctoral dissertation. B., 1968, states in the 16th-17th centuries. AMEA TIEA, inv. № 6639 (2). A collection of articles about 10. Nemat M. S. KEPA, V. 3, B., 2001. the history of Azerbaijan. 11. Nematova M. K. Inscriptions of 18. A.Rahmani, “Tarikh-i Alam Aray-i Jame Mosque in Shusha. News Abbasi” as a source on the his-

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