Armenian cemetery (Culfa)

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The cemetery at Culfa in a photo by Aram Vruyr from 1915.
The cemetery at the beginning of the 20th century.
Uniformed men who were recognized as Azerbaijani soldiers destroying the tombstones.

The Armenian cemetery Culfa ( Armenian Ջուղաի գերեզման Jughayi gerezman , Azerbaijani Cuğa nekropolu ) was a medieval cemetery near the city of Culfa in Nakhichevan , an exclave of the Republic of Azerbaijan . The gravestones consisted mainly of khachkars , uniformly decorated cross stones, which are characteristic of medieval Christian - Armenian art . The Culfa Cemetery existed until 2005 when Azerbaijan launched a systematic campaign to completely destroy the monuments.

Several appeals, from both Armenian and international organizations, have been made to the Azerbaijani government to stop such activities. In 2006, Azerbaijan prevented members of the European Parliament from investigating the case, accusing them of “biased and hysterical rapprochement” and claiming that a delegation would only be accepted if it visited Armenian- controlled territory. In the spring of 2006, a journalist from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting who visited the area reported that there were no visible traces of the cemetery. In the same year, photographs taken from Iran showed that the cemetery was being converted into a firing range.

After examining satellite photos of Culfa taken between 2003 and 2009, the American Association for the Advancement of Science concluded in December 2010 that the cemetery had been demolished and razed to the ground.

history

The oldest kachkars found in the Culfa cemetery in the western part of the city dated from the 9th to 10th centuries, but their construction lasted until 1605, the year when Shah Abbas I of Safavid Persia was one of the years Established a scorched earth policy and ordered the destruction of the city and the relocation of some of its residents.

In addition to the thousands of khachkars, the Armenians also erected numerous tombstones in the form of sheep , which were lavishly decorated with Christian motifs and engravings. According to French traveler Alexandre de Rhodes , the cemetery still had over 10,000 well-preserved khachkars when he visited Culfa in 1648. However, from this time on, many kachkars were destroyed, so that by 1903-1904 only 5,000 remained.

destruction

Two Culfa Khachkars from 1602 and 1603, which were removed shortly before the destruction and are now in Etchmiadzin .

background

Armenia filed a lawsuit against the Azerbaijani government in 1998 for the destruction of the khachkars in the city of Culfa in the Nagorno-Karabakh War , which ended in a 1994 ceasefire. Since the end of the war, hostility towards the Armenian minority has built up in Azerbaijan. Sarah Pickman wrote in the journal Archeology that the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh to the Armenians "played a major role in the attempt to eradicate the historic Armenian presence in Nakhchivan."

In 1998, Azerbaijan rejected Armenia's complaint that the khachkars had been destroyed. The Tehran architect Arpiar Petrossian (also Arpiayr Petrosyan), a member of the Armenian Architecture Organization in Iran , accented the complaints after he filmed the destruction of the monuments as an eyewitness.

Hasan Zejnalow, permanent representative of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (ARN) in Baku , stated that the Armenian allegation was “another dirty lie of the Armenians”. The Azerbaijani government did not respond directly to the allegations, but said that "vandalism is not in the spirit of Azerbaijan". Armenia's lawsuits led to international audits, which, according to the Armenian Minister of Education, Gagik Gyurdjian, helped to temporarily halt the destruction.

Armenian archaeologists and Khachkare experts in Nakhchivan said that when they first visited the region in 1987 before the collapse of the Soviet Union , the monuments were still intact and the region itself contained over “27,000 monasteries, churches, kachkars, tombstones” and other cultural artifacts. In 1998 the number of kachkars was reduced to 2,700. The old Culfa Cemetery is known among specialists for containing over 10,000 engraved Khachkar tombstones, and up to 2,000 remained intact after an earlier vandalism outbreak at the same site in 2002.

Further destruction from 2003

In 2003, the Armenians renewed their protests and condemned the renewed initiation of the destruction of the monuments by Azerbaijan. On December 4, 2002, Armenian historians and archaeologists agreed to file a formal complaint and appealed to international organizations to investigate their complaints. Eyewitness accounts of the ongoing demolitions describe an organized approach. In December 2005, Iranian Armenians , including Tabriz Bishop Nshan Topouzian and other representatives of the Tabriz Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church , recorded additional video evidence along the Arax River , which partially forms the demarcation border between Nakhchivan and Iran. These show that Azerbaijani troops completed their destruction of the remaining khachkars by using hammers and axes.

Remaining khachkars of the Culfa cemetery

Some khachkars were moved to other locations when the cemetery was still in existence and have therefore been preserved. Several kachkars, including those shaped like sheep, are on display in the courtyard of the Echmiadzin Cathedral in Armenia. Other Cachkars of Jugha can be found at the Armenian Church of St. Mary in Tabriz (Iran), the Armenian Church in Geneva (Switzerland) and in the Ermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (Russia).

  • Khachkar of the Culfa Cemetery in Etchmiadzin, Armenia, ca.1576

  • Khachkar of the Culfa Cemetery in Etchmiadzin, Armenia, ca.1602

  • Chatschkar of the Culfa cemetery, 16th century.

  • Chatschkar of the Culfa cemetery, 16th century.

  • Chatschkar of the Culfa cemetery, ca.1602

Commons : Culfa Armenian Cemetery  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

Movies

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Maghakyan, Simon. " Sacred Stones Silenced in Azerbaijan ." History Today . Vol. 57, November 2007, pages 4-5.
  2. ↑ Castle, Stephen. " Azerbaijan 'flattened' sacred Armenian site ." The Independent . April 16, 2006. Retrieved April 15, 2007.
  3. ↑ a b c Azerbaijan: Famous Medieval Cemetery Vanishes ( Memento of May 24, 2006 in the Internet Archive ). Institute for War and Peace Reporting , April 19, 2006.
  4. ^ " High-Resolution Satellite Imagery and the Destruction of Cultural Artifacts in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan ." AAAS . December 8, 2010.
  5. ↑ a b c d Armenian : Ayvazyan, Argam. «Ջուղաի գերեզման» (The Jugha Cemetery). Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia. vol. ix. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences , 1983, p. 550.
  6. ↑ a b c d Pickman, Sarah. " Tragedy on the Araxes ." Archeology . June 30, 2006. Retrieved April 16, 2007
  7. ↑ Azeris dismiss Iran's concern over Armenian monuments in Nakhchivan. BBC News in BBC Monitoring Central Asia , December 11, 1998.
  8. ↑ a b Armenian intellectuals blast 'barbaric' destruction of Nakhchivan monuments. BBC News in BBC Monitoring Central Asia , February 13, 2003.
  9. ↑ Djulfa: Sacred Stones Reduced to Dust - In Pictures: Surviving Khachkars from Djulfa. Djulfa Virtual Memorial and Museum, 2012. Retrieved December 16, 2017.

Coordinates: 38 ° 58 ′ 27 ″  N , 45 ° 33 ′ 53.3 ″  E