Julfa, Azerbaijan (city)
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Julfa (Azerbaijani: Culfa; Armenian: Ջուղա, translit. Jugha) is the administrative capital of the Julfa rayon of Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic. It was part of the Nakhichevan khanate, then Armenian Oblast 1840–1847, and then it was made part of the Erevan Gubernia of the Russian Empire between 1847–1917. Between 1918 to 1920, it was contested between the Democratic Republic of Armenia and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. As a result of the Treaty of Kars, it became part of the Nakhichevan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic under the Transcaucasian SFSR in 1922. In 1936, the NASSR became part of the Azerbaijan SSR.
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[edit] History
Jugha was a village in the early Middle Ages but grew into a town between the 10th and 13th centuries. Its population was almost entirely Armenian. For a time Jugha was one of the most important settlements in historical Armenia. It became extremely prosperous from the 15th to the 17th century because of the role its Armenian merchants played in international trade. The caravans of those merchants travelled the ancient trade routes from Persia, India, South-East Asia, and the Middle-East, to Russia, the Mediterranean, and North-Western Europe.
In 1603, Shah Abbas I of Persia was able to retake Julfa from the Ottomans and was greeted as a liberated by the Armenians, however, by 1605, he realised that he was unable to defend the territory along the Arax river from incursions by the Ottoman empire, and decided to evacuate the region and undertake a "scorched earth policy" so that the region's wealth and population would not fall into Turkish hands. In October 1605 Shah Abbas issued an edict saying that the entire population of Jugha had to leave their homes and move deep into the Persian Empire. The edict said, according to the 17th century chronicler Davrizhetzi (History, Arakel Vardapet Davrizhetsi, Vagharshapat, 1896), an eyewitness to the event, that they had three days to leave with the threat of massacre if they did not. Another eyewitness, Augustus Badjetsi , bishop of Nakhchivan, wrote about the forced migrations, saying that the Persians entered the Armenian villages "like thunder from the sky". "We left houses full of goods, the herds in the fields ... the entire population was turned out of their land ... how many were pushed out at the point of swords and spears ... their moans and groans reaching the skies" (quotes are from the English translation in Aivazian's Djugha - the original source being Choice Selections from Armenian Chronicles, K. Patakanian, St. Petersburg, 1884, page 6 (in Armenian). About three thousand families were deported from Jugha, and it is recorded that many drowned while crossing the Arax river. After the deportation was completed the town was destroyed by fire to prevent the inhabitants from returning.[citation needed] In 1606 a second deportation was made of the surviving population that had managed to escape the first deportation. The deported inhabitants were taken to an area near Isfahan, where a new town, New Julfa (or New Jugha), was established. Today New Julfa is a quarter in Isfahan, Iran and still contains a small Armenian population.
The sudden and dramatic downfall of Jugha made a deep and lasting impression within Armenian society and culture. For example, during the 19th century poets, such Hovhanness Toumanian, and historians, such as Gevorg Alishan, produced works based on the event. The emotions raised as a result of the destruction of the graveyard in 2006 indicates that the fate of Julfa still has strong resonances within contemporary Armenian society.
In the 17th and 18th century a small settlement existed amid the ruins of the destroyed town. At the start of the 19th century this settlement moved to a new location a little to the east of the historical town, at the point where the Yernjak River flows into the Arax river. After the 1826 Treaty of Turkmenchai, the village of Jugha became the official border-crossing between Persia and Russia. When state customs services, a garrison, a post office, etc., were erected three kilometres east of Jugha, a new settlement arose on that new site which developed into the present-day town of Julfa (Culfa).
During the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the status of Nagorno Karabakh, the remainder of the Armenian population (which had been slowly declining due to emigration during the Soviet era) either fled or was forcefully deported to Armenia.
[edit] The Archaeological Site of Old Jugha
After the destruction of Jugha, many travelers, both Armenian and foreign, visited its ruins and described the remains of the town. At the start of the 20th century the remains of the medieval settlement included a massive ruined bridge, two large caravanserais (one on the Iranian side of the border), the walls of a fortress, and several Armenian churches. The most notable remnant from old Jugha was the town's huge Armenian cemetery. It was located to the west of the ruined city, on three low hills divided by small valleys. It contained the largest surviving collection of Armenian khatchkar tombstones, most dating from the 15th and 16th centuries. One of the earliest travellers to the site mentions the existence of over 10,000 tombstones (the French Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes, in 1648). Many of them were destroyed at the start of the 20th century during the construction of the railway line to Julfa, after which the number of tombstones was estimated to be around 5000 (3000 khatchkars plus several thousand gabled, or flat, or ram-shaped tombstones).
According to Armen Aivazian’s 1971-1973 investigations at the Jugha cemetery, there were 462 khatchkars on the first cemetery hill, either upright or fallen. On the second hill there were 1672 khatchkars; and on the third hill there were 573 khatchkars. This made a total of 2707. In addition to these khatchkars there were in the same cemetery more than a thousand ram-shaped, gabled, or flat tombstones. An additional 250 khatchkars were counted in the cemetery of the nearby Amenaprkich monastery and in other parts of the city site. The number of khachkars and ram-shaped tombstones buried in the earth or in fragments, in the main cemetery and elsewhere, was estimated to be more than 1400.
Between 1998 and 2006 a series of pogroms were inflicted on the medieval cemetery, and the entire cemetery is now destroyed. The various stages of the destruction process has been documented by both photographic and video evidence taken from the Iranian side of the border. However, the government of Azerbaijani at all levels has denied that any destruction has taken place, saying that an Armenian cemetery has never existed on the site and that Armenians have never lived in Julfa. Azerbaijan has, to date, refused neutral observers access to the site.
[edit] References
- Argam Aivazian, Djugha, Yerevan, 1990.
- Argam Aivazian, Nakhijevan Book of Monuments, Yerevan, 1990.
- Switzerland-Armenia Parliamentary Group, The Destruction of Jugha, Bern, 2006.
[edit] External links
- Old Jugha page on Armeniapedia
- Destruction of Jugha khachkars by Azeri soldiers captured in photos and movie clips.
- Regnum News Agency report. giving response of Azerbaijan to reports of the destruction of the cemetery.
- IWPR report by a reporter who did not actually visit the graveyard site.
- Archive 1 Archive 2 Two archives of news reports on the issue of the Julfa graveyard's destruction.
