Qazakh

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Qazakh (Azerbaijani: Qazax, Armenian: Քազաք; also known as Kazakh, Kazakh-Shamshadin, or Gazakh) is a rayon of Azerbaijan. It has two exclaves, Yukhari Askipara and Barkhudali inside Armenia and have been under Armenian control since the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Under the Russian Empire, the rayon was part of the Kazakh uyezd of the Elisavetpol governorate. With the fall of the Russian Empire, dispute over the region arose between the Armenians (who made up 39% of the population) and the Azerbaijanis (who comprised 57%).^[1] When the South Caucasus came under British occupation, Sir John Oliver Wardrop, British Chief Commissioner in the South Caucasus, decided that assigning the Erivan governorate to Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) and the Elisavetpol and Baku governorates to the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) would solve the region's outstanding disputes. However, this proposal was rejected by both Armenians (who did not wish to give up their claims to Kazakh, Zangezur (today Syunik), and Nagorno-Karabakh) and Azeris (who found it unacceptable to give up their claims to Nakhichevan). As conflict broke out between the two groups, the British left the region in mid-1919. ^[2] By 1920, the area came under full administration of the DRA. It remained under Armenian authority both during the Bolshevik invasion of the South Caucasus and within the Transcaucasian SFSR (est. 1922). This lasted until 1931 when the territory of the former Kazakh uyezd was divided between Armenia and Azerbaijan for reasons regarding its population. Armenia would get the territory roughly corresponding to its modern-day province of Tavush which held a substantial Armenian while Azerbaijan would acquire predominately Azeri territories including the town of Qazakh itself. Armenia's territorial losses, however, were compensated with the assignment of Lori from Georgia to Armenia.^[3]