The right of priority in Karabakh: Russian and Armenian documents dispel European myths

pages of Le Figaro “to stop using the word separatism against Nagorno-Karabakh and Artsakh by Armenians who have been populated by more than 90% Armenians since ancient times”. Unfortunately, Delorme did not provide any references to sources or documentary evidence of his words.

Qarabag.com tried to figure out whose ancestors of modern Armenians or Azerbaijanis really dominated the territory numerically before the authorities of the Russian Empire began to move Armenians from Persia and Turkey into Karabakh in 1828-1830.

As the scientific community of Azerbaijan and Armenia with few exceptions, serves as a propaganda tool in this conflict, we have ignored the contemporary academic works of both sides. Our main sources are Russian official documents and certificates of Russian explorers, historians and publicists of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Only in some cases we refered to the works of the most reputable Armenian researchers of the Soviet period, who published their scientific works before the escalation of the conflict in 1988. And this is what we have managed to collect:

Who were the ancient Karabakh people?

The power of the Armenian kings in Artsakh, as a frontier region, was initially based solely on military force.

For this purpose, special Armenian colonies were organized in Artsakh… Further resettlement of Armenians in Artsakh and the organization of colonies there continued in the following years”.
[Arakelyan A. Karabakh before the conquest by Russian Tsarism // Istorichesky Zhurnal, No. 2, 1938. Pp. 69-70].

Another tool for the Armenianization of the Albanian population in Karabakh was Christian agitation.

[Essays on the history of the USSR: the crisis of the slave-holding system and the emergence of feudalism in the territory of the USSR in the III – IX centuries. Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Moscow, 1958. Pp. 323, 326]

[Petrushevsky I. On the pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. Page 8].

[Ioannisian A. Essays on the history of Armenian liberation thought. Yerevan, 1957. T. I, pp. 130]

Karabakh has never belonged to the centres of Armenian culture. The Church could not show among the Armenian descendants of the peoples of Aghvania the cultural influence it had at least in Syunik …”.
[Petrushevsky I. On the pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. P. 13]

[Arakelyan A. Karabakh before the conquest by Russian Tsarism // Istorichesky Zhurnal, No. 2, 1938. Pp. 70-71].

For a more accurate understanding of the ethnic history of Karabakh in the first centuries of our era, it is only necessary to clarify who the Albanians are:

[Petrushevsky I. On the pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. P. 14]

[Petrushevsky I. On the pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. Pp. 14]

How did Karabakh people become Muslims and Turks?

population of a dominant part of the country, including the lowlands of Artsakh, under the influence of the Arabs adopted Mohammedanism (Islam). As a result of this, the further struggle between Armenia and Albania, particularly in the territory of Artsakh, took on two forms: national and religious”.
[Arakelyan A. Karabakh before the conquest by Russian Tsarism // Istorichesky Zhurnal, No. 2, 1938. P. 72].

[Historical geography of Azerbaijan. Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan SSR. Baku, 1987. P. 48]

At the end of the XI century, Karabakh was captured by the Seljuks. Since then, these lands have been continuously the arena of the military and political activity of Turkic tribal associations and state formations. As a result, the Turks were settled here and gradually mixed with Albanians. The outstanding Soviet orientalist Ilya Petrushevsky, who researched the Armenian villages of Nagorno-Karabakh in 1928, wrote about the Turkification of even previously Armenianized descendants of the Albanians.
[Petrushevsky I. On the pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. P. 39]

The memory of the Turkic tribes of the Middle Ages has long been preserved in the toponymy of Karabakh. For example, in honor of the Oguz Land, from which the founder of the Karabakh Khanate Javanshir originated, was named Javanshir district of Elizabethpolis (Ganja) province. Its western part with 55 villages was included in the Autonomous Region of Nagorno Karabakh in 1924. The name was changed to Armenian, and it turned into Jraberd district.

[Caucasian Calendar for 1850, published by the Office of the Governor of the Caucasus. Tiflis, 1849. Page 94;
Petrushevsky I. P. Essays on the history of feudal relations in Azerbaijan and Armenia in the 16th – early 19th centuries. Leningrad, 1949. Pp. 48;
Kocharyan G.A. Nagorno-Karabakh. Society for Research and Studies of Azerbaijan. Baku, 1925. P. 8].

[Bartold V.V. Т. VII. Works on historical geography and history of Iran. Moscow, 1971. Pp. 502]

Antagonism of newcomers and Karabakh Armenians

[Petrushevsky I. On the pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. Pp. 13]

[Petrushevsky I. On the pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. P. 22].

What antagonism should have been between the first generations of Persian Armenians and Armenianized Albanians, if even almost 300 years later, the descendants of migrants kept the memory of their coming?

Turkic-Armenian symbiosis

In the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century, before the mass resettlement of Armenians to Karabakh from Iran and Turkey in 1828-1830, Turks and Karabakh Armenians got along much better than in subsequent times.

At least among the ruling nobility, there were even instances of mixed marriages. Thus, Petr Butkov, a member of the Council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire, based on archival documents, reported that in the middle of the 18th century, the son of the founder of the Karabakh Khanate, Panah-Ali-khan married the daughter of one of the Armenian princes-melik Shahnazar. Moreover, for 20 years both these leaders, Turks and Armenians, were the closest military and political allies.
[Description of the Karabakh Province compiled in 1823 by order of the General Manager of Georgia, Yermolov, the real state councilor of Mogilev and Colonel Yermolov 2nd. Tiflis, 1866].

The symbiosis between the two ethnic groups, which gradually formed in Karabakh before the mass migration of Iranian and Turkish Armenians there began in 1828-1830, is also reflected in the common faith. It still existed more than a hundred years later. Petrushevsky wrote about it after his ethnographic research in Karabakh in summer 1928:

[Petrushevsky I. On the pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. Pp. 14; scan N9].

[Petrushevsky I. On the pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. Pages 23, 25-26, 30-31, 37-38].

[Petrushevsky I. On the pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. Pp. 42]

Turks and Armenians: who were the most numerous?

The first statistical data on the numerical correlation between Turks and Armenians (including descendants of Armenianized Albanians) in the Karabakh Khanate relate to the beginning of active Russian expansion in the region.

“In the Karabakh possession, there are residents of up to 12 thousand families, including Armenians up to 2500 families, and the rest are Tatars or Mohammedans (Muslims).”
[Accession of Eastern Armenia to Russia. Collection of documents. T. I (1801-1813. Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR. Yerevan, 1972. Pp. 1801-1813. Publishing of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR, 1972. Page 562].

of the 600 villages, 450 are listed as Tatar (i.e. Turkic), and 150 as Armenian. There were 20,095 families living there: 15,729 (78.3%) were “Tatar” families, and 4,366 (21.7%) were Armenian families.
[Description of the Karabakh Province compiled in 1823 by order of the General Manager of Georgia, Yermolov, the real state councilor of Mogilev and Colonel Yermolov 2nd. Tiflis, 1866].

Both documents represent a particular value for the history of Karabakh, as they provide a clear picture of its ethnic structure before the mass resettlement of Armenians from Persia and Turkey in 1828-1830. Obviously, as a result of this migration, the demographic situation in Karabakh began to change cardinally. The nature of the relationship between the two ethnic groups also began to change for the worst.