Azerbaijan: Famous Medieval Cemetery Vanishes

IWPR reporter confirms that there is nothing left of the celebrated stone crosses of Jugha
By IWPR staff in Nakhichevan, Baku and Yerevan (CRS No. 336, 19-Apr-06)

It has become one of the most bitterly divisive issues in the Caucasus – but up until now no one has been able to clear up the mystery surrounding the fate of the famous medieval Christian cemetery of Jugha in Azerbaijan.

The cemetery was regarded by Armenians as the biggest and most precious repository of medieval headstones marked with crosses – the Armenians call them “khachkars” – of which more than 2,000 were still there in the late Eighties. Each elaborately carved tombstone was a masterpiece of carving.

Armenians have said that the cemetery has been razed, comparing its destruction to the demolition of two giant Buddha figures by the Taleban in Afghanistan. Azerbaijan has hit back by accusing Armenia of scaremongering, and of destroying Azerbaijani monuments on its own territory.

Now an IWPR contributor has become the first journalist to visit the site of the cemetery on Azerbaijan’s border with Iran - and has confirmed that the graveyard has completely vanished.

The European Parliament, UNESCO and Britain’s House of Lords have all taken an interest in the fate of the Jugha cemetery. A European Parliament delegation is currently visiting the South Caucasus. But so far none has been allowed to visit the site itself.

If international observers can confirm that the cemetery has been razed, it is sure to spark a new high-voltage row between the two countries, which have engaged in a bitter war of allegation and counter-allegation since fighting ended in the Nagorny Karabkah conflict in 1994.

The IWPR contributor was accompanied by two Azerbaijani security service officers and was restricted in his movements. He was unable to go right down to the River Araxes, the site of the former cemetery, as it lies in a protected border zone. However, he was able to see clearly that there was no cemetery there, merely bare ground. Nor was there, as some Armenians have claimed, a military training ground.

He did manage to see a 20th century cemetery with Armenian tombstones that lay untouched in a nearby village.
This is one of the most inaccessible parts of Europe, located in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan, which is surrounded by Armenia and Iran and – because of the unresolved Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute - is only accessible from the rest of Azerbaijan by air.

Old Julfa, or Jugha as it is known by the Armenians, sits on the northern bank of the River Araxes which divides Nakhichevan from Iran.
According to Armenian and other historians, Julfa was a flourishing Armenian town in the Middle Ages. But in 1604, Shah Abbas of Persia forcibly resettled the inhabitants to Isfahan, where to this day there is still an Armenian quarter known as New Julfa.

The ruined town and its cemetery remained, and were visited by a number of travellers over the years. British Orientalist Sir William Ouseley arrived in July 1812 and found “a city now in perfect decay”, and the remains of what had been one of the most famous stone bridges in the world.

He wrote, “I examined the principal remains of Julfa, where 45 Armenian families, apparently of the lowest class, constituted the entire population.

“But of its former inhabitants, the multiplicity was sufficiently evinced by the ample and crowded cemetery, situated on a bank sloping towards the river, and covered with numerous rows of upright tombstones, which when viewed at a little distance, resembled a concourse of people or rather regiments of troops drawn up in close order.”

Historian Argam Aivazian, the principal expert on the Armenian monuments of Nakhichevan, said that Jugha was a unique monument of medieval art and the largest Armenian cemetery in existence. There were unique tombstones shaped like rams, a church and the remains of a massive stone bridge. Nowhere else in the world, he said, was there such a big concentration of thousands of khachkars in one place.

Aivazian last visited the site in 1987, when it was still mostly intact, despite its poor upkeep during the Soviet period.

Artist Lusik Aguletsi, a Nakhichevan-born Armenian, also last visited the cemetery in 1987, although she was under escort.

“There is nothing like it in Armenia,” she said. “It was a thrilling sight. Two hills completely covered in khachkars. We weren’t allowed to draw or photograph them.”

Armenian experts now accuse Azerbaijan of a deliberate act of cultural vandalism.
“The destruction of the khachkars of Old Jugha means the destruction of an entire phenomenon in the history of humanity, because they are not only proof of the culture of the people who created them, they are also symbols that tell us about a particular cultural epoch,” said Hranush Kharatian, head of the Armenian government’s department for national and religious minorities.

“On the entire territory of Nakhichevan there existed 27,000 monasteries, churches, khachkars, tombstones and other Armenian monuments,” said Aivazian. “Today they have all been destroyed.”

Although the historical provenance of the cemetery is disputed in Azerbaijan, its cultural importance is confirmed by the 1986 Azerbaijani book “The Architecture of Ancient and Early Medieval Azerbaijan” by Davud Akhundov, which contains several photographs of the cross-stones of Jugha.

In Akhundov’s book, the stones are said to be of Caucasian Albanian origin, in line with the official theory taught in Azerbaijan that the Christian monuments there are the work not of Armenians, but of the Albanians. The Caucasian Albanians - a people unconnected with Albania – lived in the south-eastern Caucasus but their culture began to die out in the Middle Ages.

Nowadays, there is a village of some 500 inhabitants known as Gulistan near where the cemetery used to lie. The climate is harsh and dry and the houses are mostly built of wattle and daub and stones from the river.

The local inhabitants are tight-lipped, denying there was ever an Armenian cemetery here
“In some parts of Julfa there are historic Christian cemeteries, but they are monuments of Caucasian Albania and have nothing to do with Armenians,” said political scientist Zaur Ibragimli, who lives in Julfa.

He added that there is a large Armenian cemetery and church, still preserved, near the village of Salkhangaya.
Husein Shukuraliev, editor of the Julfa local newspaper Voice of Araxes said the destruction of the cemetery began as early as 1828, when Azerbaijan became part of the Russian empire. Thousands of tombstones were then destroyed at the turn of the 20th century when a railway was constructed, he said.

Safar Ashurov, a scholar with Azerbaijan’s Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography disputed that the cemetery was Armenian, calling the ram shapes an “element of exclusively Turkish Muslim grave art”.

However, two other witnesses told IWPR that there has been more recent destruction of the cemetery – though it may have started much further back than Armenians allege.

A man named Intigam who works repairing tin cans in Baku said he was posted in Julfa with the Soviet army in 1988-89. At the end of 1989, the radical Azerbaijani nationalist politician Nemat Panahov dismantled the border-posts on Nakhichevan’s border with Iran. Intigam said that part of the Julfa cemetery was destroyed at that time.

Panakhov himself declined to comment when contacted by IWPR, saying, “Journalists always deceive me, and I don’t want anything more to do with them.”

A second witness, who asked for his name not to be given, said that there were khachkar stones on the site up until 2002, but they were then removed on the orders of the Nakhichevan military command.

An Armenian architect, Arpiar Petrossian, told IWPR he visited the Iranian side of the border in 1998 with a friend in order to look at the monuments on that side. They also viewed the remains of the bridge. Looking across the river into Azerbaijan, he said, they noticed a flat-bed train apparently removing the cross-stones from the cemetery.

Armenian deputy culture minister Gagik Gyurdjian said his government raised the alarm in 1998.
“Then we got the entire international community up in arms and stopped the destruction,” he told IWPR. “But in 2003 the destruction started again. Many khachkars were buried under the earth, and the rest were destroyed and thrown into the Araxes.”

In the last few months, the propaganda war over Jugha has reached a new intensity - just as the latest round of Karabakh peace talks between presidents Ilham Aliev and Robert Kocharian, held in February, ran into trouble.

Azerbaijani president Aliev angrily denied Armenian allegations about the Jugha cemetery last week, saying the claims were “a lie and a provocation”.

International institutions are now demanding to be allowed to visit the site of the cemetery. The European Parliament passed a resolution in February condemning the destruction of the cemetery.

However, Azerbaijan said it would only accept a European parliamentary delegation if it visited Armenian-controlled territory as well. Around one seventh of what is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani territory has been under Armenian control since the end of the Karabakh conflict.

“We think that if a comprehensive approach is taken to the problems that have been raised, it will be possible to study Christian monuments on the territory of Azerbaijan, including in the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic,” said Azerbaijani foreign ministry spokesman Tahir Tagizade.

The Azerbaijani foreign ministry says old Muslim monuments have disappeared from Armenia. In a statement, it said that at least 1,587 mosques and 23 madrassas had been destroyed in what was once the Muslim-governed Yerevan Khanate - now part of Armenia. In the Zangezur and Echmiadzin areas alone, more than 830 mosques have been demolished, it said, adding that more than 500 Muslim cemeteries have been destroyed within the territory of Armenia. The statement did not specify when this destruction occurred.

Avetik Ishkhanian, president of Armenia’s Helsinki Committee, blames the international community for not reacting sooner to the razing of Jugha, contrasting the response with the outcry that followed the Taleban’s demolition of the Buddhas of Bamian in 2001.

“Why has there not been the same reaction in this case?” asked Ishkhanian. “At that time, world public attention was directed against the Taleban regime, and this act of barbarism was used as a propaganda weapon to launch military action against them.”

Reporting by Idrak Abbasov in Nakhichevan; Shahin Rzayev and Jasur Mamedov in Baku; and Seda Muradian, Narine Avetian and Karine Ter-Sahakian in Yerevan

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Historic [Armenian] Graveyard Destroyed

BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 21 (UPI) -- Officials said a medieval cemetery with a collection of several thousand carved stone crosses on Azerbaijan`s southern border has been destroyed.

The destruction of the Jugha cemetery is believed to he related to the conflict between Azerbaijan and its western neighbor, Armenia, The Times of London reports.

The Times quoted the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London as saying there is only a dry patch of earth where once stood between 2,700 and 10,000 intricately carved headstones dating from the 9th to the 16th centuries. The act is being likened to the Taliban`s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001, the newspaper said.

The institute`s report is the first independent confirmation of what Armenia has long alleged -- that Azerbaijani authorities have razed the cemetery since the two former Soviet republics began a border war in 1988. The war ended in a cease-fire in 1994 but continues to simmer.

Azerbaijan has repeatedly dismissed Armenia`s allegations and accused Armenia of destroying hundreds of Muslim sites, the report said.

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 December 14-16, 2005

 

 

 March 10, 2006

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Historic Graveyard is Victim of War

The Times April 21, 2006
From Jeremy Page in Moscow
Azerbaijan is being blamed for the destruction of a unique cemetery

A MEDIEVAL cemetery regarded as one of the wonders of the Caucasus has been erased from the Earth in an act of cultural vandalism likened to the Taleban blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001.

The Jugha cemetery was a unique collection of several thousand carved stone crosses on Azerbaijan’s southern border with Iran. But after 18 years of conflict between Azerbaijan and its western neighbour, Armenia, it has been confirmed that the cemetery has vanished.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a London-based non-governmental organisation that supports independent journalism, said that one of its staff had recently been to the highly restricted site.
Where once stood between 2,700 and 10,000 intricately carved headstones — khachkars — dating from the 9th to the 16th centuries, there was only a dry patch of earth, said the institute (www.iwpr.net). It was the first independent confirmation of what Armenia has long alleged — that Azerbaijani authorities have razed the cemetery since the two former Soviet republics began a bloody border war in 1988.
The war ended in a ceasefire in 1994, with 30,000 dead and a million displaced, but still simmers over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is held by Armenia but internationally recognised as Azerbaijan. Foreign organisations had been unable to visit the cemetery because it is in Nakhichevan, a tiny enclave of Azerbaijan cut off by Armenia and Iran and accessible only by air.

Azerbaijan has repeatedly dismissed Armenia’s allegations as scaremongering and in turn accused Armenia of destroying hundreds of Muslim sites. President Aliyev of Azerbaijan angrily dismissed reports about the cemetery’s destruction as “a lie and a provocation” last week.

The institute’s revelation now threatens to embarrass him and further cloud the prospects for a lasting peace with Armenia.

Vartan Oskanian, the Armenian Foreign Minister, welcomed the report. “The irony is that this destruction has taken place not during a time of war but at a time of peace,” he told The Times. There has been clear intent by the Azerbaijanis to eliminate all evidence of Armenian presence on those lands. To do that, unspeakable, irreversible destruction has been wrought and 10,000 tombstones which hold immense religious and artistic significance are simply gone.”

Tahir Tagizade, a spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, said that there had never been an Armenian cemetery or any other Armenian cultural relics in the area visited by the institute. “As a multi- ethnic society, we are proud of our diverse cultural heritage,” he said. “I don’t see any reason for destroying Armenian property, even though we are at war with the Armenians.”

The report comes as a European Parliament delegation is visiting both countries to look into allegations of attacks on cultural sites. It had hoped to visit the Jugha site, but has yet to be granted permission.Unesco said that it was also ready to send a fact-finding mission but needed permission from the Azeri and Armenian governments. The institute said that there was now a village of about 500 people by the cemetery site. Some of those there said it had been destroyed much earlier, while others disputed that it was Armenian.

The report quoted two witnesses as saying that the cemetery had been deliberately destroyed between 1989 and 2002. Argam Aivazian, the leading expert on Armenian monuments in Nakhichevan, said that Jugha had been the largest Armenian cemetery in existence, and a unique example of medieval art. “On the entire territory of Nakhichevan there existed 27,000 monasteries, churches, khachkars, tombstones and other Armenian monuments,” he said.

They were mostly intact when he visited in 1987. “Today they have all been destroyed.”

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Jugha Cemetery

openDemocracy, April 24, 2006
Photographs of the Armenian medieval cemetery at Jugha, the largest and most precious of its kind, before and after its systematic destruction.

“It has become one of the most bitterly divisive issues in the Caucasus – but up until now no one has been able to clear up the mystery surrounding the fate of the famous medieval Christian cemetery of Jugha in Azerbaijan.

The cemetery was regarded by Armenians as the biggest and most precious repository of medieval headstones marked with crosses – the Armenians call them “khachkars” – of which more than 2,000 were still there in the late Eighties. Each elaborately carved tombstone was a masterpiece of carving.

Armenians have said that the cemetery has been razed, comparing its destruction to the demolition of two giant Buddha figures by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Azerbaijan has hit back by accusing Armenia of scaremongering, and of destroying Azerbaijani monuments on its own territory.

Now an IWPR contributor has become the first journalist to visit the site of the cemetery on Azerbaijan’s border with Iran - and has confirmed that the graveyard has completely vanished…”

For the full IWPR story see "Azerbaijan: Famous Medieval Cemetery Vanishes", and for additional coverage, see Jeremy Page's report in the Times, "Historic graveyard is victim of war".

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Azerbaijan 'Flattened' Sacred Armenian Site

May 30, 2006
belfasttelegraph.co.uk
By Stephen Castle

Fears that Azerbaijan has systematically destroyed hundreds of 500-year-old Christian artefacts have exploded into a diplomatic row, after Euro MPs were barred from inspecting an ancient Armenian burial site.

The predominantly Muslim country's government has been accused of "flagrant vandalism" similar to the Taliban's demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.

The claims centre on the fate of rare "khachkars", stone crosses carved with intricate floral designs, at the burial ground of Djulfa in the Nakhichevan region of Azerbaijan, an enclave separated from the rest of the country by Armenia.

The works - some of the most important examples of Armenian heritage - are said to have been smashed with sledgehammers last December as the site was concreted over.

The Azerbaijan government, which denies the claims, is now at the centre of a row with MEPs, some of whom it accused of a "biased and hysterical approach". Its ambassador to the EU also says the European Parliament has ignored damage to Muslim sites in Armenia. Azerbaijan has refused to allow a delegation of Euro MPs permission to visit the 1,500-year-old Djulfa cemetery during their trip to the region last month.

Most of original 10,000 khachkars, most of which date from the 15th and 16th century, were destroyed by the early 20th century, leaving probably fewer than 3,000 by the late 1970s.

According to the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos), the Azerbaijan government removed 800 khachkars in 1998. Though the destruction was halted following protests from Unesco, it resumed four years later. By January 2003 "the 1,500-year-old cemetery had completely been flattened," Icomos says. Witnesses, quoted in the Armenian press, say the final round of vandalism was unleashed in December last year by Azerbaijani soldiers wielding sledgehammers.

The president of Icomos, Michael Petzet, said: "Now that all traces of this highly important historic site seem to have been extinguished all we can do is mourn the loss and protest against this totally senseless destruction."

Some MEPs believe that, boosted by its oil revenues, Azerbaijan is adopting an increasingly assertive stance in the region. Charles Tannock, Conservative foreign affairs spokesman in the European parliament, argued: "This is very similar to the Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban. They have concreted the area over and turned it into a military camp. If they have nothing to hide then we should be allowed to inspect the terrain."

When MEPs passed a critical resolution in February, Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, made a formal protest. Then, when the parliament's delegation for relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, asked to combine a mission to Armenia with a visit to the Djulfa archaeological site, their request was refused. The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly hopes to visit the site and its secretary general has offered to set up an expert group to examine cultural sites in Azerbaijan and Armenia. MEPs insist that the authorities in Azerbaijan should open their doors if they have nothing to hide.

Hannes Swoboda, an Austrian socialist MEP and member of the committee barred from examining the site, said he hopes a visit can be arranged in the autumn.

He added: "If they do not allow us to go, we have a clear hint that something bad has happened. If something is hidden we want to ask why. It can only be because some of the allegations are true." And he warned: "One of the major elements of any country that wants to come close to Europe is that the cultural heritage of neighbours is respected."