Agulis Massacre

The Agulis Massacre was a massacre of the Armenian population of Agulis (modern-day Yuxarı Əylis) by the Turkish army accompanied by the Azerbaijani refugees from Zangezur.[1][3] The attack, carried out on the order of Turkish commander Adif-bey, from December 24 to December 25, 1919, resulted in the destruction of the town of Agulis.[3][4]

Agulis Massacre
Town panorama in early 1900s
LocationYuxarı Əylis, Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan
DateDecember 24–25, 1919
TargetArmenian civilians
Attack type
Massacre[1]
Deaths1,400 (Armenian government claim)[2]
PerpetratorsTurkish army[1] and Azerbaijani refugees from Zangezur[2]
MotiveAnti-Armenianism

Background
Armenian family from Agulis

Agulis was known from the Middle Ages as a centre of trade and crafts being a part of the Vaspurakan province of the Kingdom of Armenia (antiquity).[5] The Agulis district (mahal) during the period of Iranian Armenia was the only mahal of Nakhchivan to retain a majority Armenian population before the Russian conquest.[6]

In the spring of 1919, the First Republic of Armenia extended administrative control over the region of Sharur-Nakhichevan, with Agulis being made the centre for the subregion of Goghtan. But in the summer of the year, a Muslim insurgency broke out against Armenian rule, and in August the region came under the control of the newly appointed commissar of Ordubad, Abbas Guli Bey Tairov.[2] Agulis pledged its loyalty to Tairov, although in the following months, its inhabitants faced a growing food crisis and were not allowed to leave the town. The plight of its inhabitants worsened when, in November of that year, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic unsuccessfully attempted to wrestle the region of Zangezur from Armenian control.[2][7]

Matters came to a head-on December 17, when frenzied Muslims who had been deported from Zangezur, made their way to Lower Agulis and began to attack its Armenian inhabitants, forcing them to retreat to the upper town. One of the main reasons for this was that Azerbaijani refugees from that district had suffered so intensely from exposure and famine due to the Armenian outrages in Zangezur, they had apparently lost control and sought relief in Lower Agulis. The Azerbaijanis eventually settled in the abandoned Armenian homes after the massacre.[2]

The massacre

On December 24, the frenzied Muslim mob, joined by the Azerbaijani refugees from Zangezur, entered Upper Agulis and started to pillage the town. They then proceeded to massacre its Armenian population, leaving Upper Agulis in smoldering ruins the next day. According to the Armenian government, up to 400 Armenians were killed in Lower Agulis and up to 1,000 in Upper Agulis.[2][7]

Aftermath

The town was partially rebuilt during the Soviet period. However, none of the Armenian cultural monuments were restored and the monuments that remained were completely destroyed by Azerbaijan, which was labelled as an act of cultural genocide by several authors. A prime example of this was the destruction of the Saint Thomas Monastery of Agulis which still remained standing in the late 1980s per the field research of Agram Ayvazyan but, was subsequently bulldozed and a mosque was built over it.[8][9]

According to Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, Anna Naghdalyan, this event was part of a larger process of the Armenian Genocide during that time period and, in particular, the process of ethnic cleansing the Armenian identity in Nakhchivan as seen with the destruction of the Julfa cemetery.[10][11]

Stone Dreams

The massacre of Agulis, the hometown of Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli, was one of the primary settings of his controversial novel Stone Dreams. The book was widely welcomed in Armenia.[12] However, in Azerbaijan the book was met with public outcry, defiance, and smear campaigns initiated by Azerbaijani authorities.[3]

See also

References
  1. Bert Vaux (2008). Zok: The Armenian dialect of Agulis. In between Paris and Fresno: Armenian studies in honor of Dickran Kouymjian. pp. 283–301. city of Agulis, located in southeastern Nakhichevan. Following the massacre of the Armenian population of Agulis by the Turkish army in 1919
  2. Hovannisian, Richard G. (1982). The Republic of Armenia, Vol. II: From Versailles to London, 1919-1920. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 207–238. ISBN 0-520-04186-0.
  3. Mikail Mamedov (20 November 2018). "Reading the novel Stone Dreams on the 100th anniversary of the "Great Catastrophe"". Cambridge University Press. The novel also refers to the massacre committed by Turkish troops on Christmas of 1919 in the midst of the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1923. At that time, Turkish commander Adif-bey ordered the mass execution of the Armenian population in the author's home village Aylis (Agulis in Armenian). Almost all Armenians were killed, with the exception of a few young girls who by the late 1980s had turned into gray-haired women
  4. Aliprandi, Emanuele (2016). The Story of Nakhijevan (PDF). Rome: MIA. ISBN 978-5-8948-1970-9. The most notorious massacre took place in Agulis where thousands of Armenians were slaughtered and the town, known from the Middle Ages as a center of trade and crafts, was wiped out. Recently, Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli evoked the Agulis massacre in his ‘Stone Dreams’ novel, which was met by defiance and smear campaign of the Azerbaijani authorities.
  5. (in Armenian) Barkhudaryan, Sedrak. «Ագուլիս» [Agulis]. Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1974, vol. 1, p. 61.
  6. George Bournoutian (Autumn 2015). "Demographic Changes in the Southwest Caucasus, 1604-1830: The Case of Historical Eastern Armenia" (PDF). Forum of EthnoGeoPolitics 3 (2). The Agulis mahal was the only district where the Armenians formed a majority prior to the Russian conquest
  7. HOVHANNES HAKHNAZARIAN (2013). GOGHTAN DISTRICT (PDF). Yerevan: SCIENTIFIC COUNCIL OF RESEARCH ON ARMENIAN ARCHITECTURE (RAA) FOUNDATION. pp. 148–188. the genocide that was committed in Agulis and the neighbouring villages was not something out of the ordinary: great is the number of the villages and cities in our historical homeland that were mercilessly ruined and reduced to ashes
  8. Simon Maghakyan and Sarah Pickman (February 18, 2019). "A Regime Conceals Its Erasure of Indigenous Armenian Culture". hyperallergic.com.
  9. Hasratyan, Murad (2015). "demolition of the architectural heritage of Armenia by alien invaders (11th to 20th cc.)". Banber Hayagitowt'yan Hayagitakan Miǰazgayin Handes = Vestnik Armenovedenija. Вестник Арменоведения: 83–102. ISSN 1829-4073.
  10. Siranush Ghazanchyan (December 24, 2019). "A century after the Armenian massacre of Agulis". armradio.am.
  11. United Nations Human Rights Council. "Note verbale dated 14 February 2020 from the Permanent Mission of Armenia to the United Nations Office at Geneva addressed to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights". undocs.org. Geneva Convention.
  12. "Akram Aylisli's "Stone Dreams" Released in English Translation". armenian.usc.edu. USC Dornsife-Institute of Armenian Studies. November 26, 2018.
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