Memorial Sites of Western Azerbaijan: The History of the Village of Leyli-Kachan

A unique project has been presented to the public - the research work "Places of Memory of Western Azerbaijan".

For the first time, during field research on the territory of modern Armenia, data on nearly 600 villages where the ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis originally lived has been collected and systematized. In some of them, fragments of the Turkic cultural and historical heritage have been preserved - cemeteries, shrines, mosques.

A separate video has been prepared for each village in three languages (English, Azerbaijani, Russian), containing photo and video footage of the specific village on the territory of modern Armenia, documented data on the number of Turks (ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis) in the 19th-20th centuries in the specific village, as well as the history of the village and the chronology of the gradual "disappearance" of the Turkic population as a result of expulsions and ethnic cleansings.

Western Azerbaijan is historically a geographical space where hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis lived. Despite attempts to erase the traces of our compatriots in these territories, remembering and being aware of the ancient places of residence of Azerbaijanis in Western Azerbaijan is the duty of each of us.

BAKU.WS presents to readers the next part of the series, dedicated to the village of Leyli-Kachan in Armenia, whose population was subjected to ethnic cleansing by Armenian armed formations in 1919.

In the documents of the Russian Empire and other written sources of the 19th - first third of the 20th century, the ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis were designated by various terms: "Tatars," "Caucasian Tatars," "Turks" or "Muslims." In some sources used in the preparation of the project, the designations "Turks," "Turko-Tatars," "Islams" or "Mohammedans" are also found. Hereinafter, for the period before 1920, the term "ancestors of Azerbaijanis" will be used conventionally, and for the subsequent period - "Azerbaijanis."

Leyli-Kachan is one of the Turkic villages on the territory of Armenia that has not survived to the present day.

During the tsarist period, the village was called Leyli-Kachan, Leyli-kochan, Leylikochan, Leylikachan, and during the Soviet period - Leyli Gachan, Leylikachan.

The village of Leyli-Kachan was founded in the second half of the 19th century by settlers from the village of Terp. During the tsarist period, the village was part of the Sharuro-Daralagez