Places of Memory of Western Azerbaijan: The History of the Village of Akhta in Armenia, Where an Azerbaijani Cemetery Has Been Preserved

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 historically lived have been collected and systematized. In some of them, fragments of 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 fragments of 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) who lived there in the 19th-20th centuries, as well as its history and 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.

Oxu.Az presents to readers the following part of the series, dedicated to the village of Akhta in Armenia, where an Azerbaijani cemetery has been preserved.

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 conventionally used, and for the subsequent period - "Azerbaijanis."

Names:

in the tsarist period - Akhta

in the Soviet period - Akhta.

Since 1995, the village has been part of the Vayots Dzor Province of the Republic of Armenia.

Mentions of the village are found in Ottoman sources of the 18th century.

From the mid-18th century until the Russian conquest, the territory of the village was part of the Daralagez maghal of the Nakhchivan Khanate.

In 1827, Russia occupied the territory of the Nakhchivan Khanate, and the Treaty of Turkmenchay of 1828 consolidated its inclusion into the Russian Empire.