The Village of Khandjugaz: Centuries of Azerbaijani Presence Were Erased from the Map of Armenia

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

For the first time, during field research conducted on the territory of modern-day Armenia, data on nearly 600 villages where ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis originally lived has 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-day 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 the ancient places of residence of Azerbaijanis in Western Azerbaijan and being aware of them is the duty of each of us.

Oxu.Az presents to its readers the next part of the series, dedicated to the village of Khanjugaz (now Aznvadzor) in Armenia, where Azerbaijanis lived until the late 1980s.

During the tsarist period, the settlement was called Khanjugaz, and during the Soviet period - Khanjugaz, Ibrahimli, Gezaldara. For at least a century, the village bore the name Khanjugaz until it was renamed Gezaldara in June 1940.

In April 1991, as part of the policy of Armenianization and destruction of Azerbaijani heritage in Armenia, the village was renamed Aznvadzor.

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

From the second half of the 18th century, the territory of the village was part of the Kartli-Kakheti Kingdom. In 1801, Alexander I, with his manifesto "To the Georgian People," definitively confirmed the annexation of the Kartli-Kakheti Kingdom: the Georgian monarchy was abolished, and Eastern Georgia was incorporated into the Russian Empire. During the period of tsarist Russia, the village was part of the Alexandropol Uyezd of the Erivan Governorate.

According to statistical data from the tsarist period, also cited in Armenian sources, at various times before 1914, the village was inhabited exclusively or predominantly by ancestors of Azerbaijanis.

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