Amaras

Amaras is a monastery near the village of Machkalashen in the Martuni region of Artsakh, in a valley between the Khazaz and Lusavorich mountains.¹ Armenian historians credit Gregory the Illuminator with founding the church in the early fourth century. In the late fifth century Vachagan III the Pious built a chapel over the tomb of Grigoris, Gregory’s grandson, and a church is dated to 489.¹

Tradition links the monastery to Mesrop Mashtots and the first Armenian school, and a school was kept at Amaras through successive periods of destruction.¹

The monastery was raided by Arab forces in the early ninth century, pillaged by the Mongols in the thirteenth, and destroyed in Tamerlane’s raids in 1387. It served as a customs house from 1832 to 1847, and the church was rebuilt in 1858 with help from Armenians of Shushi.¹ It was revived after the war of the 1990s and became a place of pilgrimage. Azerbaijani forces occupied it on 19 and 20 September 2023, during the offensive described in the entry on Artsakh.¹