Artsakh

Artsakh is the Armenian name of the mountainous region of the South Caucasus known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh. It was the tenth province of Great Armenia.¹ Its churches and monasteries include Amaras and Gandzasar, and it was for more than thirty years the object of a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Khachen and the melikdoms

In the Middle Ages much of Artsakh was the principality of Khachen, ruled by the Hasan-Jalalyan house. Hasan-Jalal built the church of Gandzasar between 1216 and 1238, and from the fifteenth century Gandzasar was the seat of a Catholicosate, which the Russian government dissolved in 1815.²

From the middle of the fifteenth century Armenian princes, the meliks, held five melikdoms in Artsakh: Gulistan, Jraberd, Khachen, Varanda and Dizak. The Hasan-Jalalyan family ruled Khachen and the Israyelian family ruled Jraberd. Nadir Shah confirmed their privileges in 1736. Catholicos Esayi of Gandzasar, of the Hasan-Jalalyan house, led the rising of 1722 to 1730, and in 1799 the melikdoms placed themselves under Russian rule.³

The Soviet period

On 5 July 1921 the Caucasian Bureau of the Communist Party placed Nagorno-Karabakh inside Soviet Azerbaijan, and in July 1923 an autonomous oblast was proclaimed there, covering only part of historic Artsakh.⁴¹ On 12 February 1988 mass demonstrations in Stepanakert demanded the region’s transfer to Armenia.¹

The republic

On 2 September 1991 a declaration adopted in Stepanakert established the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, and a referendum on 10 December 1991 approved independence.¹ The war that followed ended with an armistice signed at Bishkek in May 1994.¹ On 30 April 1993 the United Nations Security Council, in Resolution 822, had demanded the withdrawal of occupying forces from the district of Kelbajar and other recently occupied areas of Azerbaijan.⁵ In February 2017 the republic was renamed the Republic of Artsakh.¹

The 2020 war and its aftermath

The war of 2020 ended with a trilateral statement of 10 November 2020, signed by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia. It set a ceasefire from 00:00 Moscow time on 10 November, left the parties holding the positions they occupied, provided for the return to Azerbaijan of the districts of Aghdam, Kalbajar and Lachin, and provided for the deployment of 1,960 Russian peacekeepers for five years. It described a five-kilometer-wide Lachin corridor linking Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, under peacekeeper control.⁶

The 2023 offensive and dissolution

On 19 September 2023 Azerbaijan began a military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh.⁷ Armenia’s government told the executive committee of the UN refugee agency in October 2023 that more than 100,000 refugees, about 30,000 of them children, had arrived in Armenia from the region; these are Armenia’s figures.⁷ On 28 September 2023 the president of the republic, Samvel Shakhramanyan, signed an order that all state agencies be dissolved by 1 January 2024, when the republic would cease to exist.⁸ Monasteries such as Amaras came under Azerbaijani control.⁹