Documenting destruction of Azerbaijani cultural heritage

Part 3 — Total Annihilation: Aghdam / Ağdam

[Editor’s note: this is Part 3 of a series of contributions concerning preservation of Azerbaijani (broadly conceived) cultural heritage sites.]

By AzStudies Collective, December 30, 2020

Suggested citation: AzStudies Collective. 2020. “Total Annihilation: Aghdam / Ağdam.” In Documenting destruction of Azerbaijani cultural heritage: Part 3. Medium.com, December 30.

The city of Aghdam / Ağdam şəhəri is the administrative center of the Aghdam district (Ağdam rayonu) which prior to its occupation by Armenian forces on July 23, 1993, had a population of 40,000 people (out of a total of 158,000 people in 1993 and up to 200,000 people as of 2018…

Part 2: Counting secular cultural loss: Shusha

[Editor’s note: this is Part 2 of a series of contributions concerning preservation of Azerbaijani (broadly conceived) cultural heritage sites.]

By AzStudies Collective, December 26, 2020

Suggested citation: AzStudies Collective. 2020. “Counting secular cultural loss: Shusha.” In Documenting destruction of Azerbaijani cultural heritage: Part 2. Medium.com, December 26.

The hilltop town of Şuşa / Shusha has a special meaning for Azerbaijanis.

A historical capital of Karabakh, it has been variously described as the “heart of Karabakh”, the “music capital of Azerbaijan”, and the “music conservatory of the Caucasus”.

Home to 19,036 ethnic Azerbaijanis…

Azerbaijani cultural heritage

[Editor’s note: this is Part 1 of a series of contributions concerning preservation of Azerbaijani (broadly conceived) cultural heritage sites.

Part 1. Islamic / Azerbaijani Mosques

Context

While there has been an interest in and calls for preservation of Armenian heritage in and around Upper Karabakh (Dağlıq or Yuxarı Qarabağ in Azerbaijani) — a region at the center of a decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the current state of Azerbaijani cultural heritage has not received similar attention by Western media. …