Karabakh ( ; ) is a geographic region in southwestern Azerbaijan and eastern Armenia, extending from the highlands of the Lesser Caucasus down to the lowlands between the rivers Kura and Aras. It is divided into three regions: Highland Karabakh, Lowland Karabakh (the steppes between the Kura and Aras rivers), and the eastern slopes of the Zangezur Mountains (roughly Syunik and Kalbajar–Lachin). Leo. Երկերի Ժողովածու [Collected Works]. Yerevan: Hayastan Publishing, 1973, vol. 3, p. 9. Ulubabyan, Bagrat Արցախյան Գոյապայքարը [The Struggle for the Survival of Artsakh]. Yerevan: Gir Grots Publishing, 1994, p. 3. .Mirza Jamal Javanshir Karabagi. The History of Karabakh . Chapter 2: About the borders, old cities, population aggregates and rivers of the Karabakh region.Mirza Jamal Javanshir Karabagi. A History of Qarabagh: An Annotated Translation of Mirza Jamal Javanshir Qarabaghi's Tarikh-e Qarabagh, trans. George A. Bournoutian. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishing, 1994, pp. 46ff.Hewsen, Robert H. "The Meliks of Eastern Armenia: A Preliminary Study," Revue des Études Arméniennes 9 (1972), p. 289, note 17.
Etymology The name , transliterated from the Russian version of the word , derives from the Azerbaijani , which is generally believed to be a compound of the Turkic word kara (black) and the Iranian word bagh (garden), literally meaning "black garden."Regions and territories: Nagorno-Karabakh. BBC News. Retrieved August 29, 2009.Академик В.В.Бартольд. Сочинения / Ответственный редактор тома А.М.Беленицкий. – М.: Наука, 1965. – Т. III. – С. 335. – 712 с.Босуорт К. Э. The Encyclopedia of Islam. – 1997. – Т. IV. – С. 573. However, there are some other hypotheses.
Russian Orientalist Vladimir Minorsky believed that the name possibly connected to an extinct Turkic tribe of the same name. By comparison, there are similar toponyms in Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan.
According to Iranian linguist Abdolali Karang, kara could have derived from kaleh or kala, which means "large" in the Harzani dialect of the extinct Iranian Old Azeri language.Karang, Abdolali. Tati va Harzani: Do lahje az zabane bastani-ye Azerbaijan (in Farsi), Tabriz: E. Vaezpour, 1954, p. 496."Azari, the Old Iranian Language of Azerbaijan", Encyclopædia Iranica, op. cit., Vol. III/2, 1987 by Ehsan Yarshater. External link: The Iranian-Azerbaijani historian Ahmad Kasravi also speaks of the translation of kara as "large" and not "black."Kasravi, Ahmad. Collection of 78 papers and talks (in Farsi), ed. Yahya Zeka, Lectures, Tehran: Sherkate Sahami Ketabhaye Jibi, 2536, pp. 365/431 The kara prefix has also been used for other nearby regions and landmarks, such as Karadagh (dagh "mountain") referring to a mountain range, and Karakilise (kilise "church") referring to the largest church complex in its area, built mainly with white stone, the Monastery of Saint Thaddeus. In the sense of "large," Karakilise would translate to "large church," and Karabakh would translate to "large garden."
Another theory, proposed by Armenian historian Bagrat Ulubabyan, is that, along with the "large" translation of kara,History of the Principality of Khachen, Yerevan, 1975, p. 2 the bagh component was derived from the nearby canton called Baghk, which at some point was part of Melikdoms of Karabakh within modern-day Karabakh – Dizak and the Kingdom of Syunik (in Baghk, the -k suffix is a plural nominative case marker also used to form names of countries and regions in Classical Armenian). In this sense, Karabakh would translate to "Greater Baghk."Hewsen, Robert H. Armenia: a Historical Atlas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. 119–120.
The placename is first mentioned in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in The Georgian Chronicles ( "Life of Kartli"), and in Persian sources. Ulubabyan, Bagrat. «Ղարաբաղ» [Gharabagh]. Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1981, vol. 7, p. 26. The name became common after the 1230s when the region was conquered by the Mongols.Great Soviet Encyclopedia, "NKAO, Historical Survey", 3rd edition, translated into English, New York: Macmillan Inc., 1973. The first time the name was mentioned in an Armenian source was in the fifteenth century, in Thomas of Metsoph's History of Tamerlane and His Successors.
Geography Karabakh is a landlocked region located in the southeast of Armenia and the west of Azerbaijan. There is currently no official designation for what constitutes the whole of Karabakh. Historically, the maximum extent of what could be considered Karabakh was during the existence of the Karabakh Khanate in the 18th century, which extended from the Zangezur Mountains in the west, following eastwards along the Aras river to the point where it meets with the Kura river in the Kur-Araz Lowland. Following the Kura river north, it stretched as far as what is today the Mingachevir reservoir before turning back to the Zangezur Mountains through the Murov Mountains. However, when not referring to the territory covered by the Karabakh Khanate, the northern regions are often excluded (modern-day Goranboy and Yevlakh). During the Russian Empire, the eastern lowlands where the Kura and Aras rivers meet (mostly modern-day Imishli) were also excluded, but most pre-Elisabethpol maps include that region in Karabakh.
+The three regions of Karabakh roughly corresponding to modern-day provinces and districts Zangezur Highlands or mountainous region Lowlands or steppe Armenia: Syunik Azerbaijan: Lachin, Qubadli, Zangilan Azerbaijan: Kalbajar, Tartar, Khojaly, Khankendi, Agdam, Shusha, Khojavend, Jabrayil, Fuzuli Azerbaijan: Barda, Aghjabadi, Beylagan. Historically also included Imishli and small parts of north-western Saatly and Sabirabad.
History
Antiquity The region today referred to as Karabakh, which was populated with various Caucasian tribes, is believed to have been conquered by the Kingdom of Armenia in the 2nd century BC and organized as parts of the Artsakh, Utik and the southern regions of Syunik provinces. However, it is possible that the region had earlier been part of the Satrapy of Armenia under the Orontid dynasty from as early as the 4th century BC.Hewsen. Armenia, pp. 118–121. After the partition of Armenia by Rome and Persia in 387 AD, Artsakh and Utik became a part of the Caucasian Albanian satrapy of Sassanian Persia, while Syunik remained in Armenia.
Middle Ages The Arab invasions later led to the rise of several Armenian princes who came to establish their dominance in the region.Hewsen. Armenia, pp. 119, 155, 163, 264–265. Centuries of constant warfare on the Armenian Plateau forced many Armenians, including those in the Karabakh region, to emigrate and settle elsewhere. During the period of Mongol domination, a great number of Armenians left Lowland Karabakh and sought refuge in the mountainous (Highland) heights of the region.Bournoutian, George A. "Review of The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity Under Russian Rule, by Audrey L. Altstadt," Armenian Review 45/2 (Autumn 1992), pp. 63–69.
From the 11th century onwards, Karabakh became home to numerous Oghuz Turkic tribes, the ancestors of the modern Azerbaijanis, who stuck to the nomadic way of life, circulating between the winter pastures in Karabakh lowlands and the summer pastures in Karabakh highlands. These tribes dominated the region, and were key allies of the Safavid Empire, which ruled over Karabakh from the 16th to early 18th century.
In the fifteenth century, the German traveler Johann Schiltberger visited Lowland Karabakh and described it as a large and beautiful plain in Armenia, ruled by Muslims.Johannes Schiltberger. Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger. Translated by J. Buchan Telfer. Ayer Publishing, 1966, p. 86. . Highland Karabakh from 821 until the early 19th century passed under the hands of a number of states, including the Abbasid Caliphate, Bagratid Armenia, the Mongol Ilkhanate and Jalayirid Sultanates, the Turkic Qara Qoyunlu, Aq Qoyunlu, and Safavid Iran (the province of Karabakh). Armenian princes of the times ruled as vassal territories by the Armenian House of Khachen and its several lines, the latter Melikdoms of Karabakh. The Safavid Shah ("King") Tahmasp I (1524–1576) appointed the family of Shahverdi Sultan, who hailed from the Ziad-oglu branch of the Qajar tribe, as governors of Karabakh."Ganja." Encyclopædia Iranica. It was also invaded and ruled by Ottoman Empire between 1578–1605 and again between 1723 and 1736, as they briefly conquered it during the Ottoman-Safavid War of 1578-1590 and during the disintegration of Safavid Iran, respectively. In 1747, Panah Ali Khan, a local Turkic chieftain from the Javanshir clan, seized control of the region after the death of the Persian ruler Nader Shah, and both Lower Karabakh and Highland Karabakh comprised the new Karabakh Khanate. Qajar Iran reestablished rule over the region several years later.
Early Modern Age
In 1813, under the terms of the Treaty of Gulistan, the region of Karabakh was lost by Iran to the Russian Empire. Under Russian rule, Karabakh (both Lowland and Highland) was a region with an area of 13,600 km2 (5,250 sq mi), with Shusha (Shushi) as its most prominent city. Its population consisted of Armenians and Muslims (mainly of Tatars, later known as Azerbaijanis, but also Kurds). The Russians conducted a census in 1823 and had tallied the number of villages (though not the number of people) and assessed the tax basis of the entire Karabakh khanate, which also included Lowland Karabakh.For an English translation see, The 1823 Russian Survey of the Karabagh Province: A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of Karabagh in the First Half of the 19th Century. Trans. George A. Bournoutian. Costa Mesa, CA, 2011. It is probable that the Armenians formed the majority of the population of Eastern Armenia at the turn of the seventeenth century,Bournoutian, George A. "Eastern Armenia from the Seventeenth Century to the Russian Annexation," in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume II: Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997, p. 96. but following Shah Abbas I's massive relocation of Armenians in 1604–05 their numbers decreased markedly, as they eventually became a minority among their Muslim neighbors.