The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

Historical and Political Perspectives

M. Hakan Yavuz, Michael Gunter, M. Hakan Yavuz, Michael Gunter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000608502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Études ethniques

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the long-running dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Armenian-majority region of Azerbaijan. It outlines the historical development of the dispute, explores the political and social aspects of the conflict, examines the wars over the territory including the war of 2020 which resulted in a significant Azerbaijani victory, and discusses the international dimensions.

Part I Conceptual and Historical Origins

1 Karabakh Historical Background

Kamala Imranli-Lowe

DOI: 10.4324/9781003261209-3

Introduction

Writing the history of Karabakh is just as difficult an undertaking as settling its conflict involving Armenia and Azerbaijan. It is especially challenging when it comes to imagining the region’s distant past, which relies heavily on extant manuscripts where the originals have been lost. These sources, which have undergone repeated revisions by countless scribes to fit, inter alia, contemporary political, ecclesiastical and ideological demands, have been the major narratives used for (re-)constructions of the history in later periods. The mixture of nationalist agendas connected with nation and state-building with imperialistic ambitions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also created favourable grounds for further revisions of the historical sources, bringing them into agreement with contemporary political goals. The appearance of print editions based on the extant manuscripts and their translations, with the aim of raising the respective masses’ awareness of their “historical homeland”, as well as the emergence of new rewritten histories in this period, played an important role in the territorial conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early twentieth century. The continuation of the Karabakh conflict into the present day, on the other hand, has further encouraged the use of history as a political tool. It has also brought about primordialist approaches to historical research, by constructing a historical ethnic link between the region and its population from time immemorial. The conflict, and the connected retrospective essentialisation of ethnicity, has made it almost impossible for scholars to agree on a mutually acceptable history of Karabakh, and the issue is likely to remain unresolved.

This chapter is an attempt to give an outline of the complicated political history of Karabakh from the classical to the modern period. It draws mainly on scholarly work, as well as official sources, but does not discuss historical narratives, given the length of the period in question and of this chapter. Hence, the chapter seeks to provide a brief description of the political aspects of Karabakh’s history up until 1918–1920/1921, since when the conflict has entered state level with the emergence of the first Azerbaijani and Armenian republics.

Ancient and Medieval Karabakh in Academic Discourse

“Karabakh” is the term by which is roughly understood the area of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (province) and the seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan. Though the current stage of the conflict started in the late 1980s, with the Armenian demands regarding the transfer of the oblast from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia, it spread into the adjacent districts in the 1990s. The contemporary understanding of the “Karabakh” notion implies an area smaller than its historical designations in the late medieval and modern periods. As for the ancient and early medieval periods, the area of contemporary Karabakh corresponded to that of Orkhistena (Artsakh¹) and partly Otene (Uti), provinces in Caucasian Albania, until the country came under Arab rule in 705. Academic discourse on the boundaries of Albania,² as it is named in Greco-Latin sources, in this period includes various views which can be grouped as follows:

• The territory of Albania broadly corresponded to that of modern Azerbaijan, reaching Derbent in the north-east and the modern-day border between Azerbaijan and Georgia in the north-west, the Caspian Sea in the east and the Araz River (Arax/Araxes) in the south (Minorsky 1953a, 504; Mamedova 2005, 273; Barthold 2012).
• Artsakh and Uti provinces to the south of the Kur River were part of Albania from the ancient to the early medieval periods, except for the second century BCE–fourth century CE, when they were part of Armenia (Hübschman 1904, 266; Eremian 1958a, 310; Trever 1959, 58).
• Artsakh and Uti were originally parts of Armenia. Only in the late fourth–fifth centuries CE did Albania extend southwards to include the Armenian principalities between the Kur and Araz rivers (Adontz 1970, 173–179; Hewsen 2013, xxxi; Svazian 2015, 48–56).

The above-mentioned differences in views can be explained by conflicting and unclear information in the extant versions of classical and Armenian sources with numerous interpolations in their manuscript bases, which in their turn date from long after their lost originals. Also, most of the authors were not contemporary to the events narrated, had not visited the places described and relied on unverified information from other sources. Some authors did not use any written sources, and many narratives contained legends and did not correspond to the realities of the period under consideration. Study of the political history of Albania has also suffered from politically motivated readings of the sources, as well as inconsistencies in reasoning and conflicting views by the same scholars on the same subjects. The issue is also complicated by the fact that for a long time historians have relied predominantly on the Armenian written tradition, while lacking sources in Albanian. However, despite disagreements among scholars on the boundaries of Albania, as explained above, there seems to be unanimous agreement that the country covered the area roughly corresponding to that of modern Azerbaijan in the fourth–fifth centuries CE, and included the area of present-day Karabakh.

Albania was mainly populated by Caucasian-speaking Albanians, one of the autochthonous peoples of the Caucasus whose nobility adopted Christianity in the fourth century. Albanians had their own alphabet of 52 phonemes, which was still in use in the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries (Eremian 1958b, 329), and a Bible translated into their language (Gevond 1862, 44; Aleksidze 2003, 100–107). According to contemporary Arab geographers, Albanian or al-Rāniyya was still the dominant language in Albania in the tenth century (Minorsky 1953a, 504; Frye 2012; Vacca 2017, 30). Alongside Albanians, who are today considered to count among the ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis, Albania was also populated by Iranian-speaking Tats, Talysh and Kurds, and Turkic-speaking tribes.

The Arab conquest and spread of Islam, followed by the arrival of Islamised Arab, Iranian and Turco-Mongol settlers, resulted in religious and ethno-linguistic transformations in Albania. The fate of the Albanians, especially their correlation with Armenians and Georgians due to their Christian past, has been controversial. The controversies attach, essentially, to the period up to which Albanian people existed as political entities and had their own church.

Nicholas Marr (1915, 20–21) considered in his work some of the Christian Albanians assimilated by Armenians and Georgians by the eleventh century. According to Il’ia Petrushevskii (1930, 8), the church in Albania served as a tool for Armenianisation in the country. This became apparent from the early eighth century, after the overthrow of the dyophysite Albanian Catholicos by the monophysite Armenian Catholicos with the help of the Arab caliph. Suren Eremian (1958b, 328) wrote that the population in the Albanian provinces of Artsakh and in most of Uti had already been assimilated by Armenians by the time of the establishment of Arab rule in the early eighth century. However, Eremian (1958c, 534) also referred to “local feudals”, who were permitted by the Arabs to retain lands in the mountains of Karabakh and southern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, as Udins-Albanians. The historian argued that the part of the Albanian population that was not yet “ethnically and culturally” assimilated by the Armenians and Georgians adopted Islam and was Turkicised by the Turkic tribes, who later settled in its former territory. Thus, the Azerbaijani people was formed (Eremian 1958b, 330). Accordingly, the Albanian Church has been considered part of the Armenian Church since the seventh/early eighth century (Eremian 1958b, 328).

Farida Mamedova (2005, 389–390, 616–619) considered that the majority of Albanians living on the lower reaches of the Kur and Araz rivers were Islamised after the arrival of Arabs, and assimilated with Turkic-speaking peoples who had been living in Albania since the early centuries CE. Their number was increased by the new arrivals of Turkic tribes over the following centuries. As for the Armenianisation process of the remaining Christian Albanians, this historian is of the view that the process could only start after the liquidation of the independent Albanian Catholicosate in the early nineteenth century.

The thesis on the Albanian church being considered as part of the Armenian church since the seventh/early eighth century, and the “ethnic and cultural” assimilation of the Albanians in the medieval period, can be challenged with a great deal of evidence from Armenian and Albanian historical narratives. For example, The Chronicle by Matthew of Edessa (2017, I, 2), an Armenian historian who lived in the eleventh–twelfth centuries, includes interesting data about the Albanian kings and catholicoses of the tenth–eleventh centuries. The historian, inter alia, relates an invitation to the “most praiseworthy Lord Yovhanne’s, kat’oghikos of the land of the Aghuans [Albanians], and forty bishops with him” and “P’illipos, king of the Aghuans, … the son of Goghazgak, son of Vach’agan, [from a line] which had been kings of the land of the Aghuans” to attend the coronation of “Gagik, son of Ashot” as the king of Armenia in the city of Ani in 961. Matthew of Edessa (2017, II, 81) also contrasts the period when there existed simultaneous Armenian catholicoses at the end of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries to the stable situation in the Albanian Catholicosate in the same period, writing that the church in Albania “remained unshaken and secure, with its patriarchate and monarchy to the present [end of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries]”.

The first evidence concerns the period when, as a result of the gradual weakening of the Arab caliphate, various political entities emerged in the territories under Arab rule in the ninth century. They included Armenian polities such as Kars, Ani and Vaspurakan in the territory of present-day Turkey, as well as Albanian ones such as Siunia (Siunik, Siwnik), Khachen-Artsakh and Shaki (Sheki) in the territory of the former Albania. The Christian rulers of these Albanian polities were the descendants of the Mihranid dynasty (Imranli-Lowe 2020, 263). According to some authors, the Mihranids were of Sasanian origin (Kagankatvatsi 1861/Dasxuranci 1961, III, 22; Krymsky 1938, 373; Barthold 1963, 673), while for some, they were of Parthian descent (Minorsky 1958, 12; Vacca 2017, 219). The Mihranids, having adopted Christianity in the seventh century and intermarried with local Albanian nobility, were called an “Albanian national dynasty” by Vasily (also known as Wilhelm) Barthold (1963, 673; Minorsky 1953a, 504–529; Imranli-Lowe 2020, 263).

Contemporary Arabic authors referred to Albania as al-Rān (Arran) and gave contradictory definitions of the term. According to Barthold (2012), as was the case in ancient times for Albania, the name Arran originally referred to the whole region from Darband in the north-east to Tiflis in the west and the Araz River in the south and south-west. Richard Frye (2012) applied this notion to the area between the Kur and Araz rivers. Minorsky (1958, 17–18) referred to “the two Arrans” on the northern and the southern banks of the Kur River and mentioned that, in 950–1050, Arran referred to the area south of the Kur River.

In 885/6 the Albanian/Arran kingdom was “partly restored” under King Gregor-Hamam, who was descended from lords of two polities: Siunia and Khachen. The boundaries of the kingdom extended from the eastern bank of Lake Sevan in the west to Barda in the east, on the right bank of the Kur River, and also included Kambisena-Shaki (Sheki) on the left bank (Kagankatvatsi 1861/Dasxuranci 1961, III, 21, 22; Krymsky 1938, 374–375; Mamedova 2005, 394–395; Draskhanakertsi 1986, 33, n.11, 136). The important role played by Siunia among the Albanian polities, who provided Albania/Arran with kings, lasted until 1166, when it passed to Khachen-Artsakh. The centre of this polity, which Iosif Orbeli calls “a part of the ancient Albania” and was ruled by Hasan Jalal from 1142, was the basin of Khachenchay and partly that of the Tartar (Minorsky 1953a, 526; Orbeli 1963, 146). These Albanian polities existed either as vassals or as parts of the Muslim states of the Shirvanshahs, Sajids, Salarids, Shaddadids, Seljukids and Khwarazm in the period from the ninth century to the late 1220s. Another Hasan Jalal in the thirteenth century, who was described as the “king of Albania”, “great guardian of borders of Albania”, “lord of Khachen and Arran”, “lord of lords of Khachen” and with other titles on inscriptions dating from 1229 to 1296, declared his obedience to the Mongols in 1238/40. Khachen-Artsakh remained the vassal of the Mongols till the rule of the Timurids in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries (Orbeli 1963, 150–158, 161; Imranli-Lowe 2020, 269, n.15, 274).

According to Frye (2012), under the Mongols Arran and Azerbaijan (in present-day Iran) were joined together and ruled by single go...