According to many scholars, the historical research carried out in Azerbaijan with state support has been falsified to exalt the Caucasian Albanians as the alleged ancestors of Azerbaijanis and to provide a historical basis for territorial disputes with Armenians. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Much of this false historiography aims to root Azerbaijanis in the territory of Azerbaijan, cleanse it of Armenian heritage, [10] [11] and depict Armenians as newcomers. [12]
The Azeri revisionist steamroller takes many forms: irreversible destruction, degradation (Armenian cupolas modified, Armenian inscriptions erased, crosses removed), reassignment (churches become mosques), reappropriation through outright denial of its Armenian origins. [13]
— The European Center for Law and Justice, [14]
Multiple observers — including those from government, [15] genocide experts, [16] [17] [18] and others [19] [20] — state that Azerbaijan engages in historical revisionism to support its territorial claims, [21] deprive Armenians of their own territorial claims. [22] [23] and eliminate traces of historical Armenian presence. [24] [25] This has involved the falsification of history, [26] [27] alongside the erasure of Armenian cultural heritage sites, [28] [29] and place-names. [30] [31] [32] as well as the imposition of a state monopoly over Armenian cultural studies, which limits independent research and enforces official narratives. [33] [34] [35] Petrosyan et al. state that Azerbaijan's use of historical falsification aim "to neutralize the Armenian identity of Artsakh." [36]
Genocide scholars Edita Gzoyan et al. write "we are witnessing a systematic, scholarly, political, and military attempt to de-Armenize the land, its names, geography, and history. This process resembles Lemkin’s notion of genocide—the destruction of the national pattern of the targeted group and the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor." [37] Analysts have observed that Azerbaijan is distinct from other genocidaires insofar as it not only attempts to erase the history of Armenians in the Caucasus but denies their very existence, thereby attempting to minimize the nature of the crime. [38] [39] [40] The European Centre for Law and Justice states "to accomplish complete cultural erasure, Azerbaijan has gone beyond merely destroying Armenian heritage—Azerbaijan is also denying it ever existed," adding that "Azerbaijan seeks to erase...even the memory of the Armenian people." [41]
Alexandra Xanthaki, the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights expressed concern over the "ongoing pattern of destruction and appropriation of Armenian historically, culturally, and religiously significant sites and objects....[including]...the organised reinterpretation of the history of Nagorno-Karabakh to erase the traces of the presence of Armenians," adding concern that the "allegations that the combined attacks to people, monuments and symbols, the falsification of the historical narrative and erasure of place names...may amount to cultural cleansing." [42]
Under Mir Cəfər Bağırov's leadership as First Secretary of the Azeri SSR, efforts began to erase the historical Armenian presence in Azerbaijan and elevate the Azeri majority to the sole titular nation. [43] Anti-Armenian historical revisionism developed in the 1950-1960s, [44] [45] and promoted the false narrative that Azerbaijanis are descendants of the indigenous Caucasian Albanians. [46] [47] By the 1980s, Azerbaijani media and textbooks pushed more extreme revisionist accounts that included the following: that no Armenians had ever existed in Nagorno-Karabakh nor formed an independent state, that no Caucasian Albanians were Armenianized, that Armenians were newcomers to the region only following Russian intervention. [48]
These revisions, driven by Soviet and later post-Soviet nationalism, [49] contributed to ethnic tensions and paved the way for the ethnic cleansing of Armenians. [43] [50] In certain instances, Azeri historiography explicitly prohibits mentions of Armenians, with the intention of erasing the historical presence of Armenians. [51] [52] Arsène Saparov, Caucasus expert, states that "the persistent Azerbaijani policy of denial of the Armenian presence and cultural heritage in the Caucasus...has been institutionalized since Ilham Aliyev became president." [53]
One of the most typical and widespread medieval Armenian monuments are khachkars [Comm 2] (Armenian : խաչքար, lit. 'cross-stone' [54] ) - stone steles with a cross and carvings used as tombstones and objects of worship. Khachkars remained in large numbers on all lands where Armenians lived. Therefore, an important manifestation of the "Albanization" of the Armenian cultural heritage was the theory proclaiming the Armenian khachkars of Nagorno-Karabakh, Nakhichevan and (separating them) the Armenian Syunik as Albanian artifacts under the name "khachdashi" (with the replacement of the Armenian – car, "stone", with the Azeri – dash of the same meaning). According to the Azerbaijani architectural historian Davud Aga-oglu Akhundov , khachdashi are distinguished by the fact that they bear in their decor signs of a fusion of Christianity with pre-Christian Albanian beliefs and contain symbols of Mithraism and Zoroastrianism.
In 1985, at the All-Union Archaeological Congress in Baku, Davud Aga-oglu Akhundov made a report in which he expressed these ideas, which provoked a scandal. The Armenian delegation announced its readiness to leave the conference, Leningrad scientists assessed Akhundov's report as a pseudoscientific political action. American archaeologist Philip L. Kohl believes that this report was a deliberate political provocation and aimed at creating a knowingly false cultural myth. [8]
As Russian and Armenian critics later noted, Akhundov simply either did not know or deliberately ignored the well-known features of Christian iconography, declaring these subjects to be Mithraic, and also looked over the Armenian inscriptions on the "khachdash" he studied. According to the Russian specialist A. L. Yakobson, "Mithraist fog envelops almost all the monuments that the authors of <D. A. Akhundov with co-author M. D. Akhundov>, not to mention their generalizations". So, describing the Julfa khachkars of the 16th–17th centuries, Akhundov sees in the images of a lion, a bull and a bird "the eternal companions of God Mithra", while, according to experts, these are undoubted symbols of the Evangelists. [4] [5] [55] The concept of "khachdash" was finally completed in Akhundov's book "Architecture of Ancient and Early Medieval Azerbaijan", reviewed by Academician Ziya Buniyatov, Doctor of Historical Sciences V.G. Aliyev and Doctor of Art History, Professor N.A Sarkisov. [56] [57]
This theory is now officially accepted in Azerbaijani science and propaganda. Thus, the chairman of the Azerbaijan Copyright Agency, Kamran Imanov, denounces the "Armenian tradition of appropriating our cultural values" as follows: These "scientists" at one time stole almost all the wonderful examples of our Christian past – memorials, churches, steles, tombstones, our khachdash, announced "Khachkars". [58] According to the latest theories of Azerbaijani scholars, the custom of erecting stone khachdash crosses was brought to the Caucasus by the Turks back in the "pre-Albanian era". [59]
Historians which have documented the falsification of Azerbaijani historiography include Victor Schnirelmann, [4] Anatoly Yakobson, [5] Vladimir Zakharov, [6] Mikhail Meltyukhov, Hasan Javadi, [7] Philip L. Kohl [8] and George Bournoutian. [9]
Territorial Claims
Azerbaijani historiography portrays the early to mid 1800s as the "ideal" and "normative" situation with Azeri sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh and "Southern Azerbaijan" (Northern Iran), [60] despite that a "united Azerbaijan" was never, in fact, independent but always part of the Iranian empires. [61] In addition, "Western Azerbaijan" is an expansionist propaganda campaign that is used to refer to the territory of Armenia. Azerbaijani officials have falsely claimed that the territory of the modern Armenian republic were lands that once belonged to Azerbaijanis. [62] [63] The concept has received official endorsement by the government of Azerbaijan, and has been used by its current president, Ilham Aliyev, who, since around 2010, has made regular reference to "Irevan" (Yerevan), "Göyçə" (Lake Sevan) and "Zangazur" (Syunik) as once and future "Azerbaijani lands". [64] The irredentist concept of "Western Azerbaijan" is associated with other irredentist claims promoted by Azerbaijani officials and academics, including the "Goyche-Zangezur Republic" and the "Republic of Irevan." [65] In December 2022, Azerbaijan initiated its "Great Return" campaign which ostensibly promotes the settlement of ethnic Azerbaijanis who once lived in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. [66] [67] Azerbaijan's "Great Return" program has been characterized as ahistorical and expansionist by international critics [68]
According to the point of view prevailing in Azerbaijani historiography, the Armenians appeared in Transcaucasia only after 1828, when these territories were ceded to Russia. Nevertheless, there are a large number of Armenian, Persian, Russian, Arab and other primary sources that record a significant presence of Armenians in the Transcaucasus and, especially, in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. According to George Bournoutian, the greatest irritation among Azerbaijani historians was caused by the fact that Muslim primary sources on Transcaucasia living in the territory of present-day Azerbaijan, such as Abbas Quli Bakikhanov, after whom the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan is named, and Mirza Adigozal bey, also clearly note a strong Armenian presence in Karabakh before 1828. To neutralize this fact, Buniyatov and his colleagues, neglecting academic conscientiousness, began to republish medieval primary sources, in which information about the Armenians was deleted. [69] George Burnutyan also gives similar examples of falsification by the Azerbaijani historian Nazim Akhundov in the 1989 reprint (according to Akhundov's statement) of Mirza Jamal Javanshir's book Tarikh-e Qarabagh (History of Karabakh), in places where the manuscript talks about the Armenian possessions of Karabakh the word "Armenian" is systematically omitted. [9]
The distortion of the translation of Bakikhanov's book Gulistan i-Irem by Buniyatov was noted by historians Willem Floor and Hasan Javadi: [70]
"This certainly is the case with Zia Bunyatov, who has made an incomplete and defective Russian translation of Bakikhanov's text. Not only has he not translated any of the poems in the text, but he does not even mention that he has not done so, while he does not translate certain other prose parts of the text without indicating this and why. This is in particular disturbing because he suppresses, for example, the mention of territory inhabited by Armenians, thus not only falsifying history, but also not respecting Bakikhanov's dictum that a historian should write without prejudice, whether religious, ethnic, political or otherwise." [70] — Willem Floor and Hasan Javadi.
Victor Schnirelmann also notes that for Azerbaijani historians headed by Buniyatov, "the way to underestimate the presence of Armenians in the ancient and medieval Transcaucasia and diminish their role is to reissue ancient and medieval sources with cuts, replacing the term "Armenian state" with "Albanian state" or other distortions of the original texts", [4] the fact of reprinting with cuts was also noted by the Russian orientalist Igor M. Diakonoff, [71] the Armenian historian Muradyan [72] and the American professor George Bournoutian. [9]
Historians Mikhail Meltyukhov, Alla Ter-Sarkisiants and Georgy Trapeznikov note that in this publication, when translated from Farsi into Russian and Azerbaijani, "a lot of words and geographical terms ("Azerbaijan","Azerbaijani") appeared in the text, which, as any historian can understand, were absent in the Persian original". [73] In the preface to the book Two chronicles on the history of Karabagh, a professor at the University of California, Barlow Ter-Murdechian, also notes Buniyatov's numerous distortions of the original texts of historians Mirza Jamal and Mirza Adigozal-Bek. [74] According to George Burnutyan, such actions mean that without the publication of a facsimile copy of the original, Azerbaijani editions of sources related to Karabakh are unreliable:
"There are still a number of Persian manuscripts on Karabakh in the archives of Azerbaijan which have yet to be examined critically. Some of this primary material has already appeared in edited Azeri translations and others will undoubtedly follow. Unfortunately, unless they include a certified facsimile of the original manuscript, the tententious scholarship demonstrated above will render all these translations highly suspect and unusable by scholars. // Such blatant tampering with primary source material strikes at the very heart of scholarly integrity. The international academic community must not allow such breaches of intellectual honesty to go unnoticed and uncensured." [9]
— George Bournoutian.
Robert Hewsen in the Historical Atlas of Armenia, in a special note, warns of numerous distortions of the original texts of primary sources published in Soviet and post-Soviet Azerbaijan, the edition of which does not contain any mention of the Armenians present in the original work. [75]
Sh. V. Smbatyan finds numerous distortions of sources in the work of Geyushev Christianity in Caucasian Albania. For example, the book by Hakob Manandian Feudalism in ancient Armenia is cited as Feudalism in ancient Albania by Geyushev, in the title of Suren Yeremian's article Moses Kalankatuisky on the embassy of the Albanian prince Varaz-Trdat to the Khazar Khakan Alp Ilitver the words of the Albanian prince Varaz-Trdat are given to Albania, the facts described with references to The History of the Country of Albania by Movses Kagankatvatsi are absent in this source. [76] Armenian historian Hayk Demoyan, analyzing a photograph of a historical monument from the Historical Geography of Western Azerbaijan, [77] comes to the conclusion that it was falsified from one of the three famous khachkars of the Goshavank monastery, created by the master Pogos in 1291. [78] The Goshavank khachkar is considered one of the best examples of Armenian khachkar art of the 13th century. [79]
Victor Schnirelmann also notes that inscriptions on khachkars are falsified in Azerbaijan. [80] Philip L. Kohl, Mara Kozelski and Nachman Ben-Yehuda point to the falsification of the Mingachevir inscriptions by the Azerbaijani historian Mustafayev, who tried to read them in Azerbaijani (Turkic). [81]
The Armenian historian P. Muradyan, analyzing the translation by Z. Buniyatov of the Armenian Anonymous Chronicle of the 18th century, reveals numerous distortions and "corrections" of the original text. For example, Buniyatov replaced the mentioned Armenian toponyms with Turkic ones, and in a number of places the academician completely deleted the word "Armenia" ("Ottoman troops attacked Armenia" became "the land where Armenians lived"). [82] Muradyan [82] and other historians note another example of falsification of a source by Buniyatov, in particular, the 15th century "Journey" by Johann Schiltberger.
| Original text by Hans Schildberger | Falsified text by Hans Schildberger |
|---|---|
| I also spent a lot of time in Armenia. After the death of Tamerlane, I got to his son, who owned two kingdoms in Armenia . This son, by the name of Shah-Rokh, used to winter on a large plain called Karabagh, which is distinguished by good pastures. It is irrigated by the Kur River, called the Tigris, and the best silk is gathered near the banks of this river. Although this plain lies in Armenia, nevertheless it belongs to the pagans, to whom the Armenian villages are forced to pay tribute. The Armenians have always treated me well, because I was a German, and they are generally very disposed in favor of the Germans (nimits), as they call us. They taught me their language and gave me their Pater Noster. | I spent a lot of time in Armenia. After the death of Tamerlane, I came to his son, who owned two kingdoms. This son, by the name of Shakh-Rokh, used to winter on a large plain called Karabag, which was distinguished by good pastures. It is irrigated by the Kur River, also called the Tigris, and the best silk is gathered near the banks of this river. |
Books of medieval sources were republished in Azerbaijan with the replacement of the term "Armenian state" with "Albanian state". [83] Muradyan points to a similar distortion in the 1989 "Brief History of the Country of Aluank" by the Armenian historian Yesai Hasan-Jalalyan. [84]
| The original text of Yesai Hasan-Jalalyan | Falsified text of Yesai Hasan-Jalalyan |
|---|---|
| Gathering up to 10,000 selected and armed men, and with them a host of our priests and servants, with great pomp and triumph, considering the Armenian state (զիշխանութիւն հայոց) re-established, we moved and three days later stopped near the city of Ganja in the Cholak area. | Gathering up to 10,000 selected and armed men, and with them a host of our priests and servants, with great pomp and triumph, considering the Albanian state re-established, we moved and three days later stopped near the city of Ganja in the Cholak area. |
Historians A. A. Akopyan, P. M. Muradyan, and Karen Yuzbashyan in their work "On the Study of the History of Caucasian Albania" [85] note that the Azerbaijani historian Farida Mammadova in the book "Political History and Historical Geography of Caucasian Albania" [86] in confirmation of his the concept of the Armenian-Albanian border distorts the quotation of S.V. Yushkov, [87] refers to books that do not contain such information [88] (the authors find a similar reference in the work of Buniyatov [89] ). The authors also give an example where Mamedova, referring to Stephen of Syuni, distorts his message about the presence of several dialects, directly called by Stephen of Syuni Armenian dialects, presenting it as a message about the existence of various languages. [90] The authors note that Mamedova criticizes the Armenian author of the late fifth century Pavstos Buzand for his tendentious attempt to prepare the population for the anti-Persian uprising that took place before Pavstos Buzand wrote the work. [91] A. A. Akopyan, P. M. Muradyan, and K. N. Yuzbashyan summarize Mamedova's work as follows:
"voluntarism in the study of antiquity, the falsification of the very concept of historicism, already the result of unhealthy tendencies, cannot be characterized otherwise than as an attempt to deceive one's own people, instill in them unworthy ideas, and tune in to wrong decisions."
Doctor of Philology E. Pivazyan gives an example of falsification of F. Mamedova in her work "Political History and Historical Geography of Caucasian Albania", which on pages 24–25 attributed the translator's notes, which were absent in the original, to the author of the medieval code of law Mkhitar Gosh. [92]
Historians K. A. Melik-Ogadzhanyan and S. T. Melik-Bakhshyan also give examples of distortion of quotations and references to nonexistent statements. [93] [94] A.V. Mushegyan discovers false references to authoritative authors by academician Z. Buniyatov. [95]
Schnirelmann gives another example of distortion of links in the works of Mamedova and Buniyatov:
"Later, some Azerbaijani scholars began to completely reject the participation of Mesrop Mashtots in the creation of the Albanian writing system and tried to find an ally in this in the person of A.G. Perikhanyan (Mamedova, 1986, p. 7; Buniyatov, 1987c. P. 118). Meanwhile, in the work of Perikhanyan, only a hypothesis was expressed that Mesrop Mashtots attracted the Albanian Benjamin as his assistant, passing him the experience of creating writing. Perikhanyan clearly demonstrated that the Albanian alphabet was created under the unconditional influence of the Armenian one. Consequently, she did not in the least question the fact of Mesrop Mashtots' participation in his invention." (Perikhanyan, 1966, pp. 127–133).
Leningrad historian D.I. n. A. Yakobson, criticizing the attempts of Azerbaijani historians to record the Gandzasar Monastery as a monument of Albanian (according to Yakobson, thus also Azerbaijani) architecture, also finds examples of distortion of quotations [96] from the Azerbaijani historian Geyushev. [97] Analyzing the report of D. A. and M. D. Akhundovs "Cult symbols and the picture of the world captured on the temples and steles of Caucasian Albania", [98] Jacobson comes to the conclusion that the definitions given by the authors are "fake", and the report itself "distorts the artistic content and origin of the Armenian medieval decorative arts". [99]
V. A. Schnirelmann notes that there is a direct state order for publications with distortions of the source texts in Azerbaijan, designed to "clear" the history of Armenians:
"Another way to underestimate the presence of Armenians in ancient and medieval Transcaucasia and diminish their role is to republish ancient and medieval sources with cuts, replacing the term "Armenian state" with "Albanian state" or with other distortions of the original texts. In the 1960-1990s. Many such reprints of primary sources were published in Baku, which was actively pursued by Academician Z. M. Buniyatov. In the most recent years, describing ethnic processes and their role in the history of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani authors sometimes generally avoid discussing the issue of the appearance of the Azerbaijani language and Azerbaijanis there, thereby making the reader understand that they have existed there from time immemorial. It is unlikely that Azerbaijani historians did all this exclusively of their own free will; they were dominated by the order of the party and government structures of Azerbaijan." [100]
According to George Bournoutian, propaganda "historical" books are published in Azerbaijan by order of the government, in which Azerbaijani historians try to prove that Armenians appeared in the Caucasus after 1828. [102]
At the ceremonial meeting dedicated to the anniversary of the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic (1999), the then President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev directly called on historians to "create substantiated documents" and "prove that Azerbaijan belongs to the lands where Armenia is now located". [103] Thus, according to Schnirelmann, the Azerbaijani authorities gave direct instructions to historians to rewrite the history of Transcaucasia. [104] Farida Mammadova admits that Heydar Aliyev personally demanded from her scientific criticism of every book about the history of Albania published in Armenia. [105] Historian Arsène Saparov states that the case of Stalinist deportations of Azerbaijanis from Armenia became part of a state-sponsored "anti-Armenian conspiracy theory," adding that "any critical assessment of this case by Azerbaijani historians is impossible." [106]
The existence of the state program of falsification of the history of the Transcaucasus in Azerbaijan is also noted by the historians Mikhail Meltyukhov, Alla Ter-Sarkisiants and Georgi Trapeznikov. [73]
Historian Vladimir Zakharov, deputy director of the MGIMO Center for Caucasian Studies, commenting on the words of Ilham Aliyev that Armenia was created on the primordial Azerbaijani lands, notes that "historical research in Azerbaijan is at the service not of science, but of the political ambitions of the leaders," and Azerbaijani historians are engaged in deceiving their own people. [6]
On 14 December 2005, Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, in a speech on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, called on Azerbaijani scientists to get involved in the program of justifying the lack of historical rights of the Karabakh Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh before the world community. President Aliyev promised to subsidize the program of uniting the efforts of Azerbaijani specialists in the development and propaganda of his thesis that "the Armenians came to Nagorno-Karabakh, an integral part of Azerbaijan, as guests," arguing that "in the 70s of the last century, a monument was erected there, reflecting their settlement, the 150th anniversary of the settlement of Armenians [Comm 3] in Karabakh was celebrated" and therefore "the Armenians have absolutely no right to assert that Nagorno-Karabakh in the past belonged to them". [107] On 26 April 2011, at the annual general meeting of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev repeated these theses and stated: [108]
"Our scientists, responding positively to my call, in a short time have created excellent and based on real facts work related to the history of this region"
The Azerbaijani state also has constructed a false historical narrative portraying Azerbaijanis as victims of genocide [109] [110] [111] or ethnic cleansing [112] , including through official commemorations such as the "Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis," despite the events cited not meeting the legal or historical criteria for genocide. [113] [114] Scholars characterize this narrative as a deliberate inversion of history, designed to counter and obscure the Armenian Genocide [111] [115] while simultaneously legitimizing territorial claims and the erasure or appropriation of Armenian cultural heritage.
De Baets from Wesleyan University notes that historians are persecuted in Azerbaijan for "incorrect" interpretation of historical concepts. [116] Thus, in December 1994, the historian Movsum Aliyev was arrested for publishing the article "Answer to the falsifiers of history." [117]
The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict, has exacerbated relations between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. [118] [106] In Azerbaijan, this led to the formation of an image of a victim, combined with revanchist aspirations. On the other hand, in Armenia, where genocide has become the main factor shaping identity, Azerbaijanis are promoted as de facto Turks. [118] Sergei Rumyantsev, candidate of sociological sciences, director of the Novator Center for Social Research cites the construction of the image of a "historical enemy" on the basis of a literary work of the Turkic world of the 11th–12th centuries. "Kitabi Dede Gorgud", which is not only presented as a "historical chronicle of our fatherland", that is, Azerbaijan, aged thirteen centuries, but also the replacement of the Kipchak tribes (which served in the Turkic epic as an authentic image of the "infidels" with whom the Oguzes fought) by the Armenians and Georgians. As the author notes, "basically all the appeals to the text of the epic in the textbooks were intended to serve as the basis for the constructed image of the "historical enemy." The events of recent years ... have led to the fact that this "honorable" place was taken first of all by the Armenians". Sergei Rumyantsev illustrates this with the example of a school textbook published in 2003 on Azerbaijani history. [119] According to independent experts in Armenia and Azerbaijan, this policy makes the differences more and more insurmountable every year. A generation of young people has grown up, for whom "Armenian" and "Azeri" have become an ideological cliché, an image of an "enemy". [118]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link): Хасан-Джалалян происходил из знатной армянской фамилии наследственных меликов округа Хачен в нагорной части Карабага, населённой армянами; предок этой фамилии Хасан-Джалал был князем хачена в период монгольского завоевания, в XIII в. При кызылбашском владычестве Хасан-Джалаляны сохранили своё положение меликов хаченских...
This certainly is the case with Zia Bunyatov, who has made an incomplete and defective Russian translation of Bakikhanov's text. Not only has he not translated any of the poems in the text, but he does not even mention that he has not done so, while he does not translate certain other prose parts of the text without indicating this and why. This is in particular disturbing because he suppresses, for example, the mention of territory inhabited by Armenians, thus not only falsifying history, but also not respecting Bakikhanov's dictum that a historian should write without prejudice, whether religious, ethnic, political or otherwise. [...] Guilistam-i Iram translated with commentary by Ziya M. Bunyatov (Baku. 1991), p.11, where the translator has deleted the words 'and Armenia' from the text, which shows, as indicated in the introduction, that his translation should be used with circumspection, because this is not the only example of omissions from Bakikhanov's text.Floor and Javadi – Iranianists, authors of numerous articles in an authoritative encyclopedia Iranica
The young Azeri's seemingly innocuous, abstract archaeological paper was a deliberate political provocation: all the crosses on today's territory of Azerbaijan, including significantly Nagorno-Karabagh and Nakhichevan, were defined as Albanian, a people who in turn were seen as the direct ancestors of today's Azeris. // The rest, as they say, is history. The Armenian archaeologists were upset and threatened to walk out en bloc. Protests were filed, and even Russian scholars from Leningrad objected to this blatantly political appropriation, posing as scholarship. [...] // Thus, minimally, two points must be made. Patently false cultural origin myths are not always harmless.
In 1988, following the demands of the Karabagh Armenians to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, a number of Azeri academics, led by Zia Bunyatov, to justify their government's claims regarding the Armenian populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh, rushed to prove that the Armenian population of Karabagh had only arrived there after 1828 and thus had no historical claims to the region. Lacking any sources written in Azeri-since the Azeri alphabet was created in the twentieth century, and refusing, for obvious reasons, to cite Armenian sources, they had to rely on sources written in Persian, Arabic, and Russian, among others. Therefore, to substantiate their political claims, Bunyatov and his fellow academics chose to set aside all scholarly integrity and print large numbers of re-edited versions of these not easily accessible primary sources on Karabagh, while deleting or altering references to the Armenians.
Другим способом преуменьшить присутствие армян в древнем и средневековом Закавказье и умалить их роль является переиздание античных и средневековых источников с купюрами, с заменой термина «Армянское государство» на «Албанское государство» или с иными искажениями оригинальных текстов. В 1960—1990–х годах в Баку вышло немало таких переизданий первоисточников, чем активно занимался академик 3. М. Буниятов. В самые последние годы, описывая этнические процессы и их роль в истории Азербайджана, азербайджанские авторы порой вообще избегают обсуждать вопрос о появлении там азербайджанского языка и азербайджанцев, тем самым давая читателю понять, что они существовали там испокон веков. Вряд ли азербайджанские историки делали все это исключительно по своей воле; над ними довлел заказ партийно-правительственных структур Азербайджана. [...] Здесь-то на помощь политикам и приходят историки, археологи, этнографы и лингвисты, которые всеми силами стремятся, во-первых, укоренить азербайджанцев на территории Азербайджана, а во-вторых, очистить последнюю от армянского наследия. Эта деятельность не просто встречает благожелательный приём у местных властей, но, как мы видели, санкционируется президентом республики.
There have been systematic attempts of ethnic cleansing and historical revisionism, presenting the medieval Armenian cultural and religious monuments as expressions of Azerbaijani ancestral heritage, destroying churches and cross-stones, and denying the presence of Armenians in Historic Armenia's eastern regions. In the words of Arif Yanus, an Azerbaijani historian and human rights defender living in the Netherlands, 'Ilham Aliyev upgraded Armenophobia to the level of Fascist Germany's anti-Semitism.'... Nothing much has changed. Armenians still face similar genocidal challenges and threats of further usurpation of the small homeland they live in today.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Despite numerous requests from Armenia and various international institutions, Azerbaijan has repeatedly refused to allow foreign observers to monitor Nagorno-Karabakh's cultural sites. Thus, Armenia's heritage can only be monitored via satellite surveillance, and access to sources regarding the ongoing cultural destruction is limited.
He [Dorfmann-Lazarev] recalls how 'the promotion of Azerbaijan's Turkish-speaking majority to the status of sole titular nation was accompanied by the persecution of peoples of different ethnic origins rooted in the same territory.' It was precisely during the years of the Great Terror that the figure of Mir Dzhafar Bağırov, already elected First Secretary of Azerbaijan's Communist Party in 1933, emerged prominently...Bağırov was responsible for the deportation of numerous minority groups, the suppression of their languages, and the systemic discrimination against Armenians. Later archaeological findings, in the 1940s and 1950s, continued to be interpreted according to the principles of ethnogenesis, the claim that the dominant ethnic group in Soviet times had been the original group in a given territory for centuries or millennia. As a result...Caucasian Albania was referred to as the direct ancestor of Azerbaijan, and 'the Armenian scholars were not allowed to participate in the investigation of Caucasian Albanian antiquities, although the main sources on the history of this civilization are written in ancient Armenian.'
[Mir Cǝfǝr/Dzhafar] Bağırov's rule marks the beginning of the historiographical erasure of the republic's Armenian past, a process which would have numerous sequels…With Bağırov's accession to power, the discrimination against non-titular nations of the republic acquired a new amplitude…The promotion of the Turkophone majority of Azerbaijan to the status of its unique titular nation was accompanied by the persecution of the populations of diverse ethnic origins long-established on the same territory. The invention of the Azerbaijanis' autochthonous ethnic ancestors was thus a direct result of the Soviet politics of nationalities and of the transformation of the Turkophone populations of Azerbaijan into a unitary, and exclusive, titular nation of the republic…The historiography developed in the USSR thus gradually prepared the ground for cultural erasure. In the claims concerning the Armenians' extraneousness to the territories of Azerbaijan, such as those voiced by [Farida] Mamedova [Buniyatov's disciple, Fəridə Məmmədova], some penetrating minds had, early on, also recognised a promise of future ethnic cleansing.…In Karny's interview with Suren Zolyan, Zolyan critiques Mamedova's Albanian hypothesis as the ideological groundwork for ethnic cleansing, arguing, 'If the Armenians are considered outsiders, as proponents of the Caucasian Albania theory assert, then they are seen as candidates for expulsion. If they are deemed illegitimate occupants of this land, then repression against them is justified.'
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)The mainstream Azerbaijani history school started to shift in the 1960s and became revisionist in the 1980s. In the 1960 version, Armenian influence is downplayed: the authors omitted the Armenian origin of the Albanian alphabet, Albanized important Armenian figures, but still mentioned intermittent Armenian rule over NK and Armenianized Albanians. In the 1980s, revisionist accounts replaced these more moderate views in the media and textbooks. Gradually, they argued that no Albanians were Armenianized, that Armenians never established an independent state in the region, and that no Armenian population existed in what is now NK. They also Albanized Armenian monuments in NK, claimed that well-known Armenian manuscripts were translations from Albanian originals, and maintained that Armenians resettled in Azerbaijan only after Russia annexed Transcaucasia in 1828.
These violations relate to others by Azerbaijan described in this report. As evidenced above, Azerbaijani officials' incitement to hatred against Armenians promoted, or was used as a justification for the destruction of cultural and religious buildings as well as the destruction of Armenian local history in Nagorno-Karabakh. The villainization of Armenians through the dangerous revisionist narratives of Caucasian Albania and Western Azerbaijan in turn serves to further fuel that ethnic hatred.
In the Republic of Azerbaijan, the long Soviet practice of historic falsification has left a legacy which has distorted both the views of many Azerbaijanis of Iran and the true nature of their cultural, ethnic and historic connections. The following are some examples of this process of falsification, which, incidentally, in the last few years, has been picked up and given new credence by a number of Western commentators. Several myths with significant policy implications shape the Azerbaijanis' views of their country, its origins, and its relations to Iran.
International experts highlight Azerbaijan's territorial expansionism. Stefan Meister, head of the Centre for Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia at the German Council on Foreign Relations, explained. 'It's part of this maximalist approach: you're hungry so you never stop eating if no one draws a red line.' Meister urged Western governments to impose sanctions on Baku. Lack of consequences has led Aliyev to become so emboldened by his ahistorical, expansionist ideology that he announced a 'Great Return Program' in which 140,000 Azerbaijanis will live in Syunik and Artsakh.
In 1988, following the demands of the Karabagh Armenians to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, a number of Azeri academics, led by Zia Bunyatov, to justify their government's claims regarding the Armenian populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh, rushed to prove that the Armenian population of Karabagh had only arrived there after 1828 and thus had no historical claims to the region. Lacking any sources written in Azeri-since the Azeri alphabet was created in the twentieth century,6 and refusing, for obvious reasons, to cite Armenian sources, they had to rely on sources written in Persian, Arabic, and Russian, among others. [...] Even more irritating was the fact that Muslim historians, who had lived in the territory of what later became the Azerbaijan Republic, men like Abbas Qoli Aqa Bakikhanov Mirza Jamal Javanshir and Mirza Adigozal Beg, the first of whom was honored by the Academy of Sciences in Baku as the father of the history of Azerbaijan, had clearly indicated a strong Armenian presence in Karabagh prior to 1828 and had placed the region within the territory of historic Armenia. [...] To legitimize this edition as unbiased, Bunyatov stated that Tigran Ter-Grigorian, an Armenian scholar working at the History Institute of Baku, had prepared the Russian translation (from which the Azeri version was translated).
Scholars should be on guard when using Soviet and post-Soviet Azeri editions of Azeri, Persian, and even Russian and Western European sources printed in Baku. These have been edited to remove references to Armenians and have been distributed in large numbers in recent years. When using such sources, the researchers should seek out pre-Soviet editions wherever possible
На самом деле именно в Азербайджане известны попытки фальсификации надписей на хачкарах.
The extremely limited nature of the originally available Albanian epigraphic remains was such that it was possible also, for example, to decipher and read the Mingechaur inscription on the pedestal as Azerbaijanian (i.e., Turkic) (Mustafaev 1990: 23–25), an unsuccessful attempt, like numerous others, to demonstrate a long-standing Turkic ethnic and linguistic affiliation with such eastern Caucasian tribes as the Albanians, the Gargars, and the Udins (see Gadjiev 1997:25–27). Such falsifications, pseudoscientific discoveries, and conclusions are not only formidably shortsighted but also rather dangerous, especially for the development of interethnic and international relations in multiethnic Dagestan and the Caucasus.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)...волюнтаризм в изучении древности, фальсификация самого понятия историзма, будучи уже результатом нездоровых тенденций, не могут быть охарактеризованы иначе, как попытка обмануть собственный народ, внушить ему недостойные идеи, настроить на неверные решения.
Можно ли считать серьезным исследователя, который обвиняет своих оппонентов в неверном представлении точек зрения предшественников и для этого приводит неполную фразу С. В. Юшкова: «Нельзя думать, что Албания при Страбоне занимала только долину по левому течению реки Куры», 34пытаясь создать у читателя впечатление, будто учёный настаивал на вхождении в Албанию и правобережья (p. 73). В действительности, С. В. Юшков полемизировал с А. Яновским, помещавшим Албанию лишь на левобережной равнине вплоть до Кавказских гор, и доказывал вхождение в эту страну также и большей части Дагестана.
Далее в книге читаем: «X. Хюбшманн и И. Маркварт вообще считали Сюник албанской областью» (p. 106). Даётся ссылка только на с. 216 «Die altarmenischen Ortsnamen» Г. Гюбшманна. Конечно, несерьезна уверенность Ф. Мамедовой в том, что вхождение Сюника в Албанию можно доказать ссылками на авторитеты, минуя материал источников. Но самое интересное то, что ни Г. Гюбшманн, ни И. Маркварт не относили Сюник к Албании. На с. 216 сочинения Г. Гюбшманна нет даже слова «Сюник». Приписанного ему утверждения нет и на других страницах работы немецкого филолога, так же как и в фундаментальном историко-географическом исследовании И. Маркварта! Как же понимать такого рода «аргументацию»?
С той же целью ту же страницу указывал 3. Буниятов (p. 100)
Далее она пишет: «Сюнийский автор VIII в. Стефан Сюнийский отмечал, что в его время в Сюнике и Арцахе говорили на сюнийском и арцахском языках» (p. 106, p. 108). Даётся ссылка на издание «Толкования» Степаноса Сюнеци48. Если допустить, что Ф. Мамедова прочитала текст на армянском языке и постигла его смысл, то это её утверждение трудно охарактеризовать иначе, как ложное. В соответствующем разделе армянский учёный VIII в.49 в шести пунктах и на шести страницах (по изданию) перечисляет то, что необходимо знать для занятий грамматикой. Во втором абзаце четвёртого пункта, посвященного знанию языков, он говорит: «И также /следует/ знать все окраинные диалекты (զբառսն եզերականս) своего языка (զքո լեզուիդ), кои суть корчайский и хутский и Четвёртой Армении и сперский И сюнийский и арцахский (զՍիւնին, եւ զԱրցախայինն), а не только срединный и центральный, ибо /и диалекты/ эти пригодны для стихосложения, а также для истории полезны, дабы не пустить /что-то/ из-за незнания языков»
Оказывается, что Павстос Бузанд, изложивший примерно в 70-х гг. V в. историю своей страны в IV в., благодаря которой до нас дошли ценнейшие сведения, в том числе и об армяно-албанской границе по Куре, был искусным фальсификатором и тенденциозно расширял пределы Армянского царства IV века (с. 124—126). Почему? «Чтобы идеологически подготовить население к антиперсидскому восстанию (450—451 гг.), необходимо было создать труд, гиперболизирование) изображающий мощь Армении, её территориальную целостность... С этой целью Фавстос Бузандаци (!) включает в состав Армении... наряду с другими землями и албанские области правобережья Куры — Ути, Арцах и Пайтакаран» (с. 125). Но как может труд, созданный в 70-х гг. V в. (у Ф. Мамедовой — в конце V в.), подготовить население к восстанию 450 — −451 гг.?
Мамедова приводит этот фрагмент по русскому переводу: «Предприняли мы это дело в 633 году армянского летосчисления: вычтя цикл (в 532 года), будет 101 год по календарю, который называется (у нас) Малым календарём, а по греческому летосчислению—в 405 году (то есть 1184 г.)...» (с. 24—25). Как видим, в оригинале нет взятого в переводе в скобки местоимения «у нас». Его добавил переводчик Судебника на русский язык А. Паповян, чтобы прояснить текст. И вот этих отсутствующих в оригинале слов Мамедовой оказывается достаточно, чтобы написать: «Итак „у нас"—у албан существовал даже свой метод летосчисления в отличие от армянской эры—Малый календарь...».
При этом 3. Буниятов ссылается на книгу М. Орманяна «Армянская церковь» (Москва, 1913), с. 45 и 118, хотя на указанных страницах книги нет даже намёка на это. Эти слова принадлежат самому 3. Буниятову (с. 97) и вторично на с. 99—100, когда он приходит к выводу, что причину исчезновения агванской письменности «надо искать в антиалбанской политике григорианского католикоса, узурпировавшего в итоге все права албанской церкви». Иного мнения о причине исчезновения агванской письменности придерживается цитируемый 3. Буниятовым академик А. Шанидзе, говоря: «Письменность эта продолжала... существовать и после покорения страны арабами в VII веке, в период постепенного перехода албанцев в мусульманство и их денационализации, усилившейся с X века и принявшей угрожающие размеры в монгольскую эпоху». См. цитируемую 3. Буниятовым (на с. 99) работу А. Шанидзе «Новооткрытый алфавит Кавказских албанцев и его значение для науки», стр. 3. Вот вам четкий ответ А. Шанидзе на вопрос о причине исчезновения агванской письменности.
«То, что в „Судебник" без всякой системы и руководящей нити вошли,— читаем дальше,— наряду с законами Восточной Римской империи, албанские законы, „Законы Моисея" и армянские народные обычаи, вовсе не подтверждает принадлежность его к документам армянского права». Эта цитата с приведенными в кавычках словами «законы Моисея» отсылает читателя к переводу «Истории» Киракоса Гандзакеци (см. Примеч. 590, Т- И. Тер-Григоряна, стр. 260). Чтобы ясно представить себе научно-исследовательские методы З. Буниятова и неряшливое отношение к редакторской работе 3. Ямпольского, нам хотелось бы воочию познакомиться с той нелепостью, куда отсылают они читателя, выяснить, достаточно ли научны основания, за которые они так энергично цепляются. Т. Тер-Григорян, научный сотрудник Института истории АН Аз. ССР, на которого опираются 3. Буниятов и 3. Ямпольский, пишет: «В состав „Судебника" без всякой системы и руководящей нити вошли, кроме законов Восточной Римской империи, албанские и армянские народные обычаи, церковные каноны, „законы Моисея"» (курсив наш—К. М.-О.). Внимательный читатель без труда заметит, как произвольно обращаются автор и редактор его с источниками, как они жонглируют для обоснования своей лженаучной концепции. Что же им удалось «научно» обосновать? Они лишь переставили одни обороты, другие—разъединили, словечка два заменили или поместили в кавычах. В результате получился новый текст-конгломерат с тенденцией отрицания армянского происхождения «Судебника».
Нетрудно заметить, что 3. Буниятов, «переработал» первоисточник. Искажая ясные и четкие сведения историка, он создаёт компилятивный текст, заключает его в кавычки и со спокойной совестью отсылает читателей к соответствующей странице русского перевода, не забывая даже указать на страницу английского перевода. Это уже, как говорится, своеобразный «новаторский» подход к первоисточнику, авторское право на который, бесспорно, принадлежит 3. Буниятову. Разумеется, мы вовсе не считаем, что никто не вправе усомниться в правильности того или другого сведения древних историков. Но в таких случаях добросовестный исследователь обязан ознакомиться со всеми первоисточниками и ещё раз проверить все сообщения о событии, вызвавшем его сомнения, уметь отделить главное от второстепенного и только после этого критическим анализом источников подкрепить свои новые выводы. Однако, как видим, эти элементарные правила, обязательные в любом научном труде, вовсе не касаются 3. Буниятова. Сосредоточив все своё внимание на выстроенном им самим отрывке Истории Мовсеса Каганкатваци и умышленно умалчивая: о других многочисленных свидетельствах как армянских, так и других авторов, 3. Буниятов старается навязать читателю свою версию о том, будто сожжение армянских князей и вельмож арабскими завоевателями в 705 г. имело место не в современном городе Нахичеване на Араксе, а где-то в ином месте. Далее, с целью придания некоторой правдоподобности своим словам, он обрывает повествование историка и сразу же после упоминания о сожжении армянских князей в Нахичеване ставит точку. Между тем, в тексте историк продолжает свой рассказ о сожжении князей «и в местечке Храм». 3. Буниятов делает это совершенно сознательно. Из текста он выбрасывает два весьма важных упоминания, чтобы затем на искаженных строках построить свою версию о другом Нахичеване. Так, из свидетельства Мовсеса Каганкатваци он пропускает слово «город», весьма определенно характеризующее Нахичеван, и упоминание о местечке Храм. Цель этой «операции» ясна. Из нескольких Нахичеванов, находящихся в Армении (в районе Кагызмана в Карсской области, в окрестностях города Ани и в Карабахе, близ города Шуши), с древних времен «городом» назывался только лишь Нахичеван на Араксе. Опуская термин «город» из сообщения историка, 3. Буниятов оправдывает свои поиски другого Нахичевана. Для Буниятова серьезной помехой явилось и «местечко Храм», которое также изымается им из контекста. Местечко Храм, к счастью, существует и по сей день, недалеко от современного Нахичевана, а ныне именуется азербайджанцами Неграм (Նեհրամ). Таким образом, лишив читателя возможности точной локализации Нахичевана с помощью находящегося невдалеке от него местечка (աւան) Храм. 3. Буниятов начинает искать другой Нахичеван и, хотя у него имелись большие возможности выбрать даже Нахичеван на Дону, он все же скромно останавливается на небольшом селении Нахичеван в районе Кагызмана, к которому поспешно прикрепляет термин «город». Вот что он заявляет со всего безапелляционностью: «Таким образом ясно, что описываемые в источниках действия арабского полководца—разгром византино-армянских войск, пленение армянских князей и сожжение их в храме Нахичевана—все это никакого отношения к Нахичевану—на Араксе не имеет». 3. Буниятов полагает, что искажением Мовсеса Каганкатваци и нехитрой фальсификацией нехитрых эпизодов истории он вполне достигает искомой цели.
Об этом недвусмысленно сообщает персоязычный аноним XIII в. в своем географическом сочинении «[Хачен] это область (вилайет) трудно доступная, среди гор и лесов; принадлежит к округам (а'мал) Аррана; там есть армяне...» (Н. Д. Миклухо-Маклай, Географическое сочинение XIII в. на персидском языке («Учёные записки Института востоковедения», IX, 1954, стр. 204); Я. Геюшев цитирует это сообщение из вторых рук, притом недобросовестно, опуская то, что ему не подходит.
Таким образом, определение орнаментики хачкаров из Нораванка как азербайджанской просто неверно, если не сказать фальшиво. Непонятно, зачем понадобилось авторам искажать смысловое и художественное содержание и происхождение армянского средневекового декоративного искусства, легко и бездумно «присоединяя» его то к уже не существовавшему в то время искусству Албании (а в понимании авторов—к искусству Азербайджана), то непосредственно к искусству Азербайджана.
Отмечая в качестве азербайджанской щедрости «добровольный» отказ Азербайджанской Демократической Республики в 1918 г. от «Иреванской области» в пользу Армении, Алиев называл территорию современной Армении азербайджанской землёй и призывал историков «создавать обоснованные документы» и «доказывать принадлежность Азербайджану земель, где ныне расположена Армения» (Алиев, 1999а; 19996).
Таким образом, празднование юбилея Нахичевани стало хорошим поводом для переписывания истории Закавказья не только с одобрения, но даже по поручению президента Азербайджана.
Meanwhile, racist hostility towards Armenians in greater Azerbaijan continued, unhindered by that government. In 'Black January' 1990, 'murderous anti-Armenian violence overwhelmed Baku,' with days of rioting and vicious attacks in which at least 90 Armenians were killed. The Azerbaijani nationalist politician Heydar Aliyev stoked the situation by claiming that Armenia had perpetrated genocide against the Azeris in the past.
The decree of March 26, 1998, concerning the 'Azerbaijani Genocide,' signed by the President of the Republic, Heydar Aliyev (1993-2003), played a key role in this respect. From this moment on, the historical myth about the nation that survived a 'genocide' adopted an official status and became an important component of state ideology.
Within this denialist context, Azerbaijani state propaganda can invert the dynamics of modern history in the region and give the impression that Azeris have been historically victimized by an ongoing genocide perpetrated by more powerful Armenians. This is a clearly recognizable manipulation tactic called DARVO (deny, accuse, reverse victim and offender)
Most importantly, the textbook particularly tends to address these events as "Genocide" albeit providing no legal definition of the term to the reader or giving no justification why "March Days" should be regarded as such. Overall, the whole chapter aims to deflect the reader from the genuine reasons for the clashes and to present it as pure a priori nature atrocity emanating from 'Armenian hatred'.
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