Birinci Biləcik (also, Biledzhik Pervoye, Biledzhik Pervyy, Birindzhi-Baledzhik, and Birindzhi-Bilyadzhik) is a village and municipality in the

Shaki Rayon Shaki District ( az, Şəki rayonu) is one of the 66 districts of Azerbaijan. It is located in the north of the country and belongs to the Shaki-Zagatala Economic Region. The district borders the districts of Qakh, Oghuz, Agdash, Yevlakh, and ...

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

. It lies in the Alazan-Ayrichay basin and has a population of 1,399.

Name

During the collectivisation era of the USSR, the village of Bilejik received its prefix Birinci which means 'first', i.e. original. This helps contrast the village (i.e. historical Biləcik) with much newer İkinci Biləcik, founded nearby in the Soviet times.

History

Local historians cite the foundation of Bilejik (Biləcik) village to around 1570, originally by families who had come here from what is now the

Bilecik Province Bilecik Province ( tr, ) is a province in midwest Turkey, neighboring Bursa to the west, Kocaeli and Sakarya to the north, Bolu to the east, Eskişehir to the southeast and Kütahya to the south, spanning an area of 4,307 km2. The populat ...

district of Turkey. In 1734, Bilejik was the centre of a major revolt against

Nadir Shah Nader Shah Afshar ( fa, نادر شاه افشار; also known as ''Nader Qoli Beyg'' or ''Tahmāsp Qoli Khan'' ) (August 1688 – 19 June 1747) was the founder of the Afsharid dynasty of Iran and one of the most powerful rulers in Iranian h ...

but after minor gains, the rebellion caused Bilejik to become the focus for Nadir Shah's ire with a counter attack force sent from Barda to take revenge on the rebels. In fear of terrible reprisals, some 300 families left Bilejik and retreated to the autonomous communities of Jar-Balakan according to Mullah Mohammad Jari's ''Chronicle of the Tsar's War''. This is historically plausible as the Djaris from Djaro-Belokani had already fought Nadir Shah's army in 1738 (near Dzhinikh/Lekit), killing Nadir's brother Ibraham-Khan during that earlier conflict. In 1852, according to

Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

in his posthumous

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...

,''Hadji Murat'' chapter 25 it was in a copse close to Bilejik (Bilardzhik) where

Hadji Murad Hadji Murad (russian: Хаджи-Мурат, av, XӀажи Мурад; 1818 – April 23, N.S. May 5, 1852) was an important North Caucasian Avar leader during the resistance of the peoples of Dagestan and Chechnya in 1811–1864 against the ...

and his murids made their last stand, their horses having become bogged down in a waterlogged ricefield while trying to flee from the Cossacks of

Nukha Shaki ( az, Şəki) is a city in northwestern Azerbaijan, surrounded by the district of the same name. It is located on the southern part of the Greater Caucasus mountain range, from Baku. As of 2020, it has a population of 68,400. The center o ...

References

* Populated places in Shaki District {{Shaki-geo-stub