Nij (also known as Nidzh; az, Nic;
Udi Udi may refer to:
Places
* Udi, Enugu, a local government areas and city in Nigeria
* Udi, a place in the Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh, India
People
* Udi Gal (born 1979), Israeli Olympic sailor
* Udi Vaks (born 1979), Israeli Olympic judoka
...
: ''НыъжӀ'' or ''НиъжӀ'') is a town in the
Qabala District
Qabala District ( az, Qəbələ 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 Oghuz, Shaki, Agdash, G ...
of
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 ...
, located forty kilometers south-west of
Qabala
Qabala ( az, Qəbələ) is a city and the administrative centre of the Qabala District of Azerbaijan. The municipality consists of the city of Gabala and the village of Küsnat. Before the city was known as Kutkashen, but after the Republic of ...
. It's one of the world's few settlements of
Udi people. It has a population of 5,744.
History
The Caucasian Albanian-Udi Apostolic Autocephalous Church is located in Nij.
The first Udi school and subsequently a Russian rural school were opened in Nij in 1854. From 1931 to 1933, Udis received education in their own language; in 1937 they began to receive education in the Azeri language.
Ethnic Udis in Nij today are involved in a variety of vocations, which include farming, cattle breeding, rice cultivation,
sericulture
Sericulture, or silk farming, is the cultivation of silkworms to produce silk. Although there are several commercial species of silkworms, ''Bombyx mori'' (the caterpillar of the domestic silkmoth) is the most widely used and intensively studie ...
, horticulture, poultry farming, craftsmanship and viticulture.
Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas (, ; ; born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (), 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas père (where '' '' is French for 'father', to distinguish him from his son Alexandre Dumas fils), was a French writer ...
''père'', the French writer, in his book ''Voyage to the Caucasus'' (1859), provides detailed information about the specific economic activities, language and culture of Nij.
Controversy
In 2004,
Church of Saint Elisæus in Nij was renovated as part of a project financed by Norwegian Humanitarian Enterprise. The destruction of Armenian inscriptions associated with the church during the renovations prompted a protest by Norway's ambassador to Azerbaijan,
Steinar Gil.
In May 2018, Foreign Minister of Armenia submitted a report to the UN General Assembly claiming that the erasing of the Armenian inscriptions at Nij was evidence that "all restoration work of Christian architectural monuments in Azerbaijan was carried out in such a way as to destroy the traces of Armenian architecture, as well as the Armenian inscriptions".
[Letter dated 18 May 2018 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of Armenia to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, page 5/21. https://undocs.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/72/876]
Gallery
File:Nic qəsəbəsi Yalaşlı məhəllə Cümə Məscidi.JPG, Mosque in Nij
References
*
{{Qabala Rayon
Populated places in Qabala District
Elizavetpol Governorate