Oğuz () is a city, municipality and the capital of the

Oghuz District Oghuz District () is one of the 66 districts of Azerbaijan. It is located in the north of the country in the Shaki-Zagatala Economic Region. The district borders the districts of Shaki, Qabala, Agdash, and the Russian Republic of Dagestan. It ...

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

. The village was populated by

Armenians Armenians (, ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the Armenian highlands of West Asia.Robert Hewsen, Hewsen, Robert H. "The Geography of Armenia" in ''The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiq ...

and Udis before the exodus of Armenians from Azerbaijan after the outbreak of the

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an ethnic and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians until 2023, and seven surrounding districts, inhabited mostly by Azerbai ...

Etymology

Before 1991 the town was called Vartashen (), which means town of roses in Armenian; 'Vard' meaning rose and 'shen' meaning town or village. This is in reference to the abundance of roses that naturally grow in this place. Jost Gippert «Relative Clauses in Vartashen Udi Preliminary Remarks» «Iran and the Caucasus» Brill Publishers 2011. Стр. 208: The Armenian-based etymology given there (Arm. vard 'rose' and šēn 'village', i.e. 'rose-village') seems first to have been proposed by A. Berger (Berže) as it is also found in Seidlitz 1863: 171 (where, however, the name is spelt 'Wartaschîn'). The Udi pronunciation of today is vartašen. A colophon on Armenian manuscript dating to 1466 suggests possibly earlier bilingual variants of the name: Giwlstan (), and Vardud (). The town was renamed to Oğuz in 1991 during the expulsion of the Armenian and autochthonous Udi-speaking population. The name Oğuz, was taken from the old Turkic tribe of Oghuz.

Population

Until 1991, Vartashen was mainly a

Udi Udi may refer to: Places * Udi, Enugu, a local government areas and city in Nigeria * Udi Hills, Enugu State, Nigeria * Udi, a place in the Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh, India People Given name * Udi Aloni (born 1959), Israeli-American film ...

village, where the Vartashen dialect of the

Udi language Udi (also called Uti or Udin) is a language spoken by the Udi people and a member of the Lezgic languages, Lezgic branch of the Northeast Caucasian languages, Northeast Caucasian language family. It is believed an earlier form of it was the main ...

was spoken by about 3000 people in the 1980s. The Udis of Vartashen belonged to the Armenian and Gregorian Church and had Armenian surnames. During the

First Nagorno-Karabakh War The First Nagorno-Karabakh War was an ethnic conflict, ethnic and territorial conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nag ...

, most Udis of the town were expelled by the local activists of

Popular Front of Azerbaijan The Azerbaijani Popular Front Party (APFP; , ) is a political party in Azerbaijan, founded in 1989 by Abulfaz Elchibey. Since Elchibey was ousted from power in the 1993 military coup, the party has been one of the main opposition parties to th ...

. The Udis, bearing

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

names and belonging to both the Armenian and the Gregorian Church, had been viewed as

and hence suffered the same fate as other Armenians in Azerbaijan. Some 50 Udi people remained in the town.Wolfgang Schulze:
Towards a History of Udi.
'' International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics 1, 2005, pp. 55–91. There were also Tat-speaking

Mountain Jews Mountain Jews are the Mizrahi Jews, Mizrahi Jewish subgroup of the eastern and northern Caucasus, mainly Azerbaijan, and various republics in the Russian Federation: Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Kabardino-Balkaria. M ...

in Vartashen. Most of them have emigrated to

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

, but possibly 80 have stayed.Michael Zand: ''Language and Literature.'' In: Liya Mikdash-Shamailov: ''Mountain Jews: Customs and Daily Life in the Caucasus.'' The Israel Museum (Muzeon Yisrael), Jerusalem 2002
p. 37.

Notable people

Movses Silikyan Movses Silikyan or Silikov (, ; 14 September 1862 – 22 November 1937) was an Armenian general who served in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and later in the army of the First Republic of Armenia. He is regarded as a national hero i ...

(1862–1937), Armenian general

References

External links

* Populated places in Oghuz District Elizavetpol Governorate Places of settlement of Mountain Jews {{Oghuz-geo-stub

Etymology

Population

Notable people

See also

References

External links