Tigranakert ( hy, Արցախի Տիգրանակերտ, ''Arts'akhi Tigranakert''), also known as Tigranakert-Artsakh, is a ruined Armenian city dating back to the

Hellenistic period In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

, located in the

Aghdam District Aghdam District ( az, Ağdam rayonu) is one of the 66 administrative divisions of Azerbaijan. It is located in the west of the country and belongs to the Karabakh Economic Region. The district borders the districts of Khojaly, Kalbajar, Tartar ...

of what is today

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

. It is one of several former cities in the Armenian plateau with the same name, named in honor of the Armenian king

Tigranes the Great Tigranes II, more commonly known as Tigranes the Great ( hy, Տիգրան Մեծ, ''Tigran Mets''; grc, Τιγράνης ὁ Μέγας ''Tigránes ho Mégas''; la, Tigranes Magnus) (140 – 55 BC) was King of Armenia under whom the ...

(r. 95–55 B.C.), with the name ''Artsakh'' referring to the historical province of Artsakh in the ancient Kingdom of Armenia. Petrosyan, Hamlet L. (2010).
Tigranakert in Artsakh
" in ''Tigranes the Great''. Yerevan, pp. 380-87. However, some scholars, such as

Robert Hewsen Robert H. Hewsen (May 20, 1934 – November 17, 2018) was an American historian and professor of history at Rowan University. He was an expert on the ancient history of the South Caucasus. Hewsen is the author of ''Armenia: A Historical Atlas'' ...

and Babken Harutyunyan, have posited that this particular Tigranakert may have been founded by Tigranes the Great's father,

Tigranes I Tigranes I of Armenia ( hy, Տիգրան Ա, grc, Τιγράνης) was an Artaxiad king of Armenia at the end of 2nd and the beginning of 1st century BC. Few records have survived about his and his predecessor Artavasdes I's reign, which has l ...

(r. ca. 123–95 B.C.). It occupies an area of about 50

hectares The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is ...

and is located approximately four kilometers south of the Khachinchay (Khachen) River. The site was within territory that came under the occupation of Armenian forces after the

First Nagorno-Karabakh war The First Nagorno-Karabakh War, referred to in Armenia as the Artsakh Liberation War ( hy, Արցախյան ազատամարտ, Artsakhyan azatamart) was an ethnic and territorial conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in t ...

and was made part of the

self-proclaimed Self-proclaimed describes a legal title that is recognized by the declaring person but not necessarily by any recognized legal authority. It can be the status of a noble title or the status of a nation. The term is used informally for anyone declari ...

Republic of Artsakh until November 2020 when it was handed over to Azerbaijan as part of the

2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement is an armistice agreement that ended the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. It was signed on 9November by the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and the Pre ...

. In November 2021, Armenian sources reported that Azerbaijanis have turned a section of Tigranakert into a

barbecue restaurant A barbecue restaurant is a restaurant that specializes in barbecue-style cuisine and dishes. Barbecue restaurants may open relatively early compared to other restaurants, in part to optimize sales while barbecued foods being slow-cooked by the pro ...

History

Primary sources first make mention of Tigranakert in the seventh century, stating that there were actually two such cities with the same name in the province of

Utik Utik ( hy, Ուտիք, also known as Uti, Utiq, or Outi) was a historic province of the Kingdom of Armenia. It was ceded to Caucasian Albania following the partition of Armenia between Sassanid Persia and the Eastern Roman Empire in 387 AD. Mos ...

. Archaeologists and historians have managed to date the founding of the first one to the 120s–80s B.C., during the reign of either King

, or his son and successor King

has questioned the attribution to Tigranes II, as no coins or inscriptions bearing his name have been uncovered yet and the identification of the remains rests on the local name for the site.Hewsen, Robert H., "Three New Books about Arts'akh," ''Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies'' 22 (2013), p. 295. The ruins of the second Tigranakert have yet to be uncovered, although it is believed to have been located in the district of

Gardman Gardman ( hy, Գարդման), also known as Gardmank, was one of the eight cantons of the ancient province of Utik in the Kingdom of Armenia and simultaneously, together with the canton of Tuchkatak, an Armenian principality. It roughly corre ...

. Tigranakert was the site of a battle in the spring of 625 AD, between the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantino ...

emperor

Heraclius Heraclius ( grc-gre, Ἡράκλειος, Hērákleios; c. 575 – 11 February 641), was Eastern Roman emperor from 610 to 641. His rise to power began in 608, when he and his father, Heraclius the Elder, the exarch of Africa, led a revolt ...

() and a

Sasanian The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...

force, which resulted in the defeat of the latter. The site has inscriptions in both Armenian and Greek dating back to the 5th and 7th centuries. After the demise of the first Tigranakert in the early Middle Ages, the name of the city was preserved and used continuously in local geographic lore as Tngrnakert, Tarnakert, Taraniurt, Tarnagiurt, and Tetrakerte. In the 1740s–50s,

Shahbulag Castle Shahbulag Castle ( az, Şahbulaq qalası, literally "Spring of the Shah") is an 18th-century fortress near Aghdam in Azerbaijan built by the Karabakh Khan Panah Ali. Name and Etymology The castle was named Shahbulag ("Shah's spring") after a ne ...

was built on the site of Tigranakert by the Turkic warlord Panah Ali. It was ''de facto'' under the control of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh as part of its Askeran Province until being handed over to Azerbaijan, along with the rest of the Aghdam District as a part of the

. According to Hamlet Petrosyan, an Armenian archeologist and historian who headed the archeological expedition at Tigranakert, Azerbaijan shelled Tigranakert several times during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.

Excavations

Excavations at Tigranakert began in March 2005, when it was first discovered, and until 2020 were ongoing under the directorship of Dr. Hamlet L. Petrosyan of the Armenian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. Archaeologists have uncovered two of the main walls of the city, as well as

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 3 ...

-style towers and an Armenian

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its nam ...

church dating to the fifth to seventh centuries.Museum at Ancient Ruins of Tigranakert Opens in Nagorno-Karabakh
" ''

Asbarez ''Asbarez'' ( hy, Ասպարէզ "Arena") is an Armenian-American bilingual daily newspaper published in Armenian and English in Los Angeles, California, formerly by the Western USA Central Committee of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. ...

''. June 8, 2010. Retrieved July 1, 2010. In 2008, the excavation team began to face funding issues, although the authorities of the Republic of Artsakh promised to allocate 30 million drams to continue further research.Harutyunyan, Arpi.
Research in Ruins: Tigranakert project threatened by lack of finances
" ''ArmeniaNow''. April 11, 2008. Retrieved March 25, 2010. During the excavations of 2008–2010, silver coins of the Parthian monarchs Mithridates IV () and

Orodes II Orodes II (also spelled Urud II; xpr, 𐭅𐭓𐭅𐭃 ''Wērōd''), was King of Kings of the Parthian Empire from 57 BC to 37 BC. He was a son of Phraates III, whom he murdered in 57 BC, assisted by his elder brother Mithridates IV. The two br ...

() were found. In June 2010, a museum dedicated to the study and preservation of artefacts unearthed from Tigranakert was opened in the adjacent

. Some of the artefacts from Tigranakert were removed from the area by Armenian workers before the handover of the Aghdam District to Azerbaijan.

Gallery

File:Տիգրանակերտ7.JPG File:Տիգրանակերտ6.JPG File:Tigranakert.jpg, Part of the city defense wall File:Tigranakert2.jpg, So-called Lower Borough of the city of Tigranakert File:Tigranakert3.jpg, Part of the Lower Borough File:Stones of Tigranakert ancient Armenian city walls - panoramio (1).jpg, Tigranakert city walls File:Stones of Tigranakert ancient Armenian city walls - panoramio (2).jpg, Tigranakert city walls File:Tigranakert citadel11035.JPG, Tigranakert citadel File:Tigranaket Artsakh 02.jpg, File:Tigranaket Artsakh 04.jpg File:Տիգրանակերտի հնավայրի նկարներ 08.jpg File:Տիգրանակերտ, վաղ միջնադարյան եկեղեցի.JPG

References

Sources

* *

External links

* Tigranakert of Artsakh

* {{cite video , people = Zareh Tjeknavorian (Director) , date = 2007 , title = Tigranakert: An Armenian Odyssey , url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PENAfitgLsg , publisher = Yergir Union and Naregatsi Film Center
Tigranakert of Artsakh
on

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