John Melish

Transcription

[...] "Tarikh-e Qarabagh" written by Mirza Jamal Javanshir, the official scribe and secretary of the last khan of Karabakh; "Qarabagh-name" by Mirza Adigezal bey printed in Baku in 1950; "Golestan-i Iram" by Bakikhanov printed in Baku in 1970; and "Tarikh-e Safi" by by Mirza Yusef Not only were the Armenian meliks mentioned in these works, but the large presence of Armenians in the five mahals and in Zangezur were noted as well in these books. However, it changed after this. In 1988 following the demands of the Karabakh Armenians to secede from Azerbaijan and to join Armenia, suddenly a number of Azeri academics, led by Mr. Bünyadov, in order to justify their government's claims regarding Karabakh, rushed to prove that the Armenian population of Karabakh had arrived there only after 1828, after the treaty of Turkmenchai, and thus had no historical claim to the region of Karabakh. Lacking many sources written in Azeri, because as I said the Azeri alphabet was created only in the 20th century, they had to rely on Persian, Arabic or Russian sources. To their horror, they found that not only had ancient and medieval Greek, Roman, Arab, Persian sources, I have them here if you're interested, Ptolemy, Strabo, Dio Casius, Estakhri, Mostofi, ..., Muqaddasi, ... I can go on and on. All of these, not only, as well as modern Russian, German and English historians, geographer and travellers placed Karabakh in historic Armenia, but that the Armenians had formed a large part of the population of Karabakh, centuries prior to 1828, Even more irritating was the fact that local muslim historians, the ones that I just mentioned before, living on the territory of what later became the Azerbaijan Republic, had clearly indicated a strong Armenian presence in Karabakh prior to 1828, or had place the region within the territory of historic Armenia. Therefore, in order to substantiate their political claim, Bünyadov and his fellow academics chose to set aside all scholarly objectivity and printed new versions of "Tarikh-e Qarabagh" of Mirza Jamal, "Taikh-e Safi," etcetera, etcetera, deleting all references to the Armenians. It's very simple, these are primary sources and these are academic and historic. I understand if politicians or journalists do something like that, that's common, but generally we do not see serious historians to do this. So I'll give you just a few examples. in the 1989 edition of "Tarikh-e Qarabagh," the lines "Va ahl an shahr dar qadim Armani budeand" which means the population of that city in ancient times were Armenians. Completely deleted. Now, the original Persian and Russian edition of Bakikhanov, now that's important, Reads, the borders of Shirvan province are: in the East, the Caspian sea; in the North-West, the Kur river which separates Shirvan from Armenia and the Mugan steppe. Bakikhanov, who the Azeris call the father of their history, the Institute of History is named after him, squarely places the lands south of the Kur, that is Karabakh, within Armenia! But of course the new edition, 1991, the word "Armenia" is removed. Instead it says, "separates Shirvan and the Mugan steppe." Armenia doesn't exist. In the new edition of Hasan-Jalalyan, all references to Armenia is absent, the word "Armenian" is replaced by "Albanian." All references to the Armenians in the 15th century German traveller's account, four chapters are completely removed...