![]() ![]() ![]() Conversely, the Armenian historian Leo (1860–1932) considered it more likely that the village Shosh received its name from the fortress, which he considered the older settlement. Īccording to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, published in the final decades of the Russian Empire, the town's name comes from the nearby village Shushikent (called Shosh in Armenian), which literally means "Shusha village" in the Azerbaijani language. Panahabad ("City of Panah"), Shusha's previous name, was a tribute to Panah Ali Khan, the first ruler of the Karabakh Khanate. Sit ye not then in thy fortress of glass. According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names, when Iranian ruler Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar approached the town with his army, he reportedly told the ruler of Karabakh Ibrahim Khalil Khan: Several historians believe Shusha derives from the New Persian Shīsha ("glass, vessel, bottle, flask"). The Azerbaijani government opened the city to tourists from Azerbaijan in 2022 and plans to start resettling the city in 2023. The Armenian population of the city fled, and multiple reports emerged that the Armenian cultural heritage of the city was being destroyed. On 8 November 2020, Azerbaijani forces retook the city during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War following a three-day long battle. Between May 1992 and November 2020, Shusha was under the de facto control of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh and administered as the centre of its Shushi Province. After the capture of Shusha in 1992 by Armenian forces during First Nagorno-Karabakh War, the city's Azerbaijani population fled, and most of the city was destroyed. The city has suffered significant destruction and depopulation during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Armenian inhabitants of the city steadily grew over time to constitute a majority of the city's population until the Shusha massacre in 1920, in which the Armenian half of the city was destroyed by Azerbaijani forces, resulting in the death or expulsion of the Armenian population, up to 20,000 people. The first available demographic information about the city in 1823 suggests the city had an Azerbaijani majority. Throughout modern history, the city fostered a mixed Armenian–Azerbaijani population. Shusha also contains a number of Armenian Apostolic churches, including Ghazanchetsots Cathedral and Kanach Zham, and serves as a land link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, via the Lachin corridor to the west. Shusha is often considered the cradle of Azerbaijan's music and poetry, and one of the leading centres of the Azerbaijani culture. The town has religious, cultural and strategic importance to both groups. Over the course of the 19th century, the town grew in size to become a city, and was home to many Armenian and Azerbaijani intellectuals, poets, writers and musicians (including Azerbaijani ashiks, mugham singers and kobuz players). The town became one of the cultural centers of the South Caucasus after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus region from Qajar Iran in the first half of the 19th century. From the mid-18th century to 1822, Shusha was the capital of the Karabakh Khanate. Conversely, some sources describe Shusha as an important center within the self-governing Armenian melikdoms of Karabakh in the 1720s, and others say the plateau was already the site of an Armenian fortification. In these accounts, the name of the town originated from a nearby Armenian village called Shosh or Shushikent (see § Etymology for alternative explanations). Some attribute this to an alliance between Panah Ali Khan and Melik Shahnazar, the local Armenian prince ( melik) of Varanda. Most sources date Shusha's establishment to the 1750s by Panah Ali Khan, founder of the Karabakh Khanate, coinciding with the foundation of the fortress of Shusha. Situated at an altitude of 1,400–1,800 metres (4,600–5,900 ft) in the Karabakh mountains, the city was a mountain resort in the Soviet era. Shusha ( Azerbaijani: Şuşa, (listen)) or Shushi ( Armenian: Շուշի) is a city in Azerbaijan, in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. ![]()
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