Shusha
Shusha also known as Shushi is a town in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Shusha was a popular mountainous-climatic recreation resort in the Soviet Union. It was also the only large settlement in the Soviet autonomy of Nagorno-Karabakh (1921-1991) with predominantly non-Armenian population. The city was also a major center of Armenian cultural and economic life through the early years of World War I. After serving as a town and an ancient fortress in the Armenian Principality of Varanda,[1][2] Shusha was turned into the capital of the Karabakh khanate. According to other sources, Shusha was founded in 1750-1752 (according to other sources, 1756-1757) by Panah-Ali khan Javanshir (r. 1748-1763), the founder and the first ruler of the independent. The first capital of the Karabakh khanate was castle of Bayat, built in 1748 in the district of Kebirli. However, soon afterwards Panah Ali khan realized that in order to secure himself and his newly-established khanate from external threats, and especially from the invasions from Iran, he needed to build a new more reliable castle.
[change] References
- ↑ Bournoutian, George A. Armenians and Russia, 1626-1796: A Documentary Record. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001, page 133, (Kekhva Chelebi’s Report to the Collegium of [Russian] Foreign Affairs (17 December 1725)
- ↑ Цагарели А. А. Грамота и гругие исторические документы XVIII столетия, относяшиеся к Грузии, Том 1. СПб 1891, ц. 434-435. This book is available online from Google Books.
