St Thomas (Surb Tovma) Monastery, Agulis
Surb Tovma Vank; Aylis (az: Əylis)
St Thomas Monastery at Agulis was one of the major Armenian religious monuments of southern Nakhichevan. The site carries two linked histories: the 1919 destruction of the Armenian community of Agulis and the later physical erasure of Armenian monuments in the Nakhichevan ASSR and post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Akram Aylisli's "Stone Dreams", centred on Agulis memory, triggered official outrage in Azerbaijan in 2012, showing that the town remains politically charged far beyond architecture. The monastery's disappearance is therefore not simply a local preservation failure. It is part of a struggle over whether Armenian presence in Nakhichevan can remain legible in public space. Specialist inventories and CHW monitoring support the Armenian-erasure account; Azerbaijani state narratives contest it.
St Thomas Monastery at Agulis was one of the major Armenian religious monuments of southern Nakhichevan. The site carries two linked histories: the 1919 destruction of the Armenian community of Agulis and the later physical erasure of Armenian monuments in the Nakhichevan ASSR and post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Akram Aylisli's "Stone Dreams", centred on Agulis memory, triggered official outrage in Azerbaijan in 2012, showing that the town remains politically charged far beyond architecture. The monastery's disappearance is therefore not simply a local preservation failure. It is part of a struggle over whether Armenian presence in Nakhichevan can remain legible in public space. Specialist inventories and CHW monitoring support the Armenian-erasure account; Azerbaijani state narratives contest it.
Related policies
- Soviet demographic engineering of Nakhichevan
- Reclassification and destruction of Armenian heritage as "Caucasian Albanian"