Reclassification and destruction of Armenian heritage as "Caucasian Albanian" §

Origin

"Albanianisation" (Armenian: aghvanikatsum) refers to a state-supported scholarly and physical project, traceable in its modern form to the Soviet 1950s but accelerated since 1998, by which medieval Armenian churches, khachkars, monasteries and inscriptions in territories under Azerbaijani control are reattributed to the Caucasian Albanians, a Christian population of the eastern South Caucasus that ceased to exist as a distinct group sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries.

The intellectual frame was developed by Soviet Azerbaijani scholar Ziya Bunyadov (1923–97) and his school, who argued that the Armenian-inscribed churches of Karabakh, Nakhichevan and the eastern Armenian highlands were originally Albanian, and that medieval Armenian inscriptions were either later interpolations or evidence of an "Armenianisation" of an Albanian population by the Armenian Apostolic Church.

The political project mobilised this framework after Azerbaijani independence, formally institutionalised by Heydar Aliyev's 1998 decree creating the "Albanian-Udi Christian community" and granting it the Kish church in Sheki and other historically Armenian buildings.

Mechanism

The reattribution operates on three fronts:

1. Scholarly framing. State-funded Azerbaijani publications classify Armenian-inscribed churches as "Albanian"; Armenian inscriptions are removed, painted over, or attributed to "monks of Albanian origin." Examples include Dadivank (13th c., Khachen) post-2020, Gandzasar (1216–1238).
2. Physical alteration. Armenian khachkars, gravestones and inscribed lintels are removed or destroyed. The Julfa cemetery in Nakhichevan (1998–2005) is the most documented case: ~10,000–12,000 medieval khachkars demolished by Azerbaijani military engineers and the site levelled to a firing range. Documented by AAAS satellite imagery (2010) and the Maghakyan-Pickman Hyperallergic investigation (2019).
3. Site closure. Heritage sites in territory under Azerbaijani control are closed to Armenian-state and Armenian-Apostolic-Church visits, and academic visits require Azerbaijani-state mediation.

Post-2020 patterns documented by Caucasus Heritage Watch (Cornell-Purdue satellite imagery, 2023):

• Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shusha: struck by Azerbaijani munitions during the 2020 war (8 October 2020), then "renovated" 2021–22 with the dome cap and inscription removed.
• Kanach Zham church in Shusha (1818): largely demolished by 2022.
• Zoravor Surb Astvatsatsin in Mehakavan (Jabrayil district, 19th c.): destroyed.
• Tigranakert of Artsakh (2nd c. BCE): excavations halted, museum dismantled.

Effects

Caucasus Heritage Watch's 2023 findings, derived from systematic comparison of pre- and post-2020 satellite imagery for ~ 100 sites in former NKR territory, identified destruction or substantial alteration at ~ 40% of the sites monitored, a comparable scale, on a smaller geographical area, to the Nakhichevan campaigns of 1998–2005 (sourced opinion: caucasus heritage watch 2023).

The cumulative loss across the Nakhichevan and Karabakh campaigns is on the order of several thousand Armenian heritage sites, churches, monasteries, khachkar fields, cemeteries, secular medieval architecture, destroyed or permanently altered between 1923 and 2025. Comparable in scale to the destruction wrought by the 1915 Tehcir Law in eastern Anatolia, though over a longer period and with less loss of life editorial.

Reception and politics

The European Parliament resolution of 5 October 2023 explicitly condemns the destruction of Armenian heritage in Nakhichevan and Karabakh and calls on Azerbaijan to grant UNESCO access. The ICJ's November 2023 provisional-measures order in Armenia v. Azerbaijan requires Azerbaijan to protect Armenian cultural and religious sites in territory it controls. UNESCO requested mission access in 2020 and again in 2022; access has not been granted as of 2026.

The Azerbaijani-state position holds that no destruction has occurred, that Armenian sites are being "restored" to their original Albanian state, and that the attribution of medieval Armenian heritage to Armenians is itself a 19th-century Russian-Armenian-imperial construction. This position is rejected by mainstream archaeology and art-history (sourced opinion: Cuneo; Karapetian; AAAS).

The defensible characterisation: Albanianisation is a state programme of cultural erasure, distinct from but contiguous with the demographic engineering of Nakhichevan (1923–89) and NKAO (1923–88). The destruction of Julfa is documented, dated, photographed, and satellite-confirmed; the post-2020 campaign in former NKR follows the same playbook with the same actors (sourced opinion: maghakyan pickman 2019 julfa; caucasus heritage watch 2023). It also represents one of the most systematic campaigns of cultural-heritage destruction since the Bamiyan Buddhas editorial.