Page 16 - Azərbaycan xalçaları

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porters. This bloody tragedy in Nakhchivani history and the genocides
committed by the Armenians against the Azerbaijanis are represented
with precise facts in the book “Bloody Years” by the great Azerbaijani
writer M.S. Ordubadi, born in Nakhchivan30.
After occupying Nakhchivan, Russia put an end to the inherited
power of the Kangarli and their proprietary rights over their wide plots
of land in Nakhchivan. Despite this, the Kangarli continued playing
an important role in the life of Nakhchivan, as well as in the struc-
ture of the Russian Empire’s armed forces. The Kangarli (Nakhchivan)
Squad Detachment (1829) and the Nakhchivan Bey Public Order Squad
(1853) operated as part of the Russian armed forces. There were pow-
erful Nakhchivani officers in the corps of the Russian army as well.
Distinguished historical personalities from Kangarli stock were very
famous as the Nakhchivansky during that period and even during the
early years of Soviet power. The last khans of Nakhchivan, Ehsan
Khan’s sons Ismayil Khan (1819-1909), Kalb Ali Khan (1824-1883)
Nakhchivansky, Kalb Ali khan’s son Hussein khan Nakhchivansky
(1863-1919),31 and Jafargulu khan’s son Jamshid khan Nakhichevanski
(1895—1938) 32 gained great fame in the Russian and Soviet armies for
their courage and military organizational talents.
As previously, in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the
twentieth century, Nakhchivan also played an important role in the
development and further enrichment of Azerbaijani culture. The ear-
lier traditions of enlightenment continued in Nakhchivan; new method
schools, “Akhtar” and “Terbiye,” opened in Ordubad and Nakhchivan
in 1882 and 1894, respectively.
M.T. Sidgi, who played a special role in the opening of these schools,
also established the first secular girls’ school in Nakhchivan in 1896.
Mahammad Aga Shahtakhtli (1846-1931), Mahammad Taghi Sidgi
(1854-1903), Jalil Mammadguluzadeh (1869-1932), Mammed Said
Ordubadi (1872-1950), Aligulu Gamkusar (1880-1919), Huseyn Javid
(1880- 1941), Bahruz Kangarli (1892-1922), Aziz Sharif (1895-1998),
Kazim Ziya (1896-1956), Yusif Mammadaliyev (1905-1961), Islam
Safarli (1923-1974), Hussein Razi (1924-1998), Mammad Araz (1933-
2004), Hussein Ibrahimov (1919), and other figures of science and cul-
ture, who were born in Nakhchivan have had an exceptional influence
on the development of science, literature, and art in Azerbaijan.
In the nineteenth century, literary assemblies like the “Goncheyi-
Ulfet” and “Anjumani-shuara” (Ordubad, 1838) functioned in Nakh-
chivan and the Assembly (Majlis) of Intelligentsia and Muslim Shiite
Dramatic Art Society were organized in the early 1880s. The Nakh-
chivan Theatre was founded in 1883. B. Kangarli (1892-1922) was a
pioneer in the development of realistic machine dyeing, as well as the
genres of portrait and landscape in Azerbaijani art.
During the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, many fields of folk art, including carpet weaving, jewellery, and
textile weaving were highly developed.
In the years of the First World War (1914-1918), the land of Nakh-
chivan, as well as the entire territory of Azerbaijan, faced their hardest
period of history. Like the other areas of Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan was
also within the sphere of interest of the major powers because of its
military-strategic position. At the same time, the Armenian chauvinists
had a dream of creating a “Greater Armenia” and were trying to seize
eastern Anatolia and all of northern Azerbaijan, including Nakhchivan.
Despite that, on May 28, 1918, the Azerbaijani people restored the
independence of their state and created the Azerbaijan People’s Repub-
lic; but the Armenians did not back down from their expansionist plans.
The establishment of the Dashnak-Bolshevik government in Baku Street in Ordubad.
Gulustan tomb. 13th century. Julfa.