User:Divot/Historiography of Azerbaijan (sources)

Victor Schnirelmann: The Value of the Past: Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia. Senri Ethnological Studies 57

P.160

The republication of classical and medieval sources with omissions, with the replacement of the term "Armenian state" by "Albanian state" and with other distortions of the original manuscripts was another way to play down the Armenian role in early and medieval Transcaucasia. In the 1960s - 1990s, numerous republications of this sort came out in Baku, on the initiative of the Academician Buniiatov (for that, see Sarkisian, Muradian 1988: 47; Muradian 1988; 1990: 100-145; Agaian et al. 1989; Bournoutian 1992, 1992-1993). Recently, while discussing ethnic processes and their role in the history of Azerbaijan, some Azeri authors have completely avoided the issue of the formation of either the Azeri language or the Azeri people, as though they had been present there from time immemorial (for example, see Mamedov 2000: 29).

The Azeri scholars did all of this by order of the Soviet and Party authorities of Azerbaijan, rather than through free will. The Session of the NKAR Regional Branch of the CPA, held in March 1975, played an especially negative role in this development. This session was arranged in response to the growing Armenian nationalist movement, and focused on patriotic education and withstanding nationalism (Musliumov et al. 1983: 67-68)50). Armenian nationalism was the target, and the intervention of the Azerbaijan authorities in both the intellectual and cultural life of the Armenians of Nagorny Karabagh increased drastically after the session in question. Since that time, the indigenous population of the region was called "Azeri" in all reference books, and cultural relationships with the Armenian SSR, including receiving broadcasts over the air, were broken off. Only those views of history became officially acceptable that met the demands of the "Azeri idea". The jubilee volume devoted to the 50th anniversary of the NKAR was withdrawn from circulation and burnt just because it told of the long struggle of the Nagorny Karabagh people for independence and Armenian architectural and archaeological sites were enumerated (for that, see Mirzoian 1989). A statistical volume was published, instead, where it was maintained that the true history of Nagorny Karabagh began only with the establishment of the Soviet power in Azerbaijan (Astsaturian 1974: 3).

PP 196-197

It goes without saying that the given political situation does not satisfy the Azeris, who feel that they were treated unfairly. Being unable to regain their lost lands by force of arms, the Azeri authorities do their best to substantiate the territorial integrity of the republic. Traces of a former Armenian presence in the territory of contemporary Azerbaijan cannot but provoke Azeris' negative feelings. Here historians, archaeologists, ethnologists and linguists are able to help them; and the scholars make great efforts in order, first, to discover the early roots of the Azeris in the territory of Azerbaijan, and second, to cleanse the latter of any Armenian heritage. All this activity is not only appreciated by the local authorities but, as we saw, is approved by the President of Azerbaijan.

The authorities of the Republic of Armenia carry out a more careful policy. They avoid manifesting any territorial claims to the lands of Azerbaijan. They were unwilling to be the first state to recognize the sovereignty of Nagorny Karabagh, in order to avoid accusations of intervention in the internal affairs of Azerbaijan or, even worse, to seem to be making an attempt to annex the lands of the neighboring republic. Moreover, independent Armenia made serious efforts to improve its relationship with Turkey (Croissant 1998: 70-71). Those Armenian historians and writers who wage an ideological struggle for contested territories act on their own behalf and receive no official support from the Armenian authorities. Thus, the Armenian authorities are making every effort to eradicate the anti-Turkic attitude, which still prevails among the general public.

P 213 in russian version (Шнирельман В.А. Войны памяти: мифы, идентичность и политика в Закавказье / Рецензент: Л.Б. Алаев. — М.: Академкнига, 2003)

Между тем, критику со стороны специалистов Ахундов воспринимал как стремление наложить вето на азербайджанские исследования по истории Кавказской Албании и не допустить азербайджанских ученых к изучению местной раннехристианской культуры. В то же время он сам, возможно, по наивности, откровенно демонстрировал цели этих исследований: признавая, что армянские надписи на раннехристианских храмах ему явно мешали, создавая "мнение, будто они (храмы и хачдаши. - В.Ш.) принадлежали к Армянской церкви", он пытался дискредитировать эти надписи и представить их фальшивками. Фактически он делал все, что в его силах, чтобы вытеснить армянское культурно-историческое наследие из пределов Закавказья (Ахундов, Ахундов, 1986. С. 104-105, 111-112) (12). А тем временем в 1980-е гг. азербайджанские власти перестали пускать на территорию Азербайджана армянских исследователей, и попытка последних произвести в 1989 г. археологические раскопки в Нагорном Карабахе и оказать помощь в реставрационных работах была расценена крупным азербайджанским историком как "прямое вмешательство во внутренние дела суверенной республики - Азербайджанской ССР" (Исмашюв, 1989 г. С. 67).

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(12) На самом деле именно в Азербайджане известны попытки фальсификации надписей на хачкарах (Балаян, 1995. С. 267).

Translation:

Yet, Akhundov interpreted critical remarks by specialists as their intention to arrest Azeri studies of Caucasian Albania and block access to the local early Christian culture by Azeri scholars. At the same time, he himself, perhaps, because of naivete, demonstrated the goals of these studies: he recognized that finding Armenian inscriptions on Christian churches hindered his studies because these findings supported the "opinion that they (the churches and "khachdashes". V. Sh.) belonged to the Armenian Church". He did his best to discredit these inscriptions as though they were fakes. In fact, he was one of those people who tried to force the Armenian cultural heritage out of Transcaucasia (Akhundov, Akhundov 1986: 104-105, 111-112) (12). Simultaneously, in the 1980s, the Azeri authorities stopped giving permission to Armenian scholars to carry out studies in the territory of Azerbaijan. An attempt by the latter to arrange archaeological excavations in Nagorny Karabagh and help with the restoration of local monuments in 1989 was qualified by a well-known Azeri scholar as a "direct intervention into the internal matters of a sovereign republic - the Azerbaijan SSR" (Ismailov 1989d: 67).

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(12) In fact just in Azerbaijan it is known attempt to falsify of inscriptions on khachkars (Balayan, 1995. P. 267).

Victor Schnirelmann: Why to attribute the dominant views in Azerbaijan to the “world science”? // REGNUM

Translation

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Кулизаде всеми силами защищает своих коллег, пытаясь уберечь их от какой-либо критики. Допускаю, что она проявляет в этом некоторую неосведомленность. Поэтому довожу до ее сведения, что З. М. Буниянов и его последователи при переиздании трудов средневековых авторов (которые она мне так настойчиво рекомендует!) систематически занимались их фальсификацией, опуская встречавшийся там термин "армяне", или заменяя его на "албаны". Мало того, Буниятов был пойман и на плагиате, выдав переводы двух статей, написанных западными учеными С.Ф. Дж. Доусеттом и Робертом Хьюсеном, за свои собственные произведения.
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Впрочем, опус З. Кулизаде все же много пристойнее пасквиля А. Алекперова, попытавшегося всеми силами дегуманизировать и выставить в неприглядном свете своих соседей-армян путем распространения самых грязных сплетен, чудовищных слухов и откровенно сфальсифицированных данных. Правда, в отличие от нее он удосужился познакомиться и с моим анализом армянских этногенетических мифов, однако лишь для того, чтобы упрекнуть армян в "мошенничестве". Но мошенничества в трудах своих соотечественников он не видит, и общей этноцентристской направленности этногенетических построений в работах самых разных национальных школ историков Кавказа, чему, собственно, и были посвящены две моих книги, он признавать не хочет.
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Тем временем, власти Азербайджана откровенно демонстрируют то, что тщетно пыталась опровергнуть Кулизаде. Так, 14 декабря 2005 года президент Ильхам Алиев в речи по случаю 60-летия Национальной Академии наук Азербайджана призвал азербайджанских ученых включиться в программу обоснования перед мировым сообществом отсутствия исторических прав карабахских армян на Нагорный Карабах. Алиев обещал субсидировать объединение усилий азербайджанских специалистов в разработке и пропаганде его тезиса о том, что "армяне пришли в Нагорный Карабах - неотъемлемую часть Азербайджана, как гости" и поэтому "абсолютно не вправе утверждать, что Нагорный Карабах в прошлом принадлежал им".

Очевидно, ученые с воодушевлением откликнулись на этот призыв и ответили президенту новыми впечатляющими "открытиями". Поэтому 14 октября 2010 г. он уже уверенно заявил, что "нынешняя Армения, территория, именуемая на карте Республикой Армения, - это исконно азербайджанская земля. Это истина. Конечно, Зангезур, Иреванское ханство - это наши земли!... Наши дети должны знать все это, должны знать, что нынешняя Армения располагается на исконных азербайджанских землях".

Для того, чтобы эта исконность выглядела убедительнее, в Азербайджане систематически стираются все следы армянской культуры. В особенности, это касается Нахичевани. В 2003-2006 гг. там полностью было уничтожено средневековое кладбище в Старой Джуге (азер. Джульфа), включая уникальные хачкары. А на севере Азербайджана сносили аварские кладбища, а на лезгинских изменяли имена усопших на надгробных памятниках, прибавляя к ним тюркские окончания. Там также убирали памятники видным деятелям аварской истории (включая имама Шамиля в 2000 г.) и заменяли их памятниками Н. Нариманову и Гейдару Алиеву.
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Translation:

Kulizade does her best to defend her colleagues trying to shield them from any kind of critic. I assume she might be somewhat ignorant in this regard. For that reason I bring it to her attention that Z. M. Bunyadov and his followers, while editing the works of medieval authors (which she so persistently recommends to me!) were systematically engaged in falsifying them, omitting the term “Armenians” from those sources or replacing it with the term “Albanians”. Moreover, Bunyadov was caught in plagiarism when he presented the translation of two articles written by Western scientists S. F. Dousette and Robert Hewsen as his own works.
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Actually the opus by Z. Kulizade is much more decent than the lampoon by A. Alekperov who did all he could to dehumanize and to present his neighbors-Armenians in a negative light by means of spreading the dirtiest gossips, monstrous rumors and clearly falsified data. It is true though that unlike Kulizade, he bothered to familiarize himself with my analysis of Armenian ethno-genetic myths, however he did that only for the sake of blaming the Armenians in “fraud”. While he sees no fraud in the works of his compatriots; neither does he want to recognize the common ethno-centric direction of ethno-genetic constructions in the works of most diverse national schools of historians of the Caucasus to which I devoted two of my books.
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At the same time the authorities of Azerbaijan explicitly demonstrate exactly that which Kulizade tried so hard to disprove. Thus, on 14 Dec. 2005 in his speech delivered on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev called for the Azerbaijani scientists to get involved in the program which aimed to prove to the international community the lack of historical rights of the Karabakh Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh. Aliyev promised to subsidize the united efforts of Azerbaijani specialists in developing and promoting his thesis that “the Armenians came to Nagorno-Karabakh, an integral part of Azerbaijan, as guests” and thus “they have absolutely no right to claim that Nagorno-Karabakh belonged to them in the past”.

The scientists apparently were enthusiastic about this appeal and answered the President with new impressive “findings”. For that reason on 14 Oct. 2010 he already confidently declared that “present-day Armenia, the territory named on the map as the Republic of Armenia, is a native Azerbaijani land. This is the truth. Of course Zangezur and Yerevan khanate are our lands… Our children must know all this; they must know that today’s Armenia is located on native Azerbaijani lands”.

For making this indigenousness look more convincing all the traces of Armenian culture are being systematically erased from Azerbaijan. This refers especially to Nakhichevan. From 2003 to 2006 the medieval cemetery of Old Jugha (Azeri Julfa) including unique khachkars was completely destroyed there. On the North of Azerbaijan they have destroyed the Avarian cemeteries; as for the Lezgian cemeteries, they have changed the names of the deceased on the tombstones adding to them Turkic suffixes. They have also removed the monuments to prominent Avarian historical figures (among them that to Imam Shamil in 2000) and replaced them with monuments to N. Narimanov and to Heydar Aliyev.

Willem M. Floor, Hasan Javadi. "Abbas-Kuli-aga Bakikhanov. The Heavenly Rose-Garden: A History of Shirvan & Daghestan". — Mage Publishers, 2008

P. xvi

This certainly is the case with Zia Bunyatov, who has made an incomplete and defective Russian translation of Bakikhanov's text. Not only has he not translated any of the poems in the text, but he does not even mention that he has not done so, while he does not translate certain other prose parts of the text without indicating this and why. This is in particular disturbing because he suppresses, for example, the mention of territory inhabited by Armenians, thus not only falsifying history, but also not respecting Bakikhanov's dictum that a historian should write without prejudice, whether religious, ethnic, political or otherwise.

Philip L. Kohl, Clare P. Fawcett. Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology. Cambridge University Press, 1995

P.154

A more critical evaluation of this misplaced pride in cultural origins, however, is warranted, as subsequent developments leading up to the outbreak of hostilities illustrate. Thus, for example, at an all-Soviet Union archaeological congress which was held in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1985, a young Azeri archaeologist (Akhundov 1985:77-8) read a paper that attempted to show that the carved stone crosses found in Azerbaijan were Albanian; that is, the products of the pre-Islamic Christian state of eastern Transcaucasia. He purported to distinguish these stone crosses from the Armenian khach'k'ar, the latter being one of the most potent symbols of the Armenian people with literally thousands of uniquely carved examples found throughout today's Republic of Armenia. Since the Republic of Armenia only occupies a fraction8 of historic Armenia, it is reasonable to assume that such Armenian khach'k'ar exist or once existed throughout areas where Armenians once constituted a major, if not the dominant, population. The young Azeri's seemingly innocuous, abstract archaeological paper was a deliberate political provocation: all the crosses on today's territory of Azerbaijan, including significantly Nagorno-Karabagh and Nakhichevan, were defined as Albanian, a people who in turn were seen as the direct ancestors of today's Azeris.

The rest, as they say, is history. The Armenian archaeologists were upset and threatened to walk out en bloc. Protests were filed, and even Russian scholars from Leningrad objected to this blatantly political appropriation, posing as scholarship. No participant in this debate would have predicted that within two years the contest over ancestral claims to Nagorno-Karabagh would flare up into one of the bloodiest and most significant ethnic conflicts raging within the former Soviet Union. Yet it cannot be forgotten that agitation over the status of Nagorno-Karabagh in Armenia was initiated by intellectuals, including archaeologists, familiar with and incensed by this specific insult to their cultural heritage.

Thus, minimally, two points must be made. Patently false cultural origin myths are not always harmless. The political context within which such myths are articulated is critical, and this context continually changes: given the events of the last nine years, assertion that today's Azerbaijan was the original homeland of Turkic-speaking peoples is charged with political significance. Secondly, it is incumbent upon the external observer or, in this case, foreign archaeologist, to understand this constantly unfolding political context. For one unaware of the conflicting land claims and of the historical tension, even antagonism, between Armenians and Azeris, one would have listened to the 1985 presentation on the stone crosses quite innocently as a legitimate attempt to distinguish Albanian from Armenian material culture. Even the most fanatical Armenian nationalist could not pretend that wherever stone crosses appear, they necessarily were carved by Armenians, a claim that would be tantamount to identifying greater historic Armenia with all of Christendom. Objectively speaking, it should be possible to examine critically the specific attributes of these crosses to define regional variants and even, with certain supportive evidence (especially inscriptions), to distinguish Georgian from Albanian from Armenian khach'k'ar. In reality, however, such a legitimate, scholarly archaeological/art historical analysis minimally requires a political environment far less impassioned than what existed in 1985, much less today.

Robert Hewsen. Armenia: A Historical Atlas. — University of Chicago Press, 2001

P. 291

Scholars should be on guard when using Soviet and post-Soviet Azeri editions of Azeri, Persian, and even Russian and Western European sources printed in Baku. These have been edited to remove references to Armenians and have been distributed in large numbers in recent years. When utilizing such sources, the researchers should seek out pre-Soviet editions wherever possible.

George A. Bournoutian. A brief history of the Aghuankʻ region. Mazda Publishers, 2009

P. 8-14

In 1988, following the demands of the Karabagh Armenians to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, a number of Azeri academics, led by Zia Bunyatov, in order to justify their government's claims regarding the Armenian populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh, rushed to prove that the Armenian population of Karabagh had only arrived there after 1828 and thus had no historical claims to the region. Lacking any sources written in Azeri—since the Azeri alphabet was created in the twentieth century,6 and refusing, for obvious reasons, to cite Armenian sources, they had to rely on sources written in Persian, Arabic, and Russian, among others.

To their dismay, they found that not only had ancient and medieval Greek, Roman, Arab, Persian, as well as early modern Russian, German and English historians, geographers and travelers placed Karabagh in historic Armenia, but also that the Armenians had formed a large part of the population of Karabagh centuries prior to 1828.

Even more irritating was the fact that Muslim historians, who had lived in the territory of what later became the Azerbaijan Republic, men like Abbas Qoli Aqa Bakikhanov Mirza Jamal Javanshir and Mirza Adigozal Beg, the first of whom was honored by the Academy of Sciences in Baku as the father of the history of Azerbaijan, had clearly indicated a strong Armenian presence in Karabagh prior to 1828 and had placed the region within the territory of historic Armenia.

Therefore, in order to substantiate their political claims, Bunyatov and his fellow academics chose to set aside all scholarly integrity and print large numbers of re-edited versions of these not easily accessible primary sources on Karabagh, while deleting or altering references to the Armenians. The first act of this historical disinformation began with Bunyatov's edition of Esayi's Brief History. In the summer of 1988, immediately following the demonstrations of the Karabagh Armenians, the History Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan prepared the printing of a hitherto unpublished Russian translation,1 as well as an Azeri version."

The following is from Bunyatov's introduction:

"In 1978, in the village of Maragha, or Maraghashen (present-day Leninavan) in the Mardakert district of NKAO,3 an obelisk was erected in honor of the 150th anniversary of the immigration of the first 200 Armenian families from the town of Maragha (Southern Azerbaijan)4 into the territory of Karabagh. The immigration began immediately following the conclusion of the Turkmenchay Treaty between Russia and Iran in 1828."

"No one could imagine what unpredictable events the immigration of a small number of Armenians onto the territory of Karabagh would unleash in the future. However, even then, V. Velichko, A. Griboedov, A. Suvorov, N. Shavrov, A. Chavcha-vadze and many others warned the Russian government about the danger that this thoughtless decision would bring to the indigenous Azerbaijani inhabitants."

"The immigrants, subsidized by the Armenian kat'oghikosate,3 immediately began to purchase lands from the local Azerbaijani [sic] rulers and very soon a huge mass of Armenians, thousands of families, immigrated to Karabagh."

To legitimize this edition as unbiased, Bunyatov stated that Tigran Ter-Grigorian, an Armenian scholar working at the History Institute of Baku, had prepared the Russian translation (from which the Azeri version was translated). Ter-Grigorjan's translation, from the original Armenian, was supposedly completed in 1940, but for some inexplicable reason it was not published and had remained in the archives of the Institute. Now, half a century later, Bunyatov decided to publish the work. In comparing the original Armenian with Bunyatov's edition (see the original Armenian text and the English translation included in this volume), it becomes evident that either Ter-Grigorian mysteriously anticipated the current arguments over Karabagh and sought to substantiate Azeri claims fifty years before they were made, or, as is more likely, Bunyatov, whose alteration of texts has been previously documented, edited parts of Ter-Grigorian's translation. Since Ter-Grigorian is no longer alive to verify what was supposedly his introduction and translation, we must assume that the late Professor Bunyatov, once again, deliberately altered a primary source to suit the aims of the state. Such acts were common during the regime of Stalin, but are reprehensible, as well as incomprehensible, in modern times.

Bunyatov continued his misinformation by referring to the author as Hasan-Jalalean, rather than his Armenian surname (as it appears in the original) Hasan Jalaleants'. He also referred to him as an Albanian, whose ancestors were the famed Albanian Mihranid (Mukhranid) princes. Furthermore, his title "A Short History of the Country of Caucasian Albania," and his substitution of the term "Albanian" for "Armenian" in key sentences (see Armenian and English texts), as well as the deletion of Esayi's introduction, with its overtly Christian sentiments, make it appear that the population referred to in the text was not Armenian or even Christian, but scions of Caucasian Albanians and that Hasan Jalaleants"s history is about Caucasian Albania and not the Armenian populated districts of Karabagh-Ganje.

His introduction also not only asserts that the Kat'oghikosate of Aghuank' was totally independent from Ejmiatsin, but was also non-Armenian in character. He also accuses the Armenian Kat'oghikosate [at Ejmiatsin] of "dismantling the Albanian See by bribing the Holy Synod of Russia in 1837, taking over all the income of those dioceses, and forcing the Gregorian Armenian faith upon the ancestors of the Albanians, part of whom had accepted Islam." This fact, he claims, is evident in the double Azeri-Armenian names such as Melik-Abas, Melik-Shahnazar, Melik-Egan, Melik-Aghajan, Melik-Aghalar, Melik-Aslan, Melik-Pasha and so forth. Furthermore, in order to create the office of the Kat'oghikos of All Armenians, "Ejmiatsin had to terminate the Kat'oghikosates of Aght'amar, Sis, and Gandzasar." He goes on to lament the fate of "Armenian Catholics, Armenian Jews, and Armenian Gypsies, who were left out of the fold."

George A. Bournoutian. The 1823 Russian Survey of the Karabagh Province. Mazda Publishers, 2011

As noted, Azeri scholars, until some two decades ago, did not deny the historic Armenian presence in Mountainous Karabagh. After 1988, however, Azeri academics, led by the late Ziya Buniatov, became determined to deny any Armenian claim to the region.

Lacking any sources written in Azeri, since, as noted, the Azeri alphabet was created only in the twentieth century, they had to rely on sources in Persian, Arabic, or Russian. To their dismay, they found that ancient and medieval, Greek, Roman, Arab, Persian, as well as early modern Russian, German and English historians, geographers and travelers, placed Karabagh in historic Armenia.

Even more exasperating to the Azeris was the fact that contemporary Muslim historians, such as Mirza Jamal, Mirza Adigozal Beg and Ahmad Beg, who had lived on the territory of what later became the Azerbaijan Republic, had clearly indicated a strong Armenian presence in Karabagh prior to 1828. In addition, Bakikhanov, who was labeled as the father of the history of Azerbaijan, had placed Karabagh squarely within the territory of historic Armenia.

Therefore, in order to substantiate their political claim, Buniatov and his fellow academics chose to set aside all scholarly objectivity and produce re-edited versions of the above primary sources on Karabagh, while deleting most references to the Armenians. They hoped that the new editions would replace the rare original versions and, in time, would not only convince their own people, but would give credence to those Western scholars and politicians who favored the Azeri view.

The second problem facing Buniatov and his followers was the presence of an Armenian majority in Mountainous Karabagh in the twentieth century. To resolve this dilemma, Buniatov asserted that the Armenian population of Karabagh had only arrived there after 1828 and thus had no historical claims to the region. In his introduction to his altered edition of Esayi Hasan Jalalian’s history, Buniatov wrote:

In 1978, in the village of Maragha, or Maraghashen (present-day Leninavan), in the Mardakert district of the Autonomous Oblast’ of Nagorno-Karabagh, an obelisk was erected in honor of the 150th anniversary of the immigration of the first 200 Armenian families from the town of Maragha in Southern Azerbaijan (sic) to the territory of Karabagh. The immigration began immediately following the conclusion of the Turkmenchay Treaty between Russia and Iran in 1828.

No one could imagine what unpredictable events the immigration of a small number of Armenians on to the territory of Karabagh would unleash in the future…The immigrants, subsidized by the Armenian katoghikosate, immediately began to purchase lands from the local Azerbaijani [sic] rulers and very soon a large mass of Armenians, thousands of families, immigrated to Karabagh.

The above became and remains to this day the official Azeri explanation for the large presence of Armenians in Mountainous Karabagh. This notion has not only been blindly repeated by present-day Azeri historians, but has also been accepted as a fact by pro-Azeri Western historians.

Professor Audrey Altstadt and some Azeri sources have purposely misused my work on the Khanate of Erevan and have claimed that according to Bournoutian, Armenian immigration from Iran affected mainly the Shemakhi, Ganjeh and Karabagh regions and areas west, including Erevan. As proof, they cite parts of my chapter in Ronald Suny’s edited volume on Transcaucasia. Nowhere in that article, nor in my two books on the Khanate of Erevan, have I ever discussed population figures for Shemakhi, Ganjeh, or Karabagh. By switching the information on Erevan to Karabagh, Altstadt mimics the Azeri claims and cites my work to validate a falsehood. Thus, those who are not familiar with my work, or are too lazy to check the original source, perpetuate the error and claim that Bournoutian, who is “an Armenian authority on the region,” proves that the Armenians arrived in Karabagh after the 1828 Turkmenchay treaty. See A. Altstadt, The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity under Russian Rule (Stanford, 1992.), pp. 28, 196; and her Ethnic Conflict in the Post-Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis (New York, 1997), p. 229; S. Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations: The Caucasus and Post-Soviet Disorder (London, 1994), p. 158.

George A. Bournoutian. Rewriting History: Recent Azeri Alterations of Primary Sources Dealing with Karabakh

There are still a number of Persian manuscripts on Karabakh in the archives of Azerbaijan which have yet to be examined critically.24 Some of this primary material has already appeared in edited Azeri transla- tions25 and others will undoubtedly follow. Unfortunately, unless they include a certified facsimile of the original manuscript, the tententious scholarship demonstrated above will render all these translations highly suspect and unusable by scholars.

Such blatant tampering with primary source material strikes at the very heart of scholarly integrity. The international academic community must not allow such breaches of intellectual honesty to go unnoticed and uncensured.

(full article)

Antoon de Baets

Antoon de Baets «Defamation Cases against Historians» (History and Theory, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Oct., 2002), pp. 346—366).

"The second improper use of defamation laws implies that politicians and civil servants should tolerate more criticism of their activities tha other individuals and, therefore, use defamation laws sparingly or not at all. In practice, the reverse is the case. In Thailand, for example, several historians were charged with lese- majeste because their work criticized the monarchy. Many incumbent heads of state have eagerly used the defamation instrument to repress unwelcome historical statements11

11. For the Thai monarch, see the cases of Saman Kongsuphol, Sulak Sivaraksa, Thongchai Winichakul, in De Baets, Censorship of Historical Thought, 459—460; see also R. J. Goldstein and S. Bumroongsook, "Lese-majeste: Europe, Thailand, « in Jones, ed., Censorship, 1397—1402. For other examples (Heidar Aliyev in Azerbaijan, Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus, Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, Suharto in Indonesia, Nursultan Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, Hastings Banda in Malawi), see De Baets, Censorship of Historical Thought, 57-58, 63,140,286, 321,339-341.»

Antoon de Baets. Censorship of historical thought: a world guide, 1945—2000. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.

«In December 1994 historian Movsum Aliyev was arrested for insulting President Heidar Aliyev in a September 1993 article he wrote for the newspaper Azadliq, entitled „The Answer to the Falsifiers of History“. He was held in an overcrowded prison in Baku for several months before his release in February 1995. In 19 % or 1997, the Ganja local government confiscated all 2,400 copies of a book about the nineteenth-century Russian occupation of Ganja.»

Counteraccusations made by Azerbaijani historians on the misrepresentation of the history of Transcaucasia

In their turn, the Azerbaijani politicians and scientists believe that it is the historians of other countries who invent the facts of history of Transcaucasia. Thus, the Great Russian Encyclopedia was blamed in misrepresentation of facts. The Embassy of Azerbaijan in Russia issued a diplomatic note and demanded to withdraw the given edition of the encyclopedia from circulation. The Russian authorities did not give any response to the note of the Azerbaijani authorities. The Press Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, Khazar Ibrahim declared:

There are fictional data presented there that do not correspond to the history and that insult the Azerbaijani people. First of all, we insist on the withdrawal of the edition for preventing the creation of the negative image of the Azerbaijani public and also in order for the Russian people, who would read this book, to get an idea based on real facts rather than on insinuations found in the given edition.

The Director of the Institute of History of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) Yagub Mahmudov also believes that the historical presence of Armenians on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh constitutes a "strong distortion of history" and he offers assistance to Russian historians in the presentation of the "historical truth":

I am familiar with the article that was placed in the 31st volume of the 62-volume Great Russian Encyclopedia. In it the history of Nagorno-Karabakh is grossly misrepresented – it says that Nagorno-Karabakh is an ancient Armenian land, while based on historical documents it is known that the resettlement of Armenians in Karabakh began in the 19th century; they migrated from the Ottoman Empire and Iran. There are also other serious distortions, one of which, for example, is the presentation of Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state.

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We can and we are ready to help the Russian side to present historical data based on archival materials, which will present the historical truth. Now I am away, but when I come back I will by all means deal with this issue.

Mahmudov also spoke against the atlas Turan on the Ancient Maps which was co-published by Russian and Kazakh scientists. According to the Director of the Institute of History of ANAS, this edition is one of the results of the activities of Armenian nationalists who are concerned about the huge success of Azerbaijan in the international arena. Mahmudov describes the atlas as an "unthinkable anti-scientific and deliberate attack against Azerbaijan," in which there was no place for "the powerful states of Azerbaijan with 5000 years of statehood history", while the map, which according to Mahmudov is fictitious and constitutes a falsification of Greater Armenia, is more than once represented in the atlas. The head of the Karabakh department in the History Institute of ANAS, Doctor of historical sciences, Professor Gasim Hajiyev blames in falsifying the history of the ancient Transcaucasia Russian, Armenian and those Azerbaijani historians who "serving the Armenians and the Russians likewise refuse to recognize the Turkic origin of the Azerbaijanis." He noted that on the territory of Azerbaijan prior to the creation of the ancient states of Atropatena and Caucasian Albania there had existed Turkic states. Speaking of the 26 tribes, which according to Strabo inhabited the territory of the Caucasian Albania, Hajiyev notes that in the historical literature "the Turkic origin of such tribes as the Saks, Gutis, Cimmerians and Gargars was completely denied. The Turkic origin of Albanians as such was also denied". At the event devoted to the topic "The problem of Nagorno-Karabakh - 20 years: Causes and Results of Defeats in the First Stage," the former Education Minister of Azerbaijan, Prof. Firuddin Jalilov stated :

It's time to stop getting into historical disputes with Armenians on an amateur level and instead to involve those experts in the study of the Armenian problem who are familiar with the history and the peculiarities of this nation... I will note right away that they must not be called Armenians, as they call themselves Hay and Hay people, whose language is divided into grapar (Balkan dialect) and Syriac… All the speculations on that Armenia is an ancient country of Hays immediately become groundless and abstract, because there is no such nation as Armenians; there is a very ancient historical area called Armina in Asia Minor which was inhabited by Turkic-speaking peoples...

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Our main problem and weakness, in my opinion, lies in the ignorance of these historical basics, confirmed by the world science, which however have not been publicized and have been censored everywhere because of geopolitical interests of big countries. For the same political reasons, the Hays, who migrated and settled in the middle ages in the Armin region, today do not display their true endonym either and in their language they continue calling themselves Hays and the country – Hayastan.

Azerbaijani architects D. A. and M. D. Akhundovs consider the accusations by Russian historian and art critic, Prof. Anatoly Yakobson to be wrong. Yakobson namely stated that their work on the Gandzasar monastery (in which they claimed that Gandzasar is an "Albanian" monastery and the khachkars are in fact "Azerbaijani" monuments), "distorts the semantic and artistic content and the origin of Armenian medieval decorative art". The Akhundovs also claim that in Yakobson’s work "it is impossible to find at least a single stance, which would correspond to the historical reality. It is only unclear whether we are dealing with a deliberate falsification of history or with fruits of unprofessional creativity". Senior researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of ANAS, Doctor of Historical Sciences Abbas Seyidov, commenting on the accusations against Azerbaijan regarding the destruction of khachkars in Julfa, claims that the Armenians themselves are engaged in "total falsification of the history and culture of Azerbaijan," and in this they were assisted by the leadership of the USSR and "scientists like Piotrovsky" (M. Piotrovsky – PhD, the Director of the Hermitage Museum, had protested against the destruction of khachkars). According to the Director of the Institute of History of Azerbaijan Yagub Mahmudov Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who “has in-depth and comprehensive historical knowledge", has called for “launching an offensive in the information war against Armenian falsifiers". Mahmudov notes that the road mapped by Aliyev is the only way for "bringing the historical reality to the attention of the international community". In the falsification of the historical facts of the Azerbaijani history they also blame Wikipedia. Director of the Institute of Information Technology at ANAS Rasim Alguliyev believes that "by placing misleading information on the pages of this encyclopedia in different languages, the enemies of the Islamic world are leading an information warfare". Aydin Balaev in his book Ethno-Linguistic Processes in Azerbaijan in the 19th – 20th Centuries argues that the main falsifier of Azerbaijani history was the founder of the school on the ancient history of Azerbaijan, Director of the Institute of History after A. Bakikhanov of the Azerbaijan Academy of Science – Igrar Aliyev:

The questionable fame of the founder of this "scientific" direction in the national historiography belongs to Igrar Aliyev by right. For more than half a century, it was he who led the "crusade" against the national memory of the Azerbaijanis. It must be acknowledged that within this period, he alone had much greater achievements in the falsifications of the Azerbaijani ethno-linguistic history than all the anti-Azerbaijani centers abroad put together. Suffering from a pathological form of turkophobia, I. Aliyev, starting from the 40s of the 20th century, in his numerous works (with persistence worthy of a better application) preached the "idea" according to which the leading role in the formation of the Azerbaijani nation played the Iranian and Caucasian-speaking tribes and peoples who inhabited the ancient Medes, Atropatena and Caucasian Albania .

On Dec. 7 a conference was held at the presidium of ANAS where different facts from the history of Azerbaijan were discussed; they also talked about the publications in Wikipedia, which were regarded as a falsification of the history of Azerbaijan. Dr. Solmaz Tovhidi emphasized "the importance of establishing a structure in the Institute of Cybernetics for the proper use and management of Wikipedia".

Section for Historical revisionism (negationism)

Many scholars, among them Victor Schnirelmann , Willem Floor , Robert Hewsen , George Bournoutian and others state that in Soviet and post-Soviet Azerbaijan since 1960s there is a practice or revising primary sources on the South Caucasus in which any mention about Armenians is deleted. For instance in the revised texts the word “Armenian” is either simply removed or is replaced by the word “Albanian”; there are many other examples of such falsifications, all of which have the purpose of creating an impression that historically Armenians were not present in this territory.

Willem M. Floor and Hasan Javadi in the English edition of “The Heavenly Rose-Garden: A History of Shirvan & Daghestan” by Bakikhanov specifically point out to the instances of distortions and falsifications made by Buniatov in his Russian translation of this book . According to Bournoutian and Hewsen these distortions are widespread in these works; they thus advise the readers in general to avoid the books produced in Azerbaijan in Soviet and post-Soviet times if these books do not contain the facsimile copy of original sources. Shnirelman thinks that this practice is being realized in Azerbaijan according to state order .

Philip L. Kohl brings an example of a theory advanced by Azerbaijani archeologist Akhundov about Albanian origin of Khachkars as an example of patently false cultural origin myths .

In their turn Azerbaijani historians claim that the historians of other countries falsify the true history of Azerbaijan. As an example of falsifications Azerbaijani historians consider historical references about the presence of Armenians on the territory of Karabakh (Azerbaijanis claim that Armenians appeared there only in 1828) or the fact that in these books there is no mention of "the powerful states of Azerbaijan with 5000 years of statehood history" . After the Director of the Hermitage Museum Dr. Piotrovsky expressed his protest about the destruction of Armenian khachkars in Julfa he was accused by Azeris of supporting the "total falsification of the history and culture of Azerbaijan" .

In Azerbaijan the genocide of Armenians is officially denied and is considered a hoax. According to state ideology of Azerbaijan genocide of Azerbaijanis took place starting from 1813, which was carried out by Armenians and Russians.

The historical accounts about Azerbaijan in Wikipedia are also considered as falsification by the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences; they claim that through Wikipedia “the enemies of the Islamic world are leading an information warfare”. .