News
Show news feed


The opening of the restored Gohar Lady’s Upper Mosque took place in Shushi, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Restoration work at this 19th century mosque had begun in 2014.

Ruben Melkonyan, Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Yerevan State University, told reporters that the mosque was originally built in the 1880s.

“The mosque is one of the examples of the layer of a completely Iranian-Shia religious culture,” he added. “We haven’t come across any Azerbaijani, any Turkish letter, either in the mosque’s records or in various works.

“Interestingly, as a result of the work, we also have seen cartridges of snipers’ bullets at the towers adjacent to the mosque, approximately from the [19]90’s; that is, during the Artsakh Liberation War it was used by the adversary [Azerbaijan] as a convenient place for snipers. We also have found in sources that during the Armenian-Tatar clashes in 1919-20, the mosque was also used by the Tatars against the Armenian population during armed clashes.

“We also have found existing Armenian-Muslim education links; in particular, that the representatives of the Armenian work of education have had some impact on the organization of the work of education.”

According to Ruben Melkonyan, the inscriptions on the walls of this mosque are primarily in Persian, but some are in Arabic—with quotations from The Quran.

!
This text available in   Հայերեն
Print
Read more:
All