2920) Khachkars (Tombstones) destruction in the Armenian Cemetery of Julfa: Armenian Post (Haypost) has issued two postage stamps of 940 and 950 AMD depicting the destruction of the historic tombstones by Azerbaijan terming it as a Cultural Crime: Date of Souvenir Sheet issue: 11.07.2023:
The Armenian cemetery in Julfa was a cemetery (known as Jugha in Armenian), in the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan that originally housed around 10,000 funerary monuments.
The tombstones consisted mainly of thousands of khachkars - uniquely decorated cross-stones characteristic of medieval Christian Armenian art.
The cemetery was still standing in the late 1990s, when the government of Azerbaijan began a systematic campaign to destroy the monuments.
Several appeals were filed by both Armenian and international organisations, condemning the Azerbaijani government and calling on it to desist from such activity.
In the spring of 2006, a journalist from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting who visited the area reported that no visible traces of the cemetery remained.
In the same year, photographs taken from Iran showed that the cemetery site had been turned into a military shooting range.
More about Nakhchivan and the Khachkars:
Nakhchivan is an exclave which belongs to Azerbaijan. Armenia's territory separates it from the rest of Azerbaijan.
The exclave also borders Turkey and Iran. Lying near the Aras River, in the historical province of Syunik in the heart of the Armenian plateau, Jugha gradually grew from a village to a city during the late medieval period.
In the sixteenth century, it boasted a population of 20,000–40,000 Armenians who were largely occupied with trade and craftsmanship.
The oldest khachkars found at the cemetery at Jugha, located in the western part of the city, dated to the ninth to tenth centuries but their construction, as well as that of other elaborately decorated grave markers, continued until 1605, the year when Shah Abbas I of Safavid Persia instituted a policy of scorched earth and ordered the town destroyed and all its inhabitants removed.
In addition to the thousands of khachkars, Armenians had also erected numerous tombstones in the form of rams, which were intricately decorated with Christian motifs and engravings.
According to the French traveler Alexandre de Rhodes, the cemetery still had 10,000 well-preserved khachkars when he visited Jugha in 1648.
However, many khachkars were destroyed from this period onward to the point that only 5,000 were counted standing in 1903–1904.
A Souvenir Sheet:
On 11.07.2023, a Souvenir Sheet (SS) with two postage stamps of 940 and 950 AMD, under the theme “Religion and Culture. Cultural Crime” has been put into circulation by Armenian Post (Haypost).
The postage stamp of the souvenir sheet (SS) with the nominal value of 940 AMD depicts the Armenian cemetery of Julfa and the postage stamp of the souvenir sheet with the nominal value of 950 AMD depicts the same cemetery after the targeted destruction of the Armenian cross-stones (khachkars) by Azerbaijan in 2005.
The background of the souvenir sheet depicts the photos of the destruction of the numerous Armenian cross-stones (khachkars) of the XVI-XVIII centuries of the Armenian cemetery of Julfa located in Nakhijevan.
The souvenir sheet also depicts the inscriptions “ARMENIAN CEMETERY OF JULFA” and “THE DESTRUCTION OF ARMENIAN CROSS-STONES (KHACHKARS) OF THE XVI-XVIII CENTURIES IN NAKHIJEVAN” in Armenian and English languages.
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