Descendant of Iravan Khan arrives in Baku His grandfather ruled Iravan khanate of Azerbaijan in the 18th century

A descendant of the Iravan Khan, Amir Ali Sardari Iravani, who lives in Germany and has family ties with the Qajar family, arrived in Baku on August 24.

Chairman of the State Committee for Work with the Diaspora of Azerbaijan Fuad Muradov received the guest in a meeting where they talked about the history, and culture of Azerbaijan, as well as the immeasurable damage caused by Armenians to the rich heritage of Azerbaijanis, Report informs.

Emir Ali Sardari Iravani said not a single historical monument remained in the city of Yerevan, except for the Blue Mosque, built by his grandfather Huseynali Khan. He also shared information about his genealogy and spoke about his relationship with the Qajar dynasty.

Iravan, a historical Azerbaijani city in modern-day Armenia, has been originally settled by ethnic Azerbaijanis since its establishment by their ancestors. Armenian historian and priest Hovannes Shahkhatunyan wrote that all 49 khans who ruled the Iravan khanate for 390 years from 1441 to 1828 were Azerbaijani Turks. According to Ronald Grigor Suny, a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago, Iravan had been a Muslim city until the Batumi Conference participated by the representatives of the Ottoman Empire and the Transcaucasian Seim in 1918.

However, a massive long-term relocation of Armenians by the Russian Empire to Iravan and other territories of Azerbaijan started in the wake of the empire’s victory over Iran in two wars in 1804-1812 and 1826-1828 war. A special commission was established to deal with the deployment of Armenians from Ottoman and Iranian territories to the South Caucasus. As a result of the relocation, the number of Armenians in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan reached 18,000 between 1828 and 1829 and increased to 34,606 by 1843. The next wave of deployment of Armenians into the South Caucasus by Russia lasted from 1904 to 1915, when over 260,000 ethnic Armenians were placed in the territories of Azerbaijan. Despite protests, around 130,000 Armenians were relocated to the Azerbaijani provinces of Iravan and Yelizavetpol (the name of Azerbaijan’s Ganja city during Tsarist Russia's period).

Iravan was ceded to the newly-established Armenian republic on May 29, 1918. Shortly after the Bolshevik forces subjugated the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic on April 28, 1920, a significant part of the Zangazur region was also ceded to the newly-established Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. The annexation of the territories by Armenia took place under the aegis of the Soviet empire, which forced the Azerbaijani authorities to make territorial concessions to Armenians.

The annexation of Iravan took its toll on its indigenous Azerbaijani population and the cultural heritage of Azerbaijanis. According to 1916 data, there were over 373,000 Azerbaijanis living in Iravan, however, only 12,000 Azerbaijanis were registered in census files in 1922.

The final round of the “Armenianization” of and the deportation of Azerbaijanis from Iravan took place in 1988 when over 300,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis living in the historical Western Azerbaijan region, or modern-day Armenia were expelled forcibly from their ancestral lands. The anti-Azerbaijan sentiments in Armenia were then on the rise accompanied by pogroms and persecution of ethnic Azerbaijanis. The motives for the ethnic conflict were Armenia’s illegal claims for the territories of Azerbaijan, namely the Karabakh region. The deportation of Azerbaijanis later set grounds for Armenia to launch a full-scale military attack on Azerbaijan, leading to the first Karabakh war in 1991-1994 and the occupation of the internationally recognized Azerbaijani lands.