Jabrayil

In tsarist times, Jabrayil was a village first in the Shusha uezd and then in the Dzhebrail Uezd (created in 1868) as its administrative centre, within the Elisabethpol Governorate of the Russian Empire.[5] According to the annual reference book Caucasian Calendar, the population of Jabrayil in 1855 consisted of Shia Tatars (later known as Azerbaijanis).[4] However in the 1897 Russian census, the population of the village of Jabrayil was 520, with an Armenian plurality: 228 Armenians; 186 Turko-Tatars; 76 Russians.[2] During the Russian empire, Jabrayil was the location of a customs office for the Russian-Persian border,[5] as well as, a royal school staffed by the Armenians, including its principal Alexander Ter-Abrahamian (since 1879).[4]

According to the 1926 Soviet census, the population of Jabrayil District was 10,653. No ethnic breakdown is listed for the village itself. Of those in the district 97.2% were Turks (i.e. Azerbaijanis), 105 (1%) were Russians, 57 (0.5%) were Armenians and 24 (0.2%) were Persians.[3] The 1979 Soviet census registered 4,825 inhabitants, almost all (99,5 %) ethnic Azerbaijanis.[7] As the administrative center of the eponymous district, Jabrayil developed considerably during the Soviet era and by the beginning of the 1950s, there were two seven-year schools, a secondary school, a cultural centre, summer and winter cinemas, two libraries and a club.[8] The town's main economic products were butter, cheeses and carpets.[9]

On 23 August 1993, during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, the city was occupied by the forces of Armenia and the breakaway Republic of Artsakh, causing the displacement of its population. Like most other cities in the seven districts of Azerbaijan captured by Armenian forces, Jabrayil was looted and destroyed and remained a ghost town following its capture.[10] Within Artsakh, it was renamed Jrakan (Ջրական), and also called Mekhakavan (Մեխակավան) and was administered as a part of the Hadrut Province.[11][12]

After 27 years, on 9 October 2020, Azerbaijan regained control of the city during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.[13]

In the context of the war, on 4 October 2020, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that the Azerbaijani Armed Forces had taken control of the city following a day-long battle;[14] however, Shushan Stepanyan, the Press Secretary of the Minister of Defence of Armenia denied this.[15] On 5 October, the Artsakhian President, Arayik Harutyunyan, claimed that he had visited the city.[16] However, on 9 October 2020, footage released by Azerbaijan Ministry of Defence showed Azerbaijani soldiers raising the flag of Azerbaijan in the centre of the ruined city.[17] Reporters from Euronews visited the city on 17 October, confirming that it had come under Azerbaijani control.[18]

In November 2020 Azerbaijani media visited the recently recaptured city and reported that except for a newly built military base, no building was left intact since the capture of the city in 1993.[19] Several ambassadors who visited the ruined city in February 2021 expressed their shock at the state of the city[20] and added that a number of graves had been defaced or dug up.[21] A BBC report noted that the homes and graves of Azerbaijanis had been completely destroyed during the Armenian occupation.[10]

In 2017, the Zoravor Surb Astvatsatsin (St. Mary's)[22] Armenian church was opened at the Armenian military base in Jabrayil.[23][24] Construction of the church drew condemnation from Azerbaijan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[25] In March 2021, BBC journalist Jonah Fisher visited the site of the church using geolocation and observed no trace of it remained. When he asked the police escort what happened to the church, the latter initially said that the church was "destroyed during the war" but then when confronted with the fact that videos clearly showed the church was still intact when the area had come under Azerbaijani control, he said that "they [Armenians] destroyed it themselves". When Fisher showed the images to Head of Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev saying "the church has been destroyed", Hajiyev replied "because it's a proper geolocation I don't know, I need to check", then adding that "in Jabrayil never ever Armenian lived [sic]" and that "building any religious site of changing any religious character of the region is a violation of international humanitarian law," and then changed the subject to the destruction of Azerbaijani cities by Armenians.[10]

In early February 2021, foreign ambassadors accredited to Azerbaijan, military attachés and heads of international organizations visited Jabrayil. They, in particular, visited the destroyed House of Culture and the cemetery.[26] In September 2021, the British company Chapman Taylor won a tender to prepare a draft master plan for Jabrayil.[27] In October of the same year, on the anniversary of Azerbaijan regaining control of the city, President Ilham Aliyev laid the foundation stone for the central district hospital, school, and the first apartment block.[28]

• Hakobyan, Tadevos Kh.; Melik-Bakhshyan, Stepan T.; Barseghyan, Hovhannes Kh. (1998). Հայաստանի և հարակից շրջանների տեղանունների բառարան [Dictionary of Toponyms of Armenia and Adjacent Territories] (in Armenian). Vol. 4. Yerevan State University Press. p. 374. OCLC 247335945.

• Karapetyan, Samvel (2001). "Jabrail". Armenian Cultural Monuments in the Region of Karabakh (PDF). RAA Scientific Researches. Vol. 3. "Gitutiun" Publishing House of NAS RA. pp. 225–226. ISBN 9785808004689.

• Masalsky, Vladislav [in Russian] (1893). "Джебраиль" [Dzhebrail]. In Ivan Andreyevsky; Konstantin Arsenyev; Fedor Petrushevsky (eds.). Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (in Russian). Vol. X. Saint Petersburg: Brockhaus–Efron. p. 527.