BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 22. A working group was established within the Western Azerbaijan Community to study the Albanian Christian heritage located in the current Armenia, historical Zangezur, Daralayaz, and the Goycha lake basin today.
According to the community, the group was formed to conduct scholarly research—using archival documents and other primary sources—into the history, architectural and epigraphic characteristics, and origins of the churches, chapels, cross-stones, and monasteries in the area.
A belief has prevailed in Azerbaijani academic circles that documents pertaining to the Albanian Catholicosate from the 16th to the 19th centuries were completely destroyed. While losses are undeniable, numerous documents and sources concerning both the Albanian Catholicoses and the religious and social history of that era are preserved in the archives and manuscript collections of various countries, and some have already been published. These materials are scattered across different repositories; the working group’s primary mission is to locate them through systematic searching and consolidate them into a unified scholarly database. Currently, the Western Azerbaijan Community already possesses hundreds of documents on this subject.
The visit by foreign diplomats to the Ganjasar Monastery complex this September demonstrated that cultural heritage has moved onto the diplomatic agenda. The Western Azerbaijan Community regards the multi-layered religious and cultural heritage within the territory of present-day Armenia—including medieval monuments of Caucasian Albania—as an integral part of its own heritage, as the successors of the deported Azerbaijanis. In the international academic community, this position can be substantiated only by facts grounded in source material and by research subject to independent verification. The research will also serve to document the historical and cultural foundations for the safe and dignified return of the deported population.
