“GEGHARD”
SCIENTIFIC ANALYTICAL
FOUNDATION
2025
2025
The village of Norshen (Khutashen) in the Ismayilli district was located 11.8 km southwest of the district center. The inhabitants had migrated from the Varanda province of Artsakh. The village was previously known as Yengikend, and during the Soviet era, it was called Kirmizi Oktyabr (Red October).
In 1861, the village of Norshen had 70 Armenian households. By 1886, the village had 132 houses with an Armenian population of 838. In 1915, Norshen was entirely inhabited by Armenians, with 125 households.
In 1918, the village of Norshen was attacked by Turkish troops and local Tatars. Most of the population fled to Baku and from there to the Central Asian republics.
After the establishment of Soviet rule in Azerbaijan, a small number of Norshen residents who had survived the massacres returned and resettled in their native village. However, during the 1950s, they gradually left the village. By 1984, Norshen was inhabited by 30 Lezgin households and two elderly Armenians.
A church named Surb Astvatsatsin (Holy Mother of God) was built in Norshen, which has not been preserved. During a visit by monument specialist Samvel Karapetyan in 1985, approximately 180 inscribed tombstones from the 19th–20th centuries were still preserved in the cemetery surrounding the church.
To the north of the village was an old cemetery, where Bishop Makar Barkhudaryants copied four inscriptions in the late 19th century. Two of those inscriptions were precisely dated.
“May God have mercy on Arutin. Year 1454.”
“May God have mercy on Zani. Year 1517.”
In 1986, about 1.5 km southwest of the village, a sacred site called Tslip was still preserved, with the remains of a ruined chapel and an early medieval monument.
Today, the village is known as Yenikend (Azerbaijani: Yenikənd) and is inhabited by Lezgins.
Bibliography
Barkhutaryants M., Land of Aghvank and its Neighbors: Artsakh, Yerevan, 1999.
Karapetyan S., The Armenian Lapidary Inscriptions of Aghvank Proper, Yerevan, 1997.
Karapetyan, S., Aghvank Proper, Part 1, Yerevan, 2024, pp. 165-169.