Little Gandzak village in the Ismayilli district

2025-08-25

Little Gandzak was one of the Armenian villages in Eastern Transcaucasia. The village was also known as Avetaranu-Gandzak or Bala-Gandzak.

The inhabitants of Little Gandzak moved here from the village of Greater Gandzak in the 1850s.

In 1861 the village had 18 Armenian households, in 1886 — 29 households with 146 Armenian inhabitants. In 1897, Little Gandzak had 144 Armenians, and in 1908 — 150. According to 1909 data, the Armenian population of the village comprised 40 households — 299 people. In 1914 the village had 210 inhabitants.

Little Gandzak had neither a church nor a school.

In the summer of 1918, Turkish troops, together with Tatar forces that joined them, invaded the region and destroyed the Armenian villages, including Little Gandzak. The population of the village was massacred.

After the establishment of Soviet rule in Azerbaijan, the surviving inhabitants of Little Gandzak never returned to the village.

In 1985, during Samvel Karapetyan’s visit to the site, the village cemetery was still preserved: forty to fifty rectangular inscribed tombstones dated back to the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.

The site of Little Gandzak is located 8.8 km northwest of the present-day Ismayilli regional center.

Bibliography

Karapetyan, S., Aghvank Proper, Part 1, Yerevan, 2024, p. 198.

Mesrop Archbishop Smbatyants. Description of the Monastery of Saint Stepanos of Salian and Other Monasteries and Sacred Sites in the Towns and Villages of the Shamakhi Diocese. Tiflis, 1896, p. 139.

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