#julfa

The Archaeology of Power and Politics in Eurasia: Regimes and Revolutions (2012, Page 6): "Any political engagement with the past entails some kind of appropriation of the archaeological record as material evidence to legitimize an ideological claim... [P]olitical salience of archeological sites has made them targets for destruction (e.g., the Buddhas of Bamyan that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, or the medieval Armenian cemetery at Djulfa dismantled by the Azerbaijani army in 2005). Thus the physicality of the archaeological record lends itself to appropriation not only by modern techniques of memorialization but also by technologies of erasure and forgetting."

Armenian cross-stone ornaments from Julfa cemetery 

The Armenian cemetery in Julfa was a medieval-era cemetery near the town of Julfa, Nakhchivan, an exclave of the Republic of Azerbaijan that originally housed around 10,000 funerary monuments. The tombstones consisted mainly of thousands of khachkars, uniquely decorated cross-stones characteristic of medieval Christian Armenian art. The cemetery was still standing in the late 1990s, when the government of Azerbaijan began a systematic campaign to destroy the monuments. In the spring of 2006, a journalist from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting who visited the area reported that no visible traces of the cemetery remained. In the same year, photographs taken from Iran showed that the cemetery site had been turned into a military firing range. After studying and comparing satellite photos of Julfa taken in 2003 and 2009, in December 2010 the American Association for the Advancement of Science came to the conclusion that the cemetery was demolished and leveled.

хачкар, ст. Джуга Один из хачкаров в св. Эчмиадзине. 1602г. СТАРАЯ ДЖУГА [Photo by Tigran Amiryan]

“ Another archival collection that has not been fully digitized contains some sources on the humanitarian assistance planned by the Armenian community of Isfahan, in Iran, for refugees of the Armenian Genocide, from the provinces of Van, in Turkey, and Azerbaijan, in Iran, who had found their way to Isfahan. Below are examples of some announcements from the Minasian Collection of Armenian Materials, ca. 1600-1968. These articles and announcements can be accessed at UCLA Library Special Collections by request. “

“The Armenian Community of Isfahan has created an urgent committee to organize assistance to the refugees from the province of Van in Turkey. The Committee encourages all Armenians to help the refugees without complaint. The announcement mentions the dire situation that these refugees have found themselves in because of the barbarian treatment of the Ottoman Government. The Committee asks that the Isfahan Armenian community without any hesitation extend a helping hand to their brothers and sisters who have gone through so much leaving their homes, graves of their ancestors, their places of worship. The Committee urges the Armenian community to be kind and generous with their compatriots.” 

“80,000 refugees, 20,000 of them Armenians have arrived in Hamadan, Iran from Azerbaijan province of Iran. After 32 days of travel and enduring devastating war, they need medical attention, food, and clothing. The Committee on Refugees urges the Armenian community of Tehran to help the refugees. Procrastinating is a crime. Move swiftly to help the refugees.” 

مراسم بزرگداشت نژادکشی1915م

[Commemoration of Genocide of 1915]

This image was attached to an article about Armenian elected officials in Iran, under the biography of Vartan Vartanyan, Armenian-Iranian elected official in Tehran from New Julfa, Isfahan. The article says his mother was from New Julfa, and his father was an Armenian genocide survivor. Beyond that, I’m not confident enough in my very poor translation resources to decipher the article that is in Farsi.