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Treaty brought serious change to the
status of the whole Qarabagh Khanate,
including its centre, the city of Shusha. The
situation became more complex when the terms
of the Russian Empire’s Kurakchay Treaty were
not kept. Things reached such a pitch that in 1806
the chief of the Russian garrison stationed in Shusha,
Major Lisanevich, executed Ibrahim Khan and members
of his family. Russian historians were forced to condemn this.
On 10 September 1806 Tsar Alexander I by decree appointed
Mehdiqulu Khan, Ibrahim Khan’s son, khan of Qarabagh (1806-22).
In 1822, A.P. Yermolov, commander-in-chief of the Russian forces
in the Caucasus (1816-27), completely abolished the Qarabagh Khanate
in violation of the treaty. As in Shusha’s military and political life, the city
was enjoying a boom in construction, socio-economic life and culture. One
of the main characteristics of Shusha is that once house-building began there,
the city gradually expanded. Mirza Jamal Javanshir dwells especially on recollections
of the years of building work carried out by Panah Khan and Ibrahim Khan. He says that
the former walls of Shusha fortress were built in Panah Khan’s time and the great public mosque
(1768-69),
the Shusha fortress outer wall (1783-84) and other constructions were built in Ibrahim Khan’s
time. Shusha took shape and developed with all the typical features of an Azerbaijani city. As soon as Shusha
had been founded here, its population grew rapidly. At the end of the 18th century more than 3,000 families
were registered in Shusha, totalling 15,000 people. If the events of 1795 and 1797 had an influence on the size
of the city’s population, the numbers were soon restored. Shusha became an important centre of crafts and
trade in Azerbaijan. Shusha merchants traded with Tabriz, Tehran, Isfahan, Moscow and other cities. Silver
panabad coins were minted in the city. One of Shusha’s greatest historical roles as an Azerbaijani city was as
a centre of culture. Mollah Panah Vaqif is one of its best known examples. Famous literary critic Firudin Bay
Kocharli wrote: ‘Molla Panah is considered such a famous and skilful poet of the Azerbaijani Turks that he
has the right to be called the founder of our literature.’ In his own lifetime Molla Panah was so well-versed in
several sciences and disciplines that he ‘used the pseudonym Vaqif’ (the personal name and adjective ‘vaqif’
mean ‘well-informed’). Vaqif’s work, created under the influence of the environment of Qarabagh and Shusha,
is seen as a new stage in the history of the Azerbaijani literary language. After the abolition of the Qarabagh
Khanate, Russian rule was established there. A special place was given to Qarabagh and its centre, Shusha, in
the tsarist government’s policy of Armenianizing the land of Northern Azerbaijan. According to the census car-
ried out by Russia in 1823 in connection with the abolition of the Qarabagh Khanate, almost 1,050 Azerbaijani
families (up to 70%) lived in Shusha. According to the 1917 Caucasus Calendar, 43,869 people were recorded
in the city of Shusha. Of them, 19,121 people (43.6%) were Azerbaijani and 23,396 (53.3%) Armenian. Changes
in favour of the Armenians in the ethnic composition of the population of Shusha are there to see! Another
reason for the increase in the number of Armenians in Shusha was the genocide waged by the Armenians
against the Azerbaijanis. The genocide of Azerbaijanis by Armenians in 1905-06 was on an even larger scale
in Shusha. Protected by tsarist government circles, Armenians killed hundreds of Azerbaijanis there. Although
Azerbaijanis and Armenians were at the time (19th-early 20th centuries) both part of the Russian Empire, the
Armenians tried to strengthen their positions in the region by genocide against the Azerbaijanis. After a state
with the name Armenia was established on Azerbaijani land in May 1918, the Armenians began to accompany
their genocide of Azerbaijanis with territorial claims. With the aim of combating this, on 15 January 1919 the
government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic created a general governorate in Qarabagh with Shusha
as its centre. After the establishment of Soviet government in Armenia (November 1920), it continued the
policy of the Dashnak government. With the active assistance of Soviet Russia a struggle began to give auton-
omy to the mountainous part of Qarabagh. By decision of the Caucasus bureau of the Russian Communist
Party (Bolsheviks) of 5 July 1921, autonomous status was granted to Mountainous Qarabagh. Interestingly,
the decision envisaged Shusha being the administrative centre of the autonomy. On 7 July 1923, after granting
autonomy to Mountainous Qarabagh, the Azerbaijan Central Executive Committee moved the centre to