Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims
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planation of both the events preceding the pogroms of local Muslims
and what happened when Amazasp’s squads were in town. The docu-
ments contain extremely valuable information enabling to recreate
the timeline of tragic events in Guba in April-May 1918 together with
specific cases of atrocious murders of the town’s Muslim residents,
women, children and elderly ones among them. The documents re-
count cases of rape of dozens of Muslim women including under-
aged ones, people held captured in mosques, Muslim-owned public
facilities destroyed, libraries looted, Qur’ans and other holy books
destroyed, etc. The files name the persons involved in pogroms and
present data on murdered and wounded civilians.
Testimonies by Aliabbasbey Alibeyov, the head of Guba munici-
pality (the mayor), local clerics and David Ghelovani, the representa-
tive of central authorities in Baku, are particularly important among
the witness testimonies (see Files No. 56, 61, 68, 69 and 70) as they
name the direct masterminds of Muslim pogroms in Guba, such as
Shaumyan and Korganov. In the meantime they reveal the true goal
of Amazasp’s punitive mission, i.e. mass extermination of the local
Muslim population.
It should be also noted that one of the major witnesses, Mullah
Hajjibaba Akhundzadeh, the head of Guba’s Shiite congregation, was
interviewed by A.F.Novatski in Baku’s Taza-Pir mosque where he was
staying then. This is another proof of a very serious attitude of the in-
vestigator to his mission, while getting testimonies related to this case.
The second part of the Section comprises documents regarding
loss and other detriment inflicted to Guba residents in the course of
Amazasp’s raid. These documents inter alia contain general lists on
Guba’s various sectors (1-4) with names of victims and the value of
property stolen or destroyed, as well as the citizens’ applications and
requests. Each general list of damages is signed by mullah (priest) of
the respective parish. The files also included the damage inflicted to
the residents of Guba slaughtered by the Armenian militants.
Individual applications and requests also provide lists of stolen
pieces of property with the cost of each of them and the total sum
of the damage. Some testimonies describe the circumstances un-
der which the damage was inflicted. The applications indicate that all
groups of population were attacked, both the affluent and lowincome
ones. Even the households of the town mayor A.Alibeyov and the chief