Turkic toponyms in Armenia

1. Great Armenia in the 1st — 4th centuries, according to the insert map to volume II of the “World History” (Moscow, 1956) (the lands of Great Armenia shaded from the neighboring states after division in 387). In the center of Marzpanskaya Armenia V — VIII century. 2. Armenia on the eve of the Turkic conquest: the centralized Armenian kingdom by 1000 AD er

Armenians are descendants of the autochthonous population of the territory of modern Armenia, and the Araks valley is the center of historical Armenian statehood . It was there that the capitals of Great Armenia were located , and in the Middle Ages also Bagratidian Armenia - Yervandashat , Armavir, Artashat , Vagharshapat (also the spiritual center of the Armenians in 303–484, and again from 1441), Dvin (also the spiritual center of the Armenians in 484-931 years) and Ani ^[4] . All these cities were the main centers for the development of ancient Armenian culture .

Since the XI century, the territory of Armenia has undergone the invasion of the Seljuk Turks - the ancestors of the modern Turkic peoples of Asia Minor and Transcaucasia. The conquest of Armenia began in 1064 and ended in 1071 with the victory of the Seljuks in the Battle of Manzikert ^[5] . The invasion of the Seljuks was a disaster for the Armenian ethnos and led to the emigration of a significant part of the Armenians ^[5] . From this moment on the Armenian Highland , which includes part of the Transcaucasus ^[6] , the centuries-old process began of pushing the Armenian and Kurdish population back to Turkic. A new wave of invasions of the Turks in Armenia was associated with the Tatar-Mongol invasion , then with Timur . At the same time, an increasing number of Armenian lands were taken away from the local population and settled by alien nomads ^{[7] [8]} . However, in the era of the Tatar invasion, Marco Polo noted the predominance of Armenians throughout the territory of historical Armenia, from Sivas to Mugan ^[9] .

In 1603, Shah Abbas I organized a massive resettlement of the inhabitants of Eastern Armenia into the depths of Persia - the so-called “ great surgun ”. During this resettlement, in particular, the large Armenian city of Jugha (now Julfa , near Nakhichevan ), which was the world center of silk trade, was ravaged ; Its inhabitants founded the Armenian suburb of Isfahan - “New Jugha” ^{[10] [11]} . This event led to a sharp reduction in the Armenian population in Eastern Armenia ^[5] .

Constant destructive wars between the Persian and Ottoman empires and the scorched-earth policy applied by the parties led to a sharp decline in the population of Armenia. Before the advancing Ottoman troops, the Persians drove hundreds of thousands of people, as a result of which these territories became populated by Turkic tribes. As noted by Arseny Saparov, if the transfer of territory occurs with the destruction of the local population, then there is a complete replacement of the "cultural landscape" and geographical names in the region. This opinion is also confirmed by the Russian researcher Ivan Chopin , who indicated that the alien Turkic nomads could not establish the former names of local objects and gave them their names ^[12] :

This mahal, after the devastation he had endured in the past century, remained completely empty, so that when the last Erivan sardar, Huseyn Khan, in 1814, undertook to settle it by Karapapakhis, no one could recall the names of his devastated villages, which received from that time new names . To this day, more than forty ruined villages have been placed on lists without names.

Thus, large-scale migrations of the population of Armenia and penetration of the Turkic nomadic tribes to this territory dramatically changed the ethnic composition of the region and its cultural landscape. The former Armenian toponymy partially remained, but was adapted or completely replaced by the Turkic ^[13] .

According to the world historical science, the Turks did not appear in the Caucasus region until the beginning of our era. In April 630, the troops of the Western Turkic Kaganate attacked Armenia ^[14] , and in the 7th — 8th centuries, the territory of modern Armenia and a small part of eastern Turkey was invaded by the Khazar Kaganate several times, but the Turks did not settle there in significant numbers until the 11th century. Mass Turks first settled in the territory of modern Armenia after the Seljuk invasion of the XI century, when the incoming Turkic nomads changed the ethnic picture of the region, pushing aside the Armenian and Kurdish population ^[15] . It laid in the XI-XIII centuries. the beginning of the formation of the Azerbaijani nationality, which ended in the late XV century ^[15] .

According to the point of view that exists only in Azerbaijan, the Turks are the oldest population of the region, and the Turkic toponyms originated on the territory of Armenia since the times of Urartu (9th — 6th centuries BC). Thus, according to Sabir Asadov, the name of Urartu itself has a Turkic root “ur / uri” with the meaning “elevation” and “art” with the meaning “highland, mountain”. He also claims that a number of place names of the Ararat valley and the Lake Sevan region, reflected in the Urartu inscriptions, are of Turkic (Azerbaijani) origin. So, in his opinion, from the Turkic "ar" - "red" - is the name of Armenia. The name of the capital of Great Armenia , Artashat , also originated from the Turkic languages, where “art” means “highland, ridge, back, mountain”, and “shat” means “rocky upland, confluence of rivers, ledge of a mountain, interfluve, branching river, sleeve rivers. " The name “ Dvin ”, according to him, is derived from the Turkic “Daban” with the corresponding meanings “hill, pass, hill, mountain pass”. According to Asadov, “all the historical monuments of Armenia, its toponyms convincingly prove that for thousands of years Azerbaijanis were the main inhabitants of this territory” ^[16] . Asadov calls the "genocide of toponyms" the replacement in Azerbaijan of "Azerbaijani toponymic names", which followed "this < genocide of the Azerbaijani people ". "

G. A. Geybullaev also believes that the Ptolemy’s toponyms, the toponyms from the Georgian sources of the 5th century, the ethnonyms and toponyms from the 7th century Armenian geography , etc., are of Turkic origin in the Transcaucasus, which appeared with the penetration of the Scythian and Sakan tribes which he calls Turkic ^[17] , although in world science they are unambiguously considered Iranian-speaking ^{[18] [19]} . Thus, Heydullaev considers Turkic toponyms “the most ancient Turkic ethnotoponyms: Alban (I-II centuries), Balasakan (III century), Kemakhia and (II century), Kangar (V century), Chol (V century), Hunan (V cent.), Gargar (V cent.), Shake (VII cent.), Terter (VII cent.), Ganja (VIII cent.), Which reflect the names of the Turkic-speaking tribes Alban, Sak, Kamak, Kangar, Chol, Hunn, gargar, pecheneg, terter, kenjek ". Meanwhile, Caucasian Albanians are unambiguously considered as Caucasian-speaking tribes related to Lezgins ^[20] .

Russian historian V.A. Shnirelman notes that the arguments of the Azerbaijani supporters of the original residence of the Turks in the Caucasus look helpless, however they caused great enthusiasm in the circles of Azerbaijani intellectuals, and a collection on the problem of the ethnogenesis of the Azerbaijani people (Baku, 1984) began to be considered a "landmark in the Azerbaijani historical literature." According to Shnirelman, after the publication of the collection, pseudoscientific literature poured into the pages of Azerbaijani scientific publications ^[21] .

From the XVII to the beginning of the XIX century most of the population of the territory of Eastern Armenia were Muslims - Azerbaijanis and Kurds , of whom the majority at the end of the XIX century were Azerbaijanis ^[22] . Jafar Giyasi and Ibrahim Boziel in their book “Armenia’s of Armenia on cultural terrorism” note that according to Z. Korkodyan’s book “The Population of Soviet Armenia” ( 1932 edition), at the beginning of the 20th century, 2000 of 2,310 geographical names in Armenia were of Turkic origin ^[23] .

The renaming of toponyms in the Armenian SSR is closely connected with the internal political processes in the USSR . During the period from 1924 to 1930, about 80 toponyms were renamed. The reason for the renaming was approved in the official renaming order of January 3, 1935 . The decree said that the names of many places reflected the religious, feudal and proprietary remnants of the past, and most of them had an unstable and undermining value. In addition, many toponyms were repeated in two or more territories, which made postal and other departments difficult. A noticeable increase in the number of renames was observed in the post-war years (1946-1950), one of the reasons for which was the massive repatriation of Armenians to the Soviet Union in November 1945. Between 1946 and 1948, about 90,000 Armenians arrived from the Middle East, North and South America and Western Europe ^[24] .

Another socio-political process that influenced the names in Armenia was the emigration of Azerbaijanis during this period ^[25] , which was mentioned in Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 745 of March 10, 1948 on measures to resettle collective farmers and other Azerbaijani people from the Armenian SSR to Kura -Araksin lowland of Azerbaijan SSR ^[26] . According to this plan, about 100,000 people were supposed to “voluntarily” move. The resettlement process itself consisted of three stages: 10,000 people in 1948 , 40,000 in 1949, and 50,000 in 1950 ^[27] (for more, see the article Deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia (1947-1950) ).

In one of the points of the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 4083 of December 23, 1947 it is said ^[28] :

11. To allow the Council of Ministers of the Armenian SSR to be erected by the Azerbaijani population of buildings and residential buildings in connection with their relocation to the Kura-Araks lowland of the Azerbaijan SSR to use for resettlement of foreign Armenians arriving in the Armenian SSR.

In the years 1967-1968 there was a sharp increase in the number of renamed names when more than 50 toponyms were changed ^[29] . By the end of the 1980s in the Armenian SSR there were 152 Azerbaijani villages with Turkic names ^[30] .

Although a significant part of the Turkic names was renamed in the Soviet era, the process of “de-tirkuizatsiya” toponyms completely ended in the first years of independence of Armenia ^[31] . In total, over the period from 1924 to 1988, more than 600 toponyms of the Armenian SSR were renamed. The last stage was the renaming of the Turkic toponyms remaining in the republic. According to the head of the State Real Estate Cadastre Committee Manuk Vardanyan, in 2006, 57 more settlements were renamed. In 2007, it was planned to rename another 21 settlements of the republic. This process took a lot of time due to the fact that there were problems with choosing a new name ^[3] .

Renaming natural placenames

Hydronyms

Their 107 hydronyms were renamed 71 (66%). ^[32] Some of them had Turkic formations associated with water: -chai (river), -gel (lake), -bulag (spring), -su (water). 26 of them were changed to Armenian equivalents. So -Gel was changed to -lich (from 12 toponyms from Gel 11 were renamed to lich ), -bulag was replaced by ahpyur (from 4 toponyms with -bulag 2 were renamed to ahpyur and only one to Russian, kindred ), and - su to Armenian -jur . The situation was different with the Turkic chai . Of these, only one of 9 was renamed to Armenian with -get . For the remaining eight, a new name was chosen. In general, the renaming method can be divided into 4 categories ^[33] :

• 1. Translation of the toponym: the Turkic name of the lake Karagol in Armenian Sevlich (black + lake); the river Balygly in Dzyknaget (fish (river)). Only 5 cases
• 2. Transfer of half of the name or hybrid renaming: Shorbulag to Mushahpyur ; Karagel in Karilich (translation). 12 cases
• 3. Linguistic alteration ^[34] : Kafan in Kapan , Ertapin in Artabun . 27 cases.
• 4. Complete change: Basut in Tsav , Chayzemi in Kashuni . 29 cases

So more than half of the renamed hydronyms are inseparable from the old ones.

Oronyms

Of the 315 oronims, 164 (52%) were renamed. In the case of the Oronim , the following Turkic formations are distinguished: -dag (mountain) - 17 cases, -tepe (hill) - 9 cases, -gaya (rock) - 4 cases. The Turkic formations were changed in the following way: Out of 17 words with -dag, 10 were changed to Armenian equivalent —sar ; 6 out of 9 c -teps changed both for sar and for blur ; and all 4- gaya were changed to -car . As in the case of hydronyms, the renaming method can be divided into 4 categories ^[35] .

• 1. There are 8 known cases of translation: Akdag in Spitakasar (white + mountain); Demirli to Erkrasar (iron (mountain))
• 2. There are 14 known cases of hybrid renames: Murad-tepe to Muradsar , Kamarkaia to Kamarkar
• 3. The most common was the rework method. 98 cases are known: Hartlinlar in Hartlinler (the ending of the plural on the Turkic Lahr here is replaced by the Armenian word ler for the mountains); Ishigly in Ishkhansar
• 4. There are 44 known cases of complete change: Maman in Tsakhkadzor , Bogutlu in Ardeni .

Modern Azerbaijani authors qualify the renaming of the Turkish toponyms of Armenia as “cultural terrorism” and “linguistic genocide” ^[36]

According to Azerbaijani authors in Armenia in 1924-1991. The following Türkic place names were renamed ^{[37] [38] [39]} .

• The alteration of national identity in Soviet Armenia. Arseny SAPAROV
• The fate of Azerbaijani place names. Jafar Giyasi, Ibrahim Boziel