AGAIN & AGAIN – THIS TIME MANUFACTURED BY ERDOGAN & PUTIN WITH A HELPING HAND TO AZERBAIJAN FROM ISRAEL!
MESOPOTAMIA NEWS :
When The World Looked Away: The Destruction Of Julfa Cemetery in Azerbaijan
December 10, 2020 13:02 GMT By Amos Chapple
Fifteen years after the erasure of one of humanity’s most unique monuments, many wonder why the world’s institutions failed to stop its destruction. In early December 2005, Nshan Topouzian, an ethnic Armenian bishop living in Iran, received an alarming tip-off. According to Iranian border guards, a demolition crew had arrived at the Armenian cemetery of Julfa, in the Azerbaijani exclave of Naxcivan.
The Armenian cemetery of Julfa. This is one of several photographs of the ancient cemetery that were taken by Aram Vruyr while on assignment for Christian East magazine in 1915.
After driving through Iran’s rocky northern landscape to the Azerbaijani border, Topouzian was able to capture video footage of the final destruction of a cultural monument that, in its scale and artistry, was unlike anything else.
Bishop Topouzian offers a tearful requiem from Iranian soil as the destruction of the Julfa cemetery takes place in Azerbaijani territory in the background. The bishop died in 2010.
Over several days, hundreds of ancient cross-stones, or “khachkars,” were broken into rubble by men in military uniforms and dumped into the river between Azerbaijan and Iran.
Men working with sledgehammers at the Julfa cemetery in December 2005.
The site was the burial ground for the city of Julfa, a prosperous medieval trading center. Julfa’s mostly Armenian population was evicted in 1605 during a conflict between the Ottoman and Persian empires.
A photo taken from Iranian territory of the 2005 destruction.
Khachkars are stone slabs historically used by Armenian Christians as memorials to the dead or to mark the location of significant events.
Khachkars in the Julfa cemetery in 1915
Armenian tradition holds that no two khachkars are alike and all are sacred. They are often carved with lace-like details and fantastical creatures whose identity is lost to time.
A young man poses among khachkars and a stone ram in the Julfa cemetery in 1915.
Many believe the cross-stones serve as a kind of mediator between heaven and the soul of those buried beneath.