Bert Vaux (University of Cambridge)

In the 1720s, as the Safavid state collapsed and Russian and Ottoman armies converged on the South Caucasus, the Armenians of Karabakh organized their resistance around a network of fortified mountain districts known as sghnakhs, grouped into a Great and a Small Sghnakh (Armenian Mets Sghnakh and Pʻokʻr Sghnakh). In their correspondence with Peter the Great and his successors, the leaders of the sghnakhs presented themselves as the government of an armed Christian people awaiting Russian protection. Together with Davit Bek’s contemporary principality in Siwnikʻ, they represent the most serious attempt at Armenian self-rule in the eastern highlands between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century.

The term and the strongholds

Armenian sghnakh (Սղնախ) is a loan from Turkic sığnaq ‘refuge, place of shelter’ (compare Turkish sığınak and the Georgian town of Sighnaghi); the Dictionary of Toponyms of Armenia and Adjacent Regions glosses it as ‘fortified place’ (Hakobyan et al. 1998). According to the same work, the Great Sghnakh arose in the early eighteenth century in the Tʻartʻaṙ basin on the slopes of the Mrav range, and the Small Sghnakh, modelled on it, on the slopes of Mount Kʻirs near Shushi. Contemporary reports speak of five sghnakhs, later scholarship of six, corresponding broadly to the five Armenian melikdoms of Mountainous Karabakh, Gulistan, Jraberd and Khachʻen in the north, Varanda and Dizak in the south, each anchored on older fortresses (Abrahamyan 1946; Hasan-Jalalyan 2011). Two of these deserve particular note. The sghnakh of Shosh, the later Shushi, was held by Avan Yuzbashi, a professional commander brought from Shamakhi in 1719 to train the local forces (Aivazian 1997); it has often been confused with the Kʻaraglukh sghnakh of his colleague Tarkhan, which Chobanyan (1994) has shown to be a different fortress in Khachʻen.

Authority was dispersed among the [meliks], the yuzbashis (‘centurions’), and the Catholicos of Gandzasar, Esayi Hasan-Jalalyan, whom Armenian historiography regards as the movement’s leader. The Russian envoy Ivan Karapet, however, reported that the sghnakhs had no single head and that meliks and yuzbashis quarrelled over precedence (Abrahamyan 1946), while armed clashes between Tarkhan and Esayi’s own brothers are also attested (Chobanyan 1994).

The sghnakhs and Russia

Hopes of Russian intervention, first articulated by Israel Ori at the turn of the eighteenth century, reached their height when Peter launched his Persian campaign in 1722. In September some ten thousand fully armed men from Karabakh joined the Georgian king Vakhtang VI near Ganja, ‘deeming the dominion of the Armenians newly restored’, in Esayi’s words (Esayi Hasan-Jalaleantsʻ 1839). But Peter’s priorities lay on the Caspian coast and its silk route, where he envisaged a new commercial city at the mouth of the Kura (Anisimov 2022). He halted at Derbent, and Vakhtang’s army dispersed. The correspondence nonetheless continued. In response to an appeal from Catholicos Nersēs of Gandzasar, Peter issued a declaration dated 3 June 1723 that placed the Armenians under his protection but counselled patience until Russia had secured the Caspian littoral, invited those unable to hold out to settle in the Russian-held Caspian towns, and urged secrecy (Ezov 1898, docs. 221, 227–228; Bournoutian 2001). Its bearer, Ivan Karapet, reached the sghnakhs at the end of 1723 and remained there for some four years (Abrahamyan 1946). In January 1724, writing from ‘the sghnakh of Shosh’, Avan and his fellow commanders declared the people of Dizak and Varanda, ‘great and small’, servants of the tsar, and Avan reported 500 musketeers and 6,400 further men under arms (Ioannisian 1967; Chobanyan 1994). Letters from Esayi and the commanders in November 1723, October 1724 and March 1725, the last addressed to Peter after his death, warned that without help the Christian nation would be annihilated (Aivazian 1997).

By then Russia had already abandoned them: the Russo-Ottoman treaty of Constantinople of 12 June 1724 assigned Eastern Armenia and Georgia to the Ottomans. The sghnakhs fought on alone, sending Avan with some 2,000 men to reinforce Davit Bek in Kapan in 1724 and seeking accommodation with the Muslim notables of Ganja against the common Ottoman enemy (Danielyan 2009; Chobanyan 1994). In November 1726 an Ottoman army besieged Shosh for eight days with artillery before withdrawing to Ganja (Ioannisian 1967). As late as October 1729 the commanders described to the Russians an army of 30,000 men in four divisions, armed by local gunsmiths and supplied from local mines (Aivazian 1997): the self-portrait of a state in all but name.

Decline and legacy

After the deaths of Esayi and Davit Bek in 1728, and the departure that year of Avan and Tarkhan to the Russian-held Caspian coast in a vain quest for aid, the movement lost cohesion; the sghnakh of Gulistan held out until about 1731. When Nader Shah expelled the Ottomans, he removed the Karabakh melikdoms from the authority of the Ganja governors (Petrushevskii 1949), a tacit recognition of the autonomy they had defended. The sghnakhs survive in toponyms, in the Russian archives, and in Armenian historical memory as the fullest early modern expression of Karabakh Armenian political aspirations.

Bibliography

Sources Bournoutian, G. A. (trans.), Armenians and Russia, 1626–1796: A Documentary Record, Costa Mesa: Mazda 2001.

Esayi Hasan-Jalaleantsʻ, Պատմութիւն կամ յիշատակ ինչ ինչ անցից դիպելոց յաշխհարին Աղուանից [History or Memoir of some Events occurring in the Land of the Aghuank‘], Shushi 1839.

Ezov, G. A., Сношения Петра Великого с армянским народом [Relations of Peter the Great with the Armenian People], St Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences 1898.

Ioannisian, A. R. (ed.), Армяно-русские отношения в первой трети XVIII века [Armenian-Russian Relations in the First Third of the 18th Century], vol. 2, parts 1-2, Erevan: Academy of Sciences of Armenia 1964-1967.

Research literature

Abrahamyan, A., “Նոր վավերագրեր Պետրոս Մեծի ժամանակաշրջանի հայ-ռուս բարեկամական հարաբերությունների մասին” [New Documents on Armenian-Russian Friendly Relations during the Period of Peter the Great], Ējmiatsin 1946/2-3, p. 59-70.

Aivazian, A. M., The Armenian Rebellion of the 1720s and the Threat of Genocidal Reprisal, Erevan: Center for Policy Analysis, American University of Armenia 1997.

Anisimov, E. V., “Eastward Motion of Peter the Great’s Empire”, RUDN Journal of Russian History 21/3 (2022), p. 312-321.

Chobanyan, P. A., “Շոշ եվ Քարագլուխ սղնախների նույնացման հարցի շուրջ” [On the Issue of the Identification of the Shosh and K‘araglukh sghnakh], Patma-banasirakan handes, 1-2 (1994), p. 183-187.

Danielyan, E. L., Gandzasar Monastery, Erevan: Gandzasar Theological Center 2009.

Hakobyan, Tʻ. Kh. – Melikʻ-Bakhshyan, St. T. – Barseghyan, H. Kh., Հայաստանի եվ հարակից շրջանների տեղանունների բարարան [Dictionary of toponyms of Armenia and adjacent regions], vol. 4, Erevan: State University Press 1998, s.vv. Sghnakh, Sghnakh Mets, Sghnakh Pʻokʻr, Sghnakhi melikʻutʻyunner.

Hasan-Jalalyan, S. R., “Կաթողիկոս Եսայի Հասան-Ջալալյանի քաղաքական գործունեությունն ու պատմագրական ժառանգությունը” [Political Activity and Historiographical Legacy of Catholicos Esayi Hasan-Jalalyan], Lraber Hasarakakan Gitut‘yunneri, 3 (2011), p. 83-97.

Petrushevskii, I. P., Очерки по истории феодальных отношений в Азербайджане и Армении в XVI – начале XIX вв. [Essays on the History of feudal Relations in Azerbaijan and Armenian from the 16th to the beginning of the 19th centuries], Leningrad: State University Press 1949.