Shusha State Historical and Architectural Reserve

Shusha (Azerbaijani: Şuşa) or Shushi (Armenian: Շուշի) is a city in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan. Situated at an altitude of 1.4–1.8 kilometres (4,600–5,900 ft) in the Karabakh mountains, the city was a mountain resort in the Soviet era.

The origin of the city is disputed, in the 1750s, Panah Ali Khan founded the Karabakh Khanate, and the city developed with the establishment of the fortress of Shusha. There was an alliance between Panah Ali Khan and Melik Shahnazar, the local Armenian prince (melik) of Varanda. The nearby Armenian village of Shosh (see § Etymology for further information), has been suggested as an origin of the town's name. The town has been described as an important center within the Armenian melikdoms of Karabakh in the 1720s, and the plateau has been suggested to have been the site of an already existing Armenian fortification. From the mid-18th century to 1822, Shusha was the capital of the Karabakh Khanate. The town became one of the cultural centers of the South Caucasus after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus region from Qajar Iran in the first half of the 19th century. Over the course of the 19th century, the town grew in size to become a city, and was home to many Armenian and Azerbaijani intellectuals, poets, writers and musicians (including Azerbaijani ashiks, mugham singers and kobuz players.

The town has religious, cultural and strategic importance to both groups. Shusha is often considered the cradle of Azerbaijan's music and poetry, and one of the leading centres of the Azerbaijani culture. Shusha also contains a number of Armenian Apostolic churches, including Ghazanchetsots Cathedral and Kanach Zham (demolished by Azerbaijan as of 2026), and serves as a land link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, via the Lachin corridor to the west. Throughout modern history, the city fostered a mixed Armenian–Azerbaijani population. The first available demographic information about the city in 1823 suggests the city had an Azerbaijani majority. The Armenian inhabitants of the city steadily grew over time to constitute a majority of the city's population until the Shusha massacre in 1920, in which the Armenian half of the city was destroyed by Azerbaijani forces, resulting in the death or expulsion of the Armenian population, up to 20,000 people.

The city has suffered significant destruction and depopulation during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. After the capture of Shusha in 1992 by Armenian forces during First Nagorno-Karabakh War, the city's Azerbaijani population fled, and most of the city was destroyed. Between May 1992 and November 2020, Shusha was under the de facto control of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh and administered as the centre of its Shushi Province. On 8 November 2020, Azerbaijani forces gained control of the city during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War following a three-day long battle. The Armenian population of the city fled, and multiple reports emerged that the Armenian cultural heritage of the city was being destroyed.

Etymology

Several historians believe Shusha derives from the New Persian Shīsha ("glass, vessel, bottle, flask"). According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names, when Iranian ruler Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar approached the town with his army, he reportedly told the ruler of Karabakh Ibrahim Khalil Khan:

God is pouring stones on thy head. Sit ye not then in thy fortress of glass.

Panahabad ("City of Panah"), Shusha's previous name, was a tribute to Panah Ali Khan, the first ruler of the Karabakh Khanate.

According to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, published in the final decades of the Russian Empire, the town's name comes from the nearby village Shushikent (called Shosh in Armenian), which literally means "Shusha village" in the Azerbaijani language. Conversely, the Armenian historian Leo (1860–1932) considered it more likely that the village Shosh received its name from the fortress, which he considered the older settlement.

According to Armenian sources, the name Shusha most likely derives from the dialectal Armenian word shosh/shush (Armenian: շոշ/շուշ), meaning tree sprout or, figuratively, a high place, first applied either to the adjacent village Shosh or to Shusha itself. The form Shusha can also be explained as the genitive form of shosh/shush, as -a or -ay is a common declensional ending for placenames in pre-modern and dialectal Armenian.

Besides the common Armenian name Shushi, the town has historically been referred to in Armenian by various names, including Shoshi/Shushva Berd, Shoshi Sghnakh, Shoshvaghala, which all mean "Shosh/Shushi Fortress".

Foundation

Some Armenian sources identify Shusha with a fortress called Shikakar or Karaglukh, where the 9th-century Armenian prince Sahl Smbatean is said to have defeated an invading Arab army. According to several sources, a settlement called Shosh served as an ancient fortress in the Armenian principality of Varanda, and had traditionally belonged to the Melik-Shahnazarian princely dynasty. According to some sources, Shushi existed and had a functioning scriptorium in 1428. The fortress was described as a strategic stronghold in one of the Eastern Armenian military districts, called sghnakhs, playing a key role in the Armenian commander Avan Yuzbashi's campaign against Ottoman forces during their incursion into of the South Caucasus in the 1720s and 1730s. Armenian historian and Shusha native Ashot Hovhannisian wrote that the fortress walls must have been built by Avan Yuzbashi in 1724, if not earlier.

Kehva Chelebi, an early Armenian national activist who maintained correspondence between the meliks of Karabakh and the Russian authorities, in a 1725 report describes Shusha as a town and a fort: