Your trusted source

Panorama.am continues presenting pieces of the history of Yerevan from the Collection of the Caucasus Educational Okrug. Erivan Seminary teacher K. Shulgin’s article was published in its fourth edition. The article is about Erivan fortress capture based on the stories of the witnesses who were still alive in 1884.

Noting the paucity of literature on the history of Erivan Fortress’ capture by Paskevich and wishing to fill this gap, the author started to collect data from the elderly Armenian witnesses with the help of Erivan teachers' seminary pupils.

Remarkably, the author describes the fortress as "bulwark of Persia", for it was considered to be "impregnable." "The fortress – encircled in a wall of burnt and partly not burned bricks fastened with mud (the method applied in all the local facilities) – is located in a structural basin surrounded by hills, quite a convenient place for erecting fortifications.... Opening fire from the guns alone would be enough to utterly destroy the city and the fortress itself," the author wrote. As for the participants of the protection of the fortress and the city, the author notes, "Persians relied little on their stronghold and tried to prevent Paskevich from getting close to the city."

"The Armenians constituted a significant, predominant element of Erivan’s population. In order to weaken the party, which was dissatisfied with the Persian dominion and was ready to assist the Russian army, Sardar ordered in advance to send several Armenian families to Persia and appointed a Matas-aga as their head. Those who did not fulfill this commandment were killed," the author writes, and notes that the deported Armenian residents returned to the city after the fortress was captured.
The description of the city Khans and their behavior is due of mention. According to the story, Sardar Hasan Khan retreated to the small fortress Jafar-Abbad with the cavalry, and remained there until Erivan’ seizure. Later he fled to Persia. Khan’s brother Hussein, who took the runaway’s place, was "not a brave man." He escaped through an underground passage on the fourth day of the siege, leaving his troops to the mercy of fate. However, after making sure that "Russians were not shooting any longer," he returned. He failed to achieve any military success, and finally was captured.

Meanwhile, according to the author, the Armenian artillerymen were accused of the defeat and executed for treason.
“The Collection of the Materials to Describe the Terrain and Tribes in the Caucasus” is a large-scale publication of narrative sources carried out by the management of the Caucasus Educational Okrug in 1881-1908. It includes researches and description of the history, life, way of life and ethnographic characteristics of the peoples inhabiting the Caucasus region of the Russian Empire.
The primary purpose of publishing “The Collection” was to “find means” to contribute to the spiritual life of the teachers and prevent their degradation. “Without such a support, even a competent and sufficiently educated young teacher can gradually, without even noticing it, be subjected to the influence of the surroundings and finally turn into a ‘teacher-craftsman’ who does not differ from the villagers around him but for his knowledge of this or that reading and writing,” the foreword of “The Collection” reads.
To that end, a decision was made to assign the teachers to carry out extra researches, that is, to make a comprehensive research of the region each teacher lived and worked in.

In addition, these activities would serve “as a fence for the teachers from apathy, erroneous directions and interests in harmful and extraneous inspirations” and “keep them on the level of the education they got and support their further self-perfection.” It can also result in a practical benefit: it will create an objective description of the region and become a source of huge information for the description of the region. A fortiori, there was already a similar positive experience of gathering materials about Kuban and Stavropol in 1879.

As a help, a list of questions of interest is offered to the researchers, including history, economics, statistics, demography, ethnography of the settlements under research, as well as bibliography and archive documents on which the research should be based.

Related:
19th century scientific edition of Russian Empire compiled historical data about ancient Erivan