Church :: ARTSAKH HISTORICAL MONUMENTS

Church 1535 y․

Azerbaijan / Northern Artsakh / Getabek / Novo-Saratovka

Description

The cultural heritage of the indigenous people of Novo-Saratovka includes a church and a cemetery. Below follows a record by S. Kamalian, who is the first topographer to have seen the historical monuments of the village: “...attested by some grave-yards and church walls seen in the village and a little far from it. In the north extends its large cemetery surrounded by kitchen gardens: the newcomers being Christians, it has been left intact. Apart from khachkars and tombstones, it also comprises some quadrangular memorials, between 3 and 5 arshins high. Almost all of them bear cross reliefs, but they are bare of any year or epitaphs; perhaps, they have been scraped away. All the memorials are erected of stone which must have been conveyed from afar, for there is no quarry in the neighbourhood of the village. “The local Armenian church is preserved in a semi-ruined state in the yard of a Malakan’s house, at the end of a street below the cemetery. The vaults and roof of the bema are undamaged, but some stones are missing from the altar. The Malakans assured us that some Armenians from Bashkend had displaced them to use them in their newly-built church.”

Yeghishe Charents Art and Literature Museum. Sargis Kamalian Fund, copy-book No. 1, VI-11, pp. 33-34. In 1890 Kamalian spent a night in the house of an Armenian inhabitant of Novo-Saratovka: “For the night I stayed with a shopkeeper who was an Armenian from Gandzak. He showed me a kind hospitality” (idem, p. 34).
Karapetian, Samvel. Northern Artsakh, Yerevan, 2007, p. 269.

As reported by M. Barkhutariants, “...the surviving monuments include a cemetery with tombstones and a stone that is quite long (3 metres). It also has a semi-destroyed church which is 18 metres long and 11 metres wide.”

Barkhutariants, M. Artsakh. Baku, 1895, p. 310.
Karapetian, Samvel. Northern Artsakh, Yerevan, 2007, p. 269.

Historical Introduction
1535 y․

An unknown source traces the church back to 1535.

Soviet Azerbaijanian Encyclopedia, vol. 7, Baku, 1983, p. 283.
Karapetian, Samvel. Northern Artsakh, Yerevan, 2007, p. 269.

1558 y․

A cross-stone found nearby is known to have been erected in 1558.

Lalayan, Yer. Gandzak District. In: “Azgagrakan Handes,” vol. 5, Tiflis, 1899, No. 1, p. 358.
Karapetian, Samvel. Northern Artsakh, Yerevan, 2007, p. 269.