St. Dadii Cemetery :: ARTSAKH HISTORICAL MONUMENTS

St. Dadii Cemetery

NKR / Karvajar / Dadivank

Historical Introduction

It is commonly recognized that the places of martyrdom of the first Christian Apostles or preachers were sanctified. A number of sanctuaries in East Armenia only are associated with the martyrdom of early Christian Saints, for instance the tomb of Apostle Yeghishe in the village Homenk or Bomen (the present Bum, in Kutkashen district), the tombs of his disciples: Kahaltsitsik, near Vardashen, Gumrata in the village Tzerik, Vlas - in Nizh, and Saint Grigoris (grandson of Gregory the Illuminator) in Yatnian field (the present Biliji district), etc. Monuments or chapels, afterwards replaced by churches, were built on the graves of early Christian martyrs later. As mentioned by Movses Kaghankatvatsi the tombstone on the grave of martyr Yeghishe was erected as late as in the VII cent. “... long after his death pious Vachagan, the king of Albania, erected a pillar over the dungeon of Yeghishe’s martyrdom...”

Movses Kaghankatvatsi, History of Albania, Yerevan, 1983, p. 12 (in Armenian); Samvel Karapetian, Armenian Cultural Monuments in the Region of Karabakh, Yerevan, 2001, pp. 78-79.