Cemetery :: ARTSAKH HISTORICAL MONUMENTS

Cemetery

NKR / Tartar / Begum-Sarov

Description

It should be added that M. Barkhutariants noted that residents of the neighboring Armenian villages buried their dead in the cemetery of Sarov. "The resting place of the village contains the remnants of the late inhabitants of Sarov, Ghahrilar, Bozlu and Maralian Sarov. One of the gravestones was inscribed as follows:
"THIS GRAVESTONE TO MELIK, 1673."
Certainly, this tomb of 1673 cannot testify to the old age of the village, yet it is much older than any enforced migration or religious conversion taken place here and in the entire area along the left riverside of the Kura in the XVIII century. This is another proof to the fact that the Sarov population was aborigine".

M. Bishop Barkhutariants, Artsakh, Baku, 1895, p. 33.
Samvel Karapetian, Armenian Cultural Monuments in the Region of Karabakh, Yerevan, 2001, p. 200.

Armenians inhabited Sarov since the most ancient times. And this is witnessed by their old cemetery, 2 miles away to the east. The cemetery extends on a hill with rather smooth top. Of all the tombstones on this hill one deserves special attention, as the oldest and containing an Armenian inscription, badly weathered in the course of time and almost illegible, although the aged peasants assured, that the inscription was still legible in the days of their youth, when the Sarov priest read it in their presence and said that this was the last rest of an Armenian melik who died as early as in the 4th century AD. Graves of other peasants of Sarov are grouped round this tomb..."