Church :: ARTSAKH HISTORICAL MONUMENTS

Church

NKR / Partav

Description
1970 y․

Prop-walls of another ruined church were exposed within the town area by R. Geyushev during the excavations of 1970 season. It was a large church (dimensions: 11x6 m) planned as a three-nave basilica with three semicircular altar apses in the western wall. The walls built of baked bricks of different sizes had collapsed and only 1.5 m of the masonry was preserved. The floor was also tiled by bricks. The altar was a little above the floor mark of the hall. Main entrance was open in the eastern facade. The research proved that the church collapsed as a result of strong fire in the beginning of the VIII century. A number of publications dedicated by Azerbaijanian scientists to this church represented it as an “Albanian” and not Armenian monument.

R. B. Geyushev, Excavations in the Temple Area of the Medieval Barda (Summaries of Reports on the Results of Archaeological Field Investigations of 1970 in the USSR, Tbilisi, 1971) (in Russian) and Christianity in the Caucasian Albania, Baku, 1984, p. 88. It is known that the excavations within the area of Barda started in 1881 (see E. Weidenbaum, A Guide-Book for Caucasus, Tiflis, 1888, p. 394) (in Russian).
Samvel Karapetian, Armenian Cultural Monuments in the Region of Karabakh, Yerevan, 2001, p. 208.