Armenian Church, Baku

Saint Gregory the Illuminator Church, commonly referred to as the Armenian Church of Baku, is a former Armenian Apostolic church near Fountains Square in central Baku, Azerbaijan. Completed in 1869, it was one of the two Armenian churches in Baku to survive the Soviet anti-religious campaign and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the 1990 pogrom and exodus of Baku Armenians when it was looted. It is now the only standing Armenian monument in Baku.

The church was built between 1863 and 1869 by the design of Karl Hippius, a Baltic German architect. The cornerstone was consecrated by vardapet Daniel Shahnazariants, the bishop of the diocese of Shamakhi, in June 1863. The construction was funded by Javad Melikiants (Melikov), a Baku-based Armenian philanthropist and founder of the city's first paraffin plant. The church was consecrated on May 4, 1869, by archbishop Andreas Andreasian. The Armenian Philanthropic Society of Baku founded a girls' school in 1866 and a library in 1870 next to the church. In 1903 the Russian government's decision to confiscate the properties of the Armenian church were widely opposed by Armenians. The church was the site of a clash between Russian Cossack soldiers and Armenian nationalist activists on September 2, 1903. A group of armed activists affiliated with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaks), led by Nikol Duman defended the church. The confrontation turned violent by night and resulted in 11 deaths and 45 injuries on the Armenian side. On September 15, 1918, the church was attacked and looted by the invading Ottoman forces in the aftermath of the Battle of Baku. On June 11, 1919, Ottoman-Azerbaijani forces sieged the church and conducted a search. After not finding any arms inside, the soldiers shot at the walls of the church. In 1920, it became the cathedral of the Armenian Apostolic Diocese of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. It survived through the Soviet state atheist policies of the 1920s and 1930s, when all but two Armenian churches in Baku were destroyed. The church was reopened in 1945 and became the seat of the diocese of Azerbaijan. In the 1950s, the church underwest restoration and by 1956 five priests and ministers served at the cathedral. It had a choir, which was composed of 25 people in 1970, when they visited Etchmiadzin.

The large Armenian population of Baku, over 200,000 people, began fleeing their homes following the Sumgait pogrom in February 1988 during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Armenian bishop of Baku, Anania Arapadjyan, left in late 1988 as Soviet authorities told him they could no longer guarantee his safety there. By May 1989, Vartan Diluyan at the church was the last remaining Armenian priest in Azerbaijan. He told the American writer Jim Forest that until the recent tensions, "the climate was very favorable" with a visitor having "found a crowded church with a good choir." By that time mainly old Armenians had stayed in Baku. Baku's remaining Armenians were targeted in a January 1990 pogrom. Two weeks prior to the pogrom, serious damage to the church was caused by an arson attack on December 25, 1989, but it remained standing. Catholicos Vazgen I, head of the Armenian Church, wrote to Yuri Khristoradnov, the chairman of the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs, that "extremist Azeri nationalists" set fire to the church, which destroyed "valuable ecclesiastical books, holy paintings, and all ecclesiastical clothing." Azerbaijani Muslim leader Allahshukur Pashazade later claimed that he had criticized the destruction of the cathedral, but was not successful in stopping it as he was in Moscow at the time. Bill Keller described the church February 1990 as a "charred ruin." He quoted a local resident as saying that "firefighters and the police watched without i

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).