Gohar Lady’s Upper Mosque

The article is published in cooperation with the «Orbeli» Center and the Iran Daily newspaper.

T he restoration and preservation of Gohar Lady’s Upper Mosque the architectural and religious complex and the madrasa (seminary) building adjacent to the mosque in the city of Shushi of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), which came under the control of Azerbaijan after the 44-day war in 2020 come to demonstrate Armenia's and Nagorno-Karabakh's respect for Iran's cultural and historical heritage.

The Upper Mosque, the main Muslim religious building in Shushi in the form it had before the 44-day war was constructed in the 1880s under the patronage of the daughter of Ibrahim Khan of Karabakh. The roof of the Upper Mosque was renovated with state subsidies in 2009 as part of the Shushi mosques rehabilitation program.

Large-scale rehabilitation work began in 2014 with the assistance of "The Initiatives for Development of Armenia" (IDeA) and the "Revival of Oriental Historical Heritage Foundation." Work on the study and restoration of the mosque, in which the "Armenian National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites NGO" (ICOMOS-Armenia), the Iranian architectural firm "Part Saman Jahan", the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Organization, and Lorenzo Yurina (lecturer of Polytechnic University of Milan) participated, was completed in 2019. Minister of Culture, Youth Affairs, and Tourism of Nagorno-Karabakh made an opening speech at the event dedicated to the completion of the Upper Mosque’s restoration. He said that the mosque will function as an Armenian-Iranian scientific cultural center and will contribute to the strengthening of Armenian-Iranian relations.

The Iranian religious and cultural center Gohar Lady's Upper Mosque and the madrasa are both in the context of Armenian-Iranian cultural ties and the dialogue of Christian-Islamic cultural property, and their existence testifies to both the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's perception of the civilizational values and, regardless of ethnic, religious, and other characteristics, the representation, preservation and development of the cultural heritage of the neighbor state in step with its own. In this context, Iran, in turn, always demonstrates a matching civilized approach towards the Armenian cultural property located on the territory of Iran, and reciprocal respect and preservation assure cultural heritage protection and serve as a vivid example for other countries in the region.

The liberation of Shushi in 1992 was a watershed moment, paving the way for the expression and acknowledgment of both Armenian and Iranian cultural property with their historical, architectural, and aesthetic qualities. In addition, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic undertook initiatives (1994-2020) to preserve tangible and intangible cultural heritage. But the war unleashed by the Republic of Azerbaijan against the Republic of Artsakh on September 27, 2020, and the targeted post-war policy are also clearly directed against the historic Armenian presence in Nagorno-Karabakh, the territory's cultural property, the deliberate destruction of which during and after the armed conflict is qualified as a war crime in several international conventions and declarations. The most famous examples of this are the deliberate targeting and desecration of Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Cathedral and St. John the Baptist church (Kanach Zham) of Shushi, and the targeting of the Upper Mosque on November 1, 2020.

In conclusion, it should be emphasized that the promotion of the Armenian-Iranian resource-based cooperation policy can best solve such an important strategic task as the preservation, recognition, and popularization of the civilizational and cultural heritage.