The Julfa Khatchkars

The khachkar (Armenian for “cross-stone”) is the unique contribution of the Armenian people to the history of world art. It is a major part of Armenian sculpture. The cross-stone is one of the main and most symbolic phenomena of the art and faith of the Armenians.¹Levon Azarian, Armen Manoukian, ” Khatchkar,” in: Documenti di architettura armena/Documents of Armenian architecture 2, (1977), Milano, 3,6; Levon Azarian, Khatchkar, Etchmiadzin, Holy See of Etcmiadzin,1978, 31. ↩ Over the centuries it has been erected in Armenia and in Armenian colonies of the world.²Azarian (1978), 31*.* ↩ This type of Armenian art is one of the phenomena that separate Armenia from the Greek and Latin worlds. ³Patrick Donabéedian (2009), Le Khatchkar, un art emblématique de la spécificité arménienne, in : Isabelle Augé et Gerarde Dédéyan, L’Église arménienne entre Grecs et Laificite armenienne.tins, fin XIe-milieu XVe siècle, Paris,2009, 151. ↩

Cross-stones are rectangular stone slabs, slightly larger than human height, facing east, on the western side of which is depicted a carved image of the Cross-Tree of Life.⁴Hrair Hawk Khatcherian, “Khatchkar, ” With introduction of Patrick Donabedian, W.p., W. d., 12․ ↩ They are often placed on a pedestal and have a small cornice, under which are placed sculptures (the Almighty on the throne, The Virgin Mary, images of saints, etc.).⁵Azarian (1978), 15․ ↩

Khachkars usually have inscriptions representing prayers for the salvation of the soul of a benefactor or the deceased,⁶Khatcherian (W. d), 12. ↩ or information about important historical events, or the name of the sculptor and the occasion and date of the erection of the khachkar.⁷Azarian (1978), 15 ; Patrick Donabédian, “Les inscriptions lapidaires sur les khatchkars, Arménie, ” in : Claude Mutafian, éd., La magie de l’écrit, exc. cat., Paris, 2007, 200-203. ↩

The first Armenian surviving khachkars are dated by the second half of the 9th century.⁸Khatcherian (W. d), 13. ↩ They are distinguished by the simplicity of their artistic decoration. The pedestal with several steps under the cross symbolizes Golgotha, while also probably expressing the ascent to salvation.⁹Khatcherian (W. d), 13. ↩ The disc below the cross is reminiscent of the Roman-Byzantine imperial orb and probably expresses the idea of ​​the universal authority of the cross, while the arch under which the cross is depicted commemorates the structure that covered the cross of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and is the main message of artistic design and shows the path to salvation.

At the bottom of the slab, starting from the 13th century, the figure of the deceased depicted on horseback appears, reviving the Sasanian princely iconography.

The Armenian Khachkars from Julfa

The decoration of the khachkars finds expression in the ornamental motifs inherited from ancient Armenian architecture and the miniatures of medieval manuscripts. Most of the surviving khachkars are dated by the 16th-17th centuries. Thousands of them were erected in the cemetery of Julfa (Djugha).¹⁰Patrick Donabédian, “Le khatchkar, ” in: Jannic Durand, Ioanna Rapti et Dorota Giovannoni éd. , Armenia sacra, Mémoire chrétienne des Arméniens (IVe-XVIIIe siècle), exh. cat., Paris, 2007, 160. ↩

The city of Julfa in the Yernjak province (present Nakhichevan, Republic of Azerbaijan) of ancient Armenia, on the border of river Araks, was known as a place of residence for Armenians as early as the 10th-13th centuries.¹¹About oldest history of Julfa See Argam Ayvazian, Djugha, Yerevan,1984 [in Armenian with Russian and English summaries]. ↩ In the 15th-17th centuries it was an important trading hub between the West and the East and survived until 1848. The population of this region, repeatedly subjected to foreign invasions and plunder, was forcibly deported by the Persian Shah Abbas in 1605 and driven to Persia.

From the once prosperous city only its cemetery survived. It consisted of a unique monument group of beautifully carved khachkars, which remained abandoned for more than four centuries. The cemetery seemed to be forgotten by art history and the world (Fig.1).

In 1648, the British traveler Alexander Rhodes, who passed through there, recorded 10 thousand khachkars. Unfortunately, many of which became victim to the construction of a railway by the Russian tsarist government in 1903-1904. After that, the number of monuments fell to 5,000 and in the following decades to about 3,000.¹²Argam Ayvazian, Khatchkars of Djugha, Yerevan, 1993, 5-6,11-12 [in Armenian with Russian and English summaries]; Ayvazian (1990), 64. ↩ In the 1990s, approximately 2,000 examples remained.¹³Ayvazian (1993), 5-6,11-12; Argam Ayvazian, The Historical Monuments of Nakhichevan, Transl. ed by Krikor H. Maksoudian, Detroit, 1990, 64. ↩ From 1998 to 2006, the Azerbaijani government deliberately demolished and leveled the Julfa cemetery, destroying all the remaining the cross-stones.¹⁴Judith Crispin, The Julfa Project. The Austraian Catholic University, 2016. the_julfa_project_repatriating_a_destroy.pdf [[https://judithcrispin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/the_julfa_project_repatriating_a_destroy.pdf]](https://judithcrispin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/the_julfa_project_repatriating_a_destroy.pdf) When The World Looked Away: The Destruction Of Julfa Cemetery Serafim Seppälä, “The Struggle for Memory: The Khachkar Field of Julfa and Other Armenian Sacred Spaces in Azerbaijan”. in : Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu 13, no. No.2, 185-213 (August 2021, (PDF) The Struggle for Memory: The Khachkar Field of Julfa and Other Armenian Sacred Spaces in Azerbaijan(accessed September 2,2025). ↩

During the 19th and 20th centuries, about 25 cross-stones were (often secretly) removed from the Julfa cemetery. Fifteen of Julfa khachkars are in Armenia, one is in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and six are in in the Ethnographic Museum of Georgia in Tbilisi, and other places.¹⁵Marianna Harutyunyan, “Survived khachkars of Djugha, ” in: Edchmiadzin, journal, July (2014), 22 [in Armenian]. ↩ Before the destruction of the cemetery, a number of researchers photographed and studied the cross-stones and published numerous copies of them over the years. Especially Argam Ayvazyan, a tireless researcher of the Armenian monuments of Nakhichevan, was able to visit Julfa 17 times since the mid-1960s and to document the khachkars and ram-shaped carved tombstones.

Over the past decades, he has published numerous books and put into scientific circulation about 2,000 photographs of these khachkars.¹⁶Around 7000 photographys were published by A.Ayvazian in his book The symphony of the destroyed Djugha khachkars, Yerevan,2007[in Armenian and English]. ↩

The cemetery of Julfa, was a unique phenomenon in the Caucasus, an exceptional archaeological and architectural treasury.¹⁷Ayvazian (1990), 64. ↩ The accumulation of thousands of sculpted monuments in one place must have made a great impression and had an effect on visitors and travelers.¹⁸Jurgis Baltrusaitis and Dickran Kouymjian, “Julfa on Arax and its Funerary Monuments.” in: Dickran Kouymjian, ed. Armenian Studies/Études arméniennes: In Memoriam Haïg Berbérian, Lisbon, 1986, 35. ↩ The oldest khachkars in this cemetery were created in the 9th century, and their best examples in the 15th-17th centuries.¹⁹Ayvazian (1990), 41. ↩ Their stone was mainly pink and yellowish loparite. The average height of these khachkars was 2-2.5 or 3 meters and there were examples that were 2 to 4 meters high and 1 meter wide and 30-35 cm thick.²⁰Harutyunyan (2014), 28, note 32. ↩

The examples from the Julfa cemetery had no bases and were set directly into the ground. According to ancient customs, they were located on an east-west axis.²¹Baltrusaitis and Kouymjian (1986), 34. ↩

Before 1998 most of the 9th-15th century khachkars from the Julfa cemetery have been already destroyed.²²Ayvazian (1993), 12, ↩ The surviving examples were smaller, poorly carved, and sparsely decorated with few sculptures. The simplest and oldest monuments in this area were steles with one or three crosses carved into a stone slab.

The monuments created from the mid-15th to mid-16th centuries, with their decoration, sculptures, and inscriptions, were considered intermediate or transitional works and were of modest artistic interest. The latest inscriptions on the Julfa khachkars dated back to 1608. It was possible to find out that the survived 15^th^ century oldest khachkar in the cemetery is from 1494, the next one from 1546, and the others from 1550, 1551.²³Baltrusaitis and Kouymjian (1986), 29, 53. ↩

The khachkar of 1546 was decorated with irregularly placed crosses and simply depicted doves. From the middle of the 16th century, a desire for surface organization was noticeable. The arch of the inner cross was still not pointed, but the upper part was filled with a skillful geometric texture.

The heyday of the art of the Julfa khachkars

From the end of the 16th century, the people of Julfa began to erect more luxuriously sculpted khachkars for their deceased, as if competing with each other.²⁴Ayvazian (1990), 64. ↩ This fact testify to the wealth and artistic taste of the Armenians of Julfa. The scholars divided into two groups the cross-stones of Julfa and first group was represented by a patterned ribbon top, that was, a cornice, and the second rendered by sculptures of the Almighty, the Virgin Mary and other iconographic reliefs.

Over time, the masters narrowed the stone slab, giving it a high character, increasing the length by three to four times compared to the width, rarely bringing the cornice forward from the surface of the stone, making the area of ​​the cross a deep carving, often with 2-4 altars with crosses, presenting the upper part with various carved zones and arches. The khachkars erected here were longer than the tombstones in other parts of Armenia.

In examples from the 16th-17th centuries of the Julfa cemetery, the cross was carved in a narrow altar ending with a pointed arch. This type of arch was reminiscent of the mihrab of Islamic architectural monuments. The uniformity manifested by the structure of the works and the placement of the main components (cornice, altar, rosette, inscription, iconography, the same ornaments) did not prevent the sculptors from creating elegant and luxurious examples under the conditions of these repetitive rules.

The old works of the 16th century are characterized by shallow carvings, densely carved with a network of rosettes, swastikas or plant details or small crosses covering the entire stone, with one or three crosses and a disk containing a rosette below. They lacked the play of light and shadow of the khachkars of Julfa from the late 16th and 17th centuries. The more simply elaborated examples of that period represented the crosses with a wide pole and wide wings, under a round arch, with shallow carvings. In some khachkars, on the sides of the large cross, hands holding a small cross on each side also appeared, so called khachburs (handful crosses), reminding the image of a hand holding a cross on the pages of Armenian medieval manuscripts.²⁵Sirarpie Der Nersessian, “Miniature Painting in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century ” (= Dumbarton Oaks Studies XXXI), vol. 1, 4, vol. II, Washington, D.C. 199, fig.14; Levon Chookaszian, “Armenian Book Miniatures of VI-XIII centuries (New Pages), ” in: Dmitrij S. Likhachew and others, eds., Armenian and Russian medieval Literatures, Yerevan, 1986,462 [in Russian]. ↩ The origin of khachburs was associated with Armenian agriculture.²⁶Arakel Patrick, “Thoughts concerning Armenian khatchkars, ” Ejmiacin, journal, August,1972,37-43[in Armenian]. ↩

The most beautiful khachkars of the Julfa cemetery were created during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. They owe their beauty primarily to the artistic decoration of the cornices.

Usually, the cornice was represented by acanthus buds, arches, triple arches, including plant motifs or purely geometric squares, rhombuses, and star ornaments. The khachkars were given a special charm by the iconography representing the Almighty on the tetramorphic throne on certain cornices, and the Deesis, apostles, and angels.

A unique cornice ornament was visible on the khachkar of 1585, created by an anonymous sculptor and dedicated to the memory of Sahak and his father Mirzum. It consisted of a series of rings, which were intersected by diagonal crossings.²⁷Baltrusaitis and Kouymjian (1986), figs.19a-c. ↩ This ornament was depicted in two rows. This khachkar stood out among the crowd of other famous monuments with its rather complex cornice ornament. The surprisingly conceived ornament amazed with its jewelry-like execution. This work was related to other three cross-stones. Exactly the same ornamentation of the cornice is found on three 17^th^ century khachkars. One was work of 1603 dedicated to the memory of Paron (Armenian for “Mister”) Mali, two others were taken from Julfa to the Ethnographic Museum of Georgia.²⁸Ayvazian (1984), fig, 21; Khatcherian (W. d.,), 498. ↩ One of Tbilisi khachkars was dedicated to the memory of priest Khas and dated by 1600. The creator of these ornaments was probably the same person. The aforementioned works show what extraordinary imagination and skill this artist possessed.

The inner space of the arches of certain khachkar’s cornices was rendered by a network with thin pores throughout, and on the depth of the latter was depicted the Almighty, the Intercession, saints, two-bodied, one-headed mythical animals. Weaving such a network on stone required great skill and tension from the sculptor and it can be seen in the khachkars of Master Poghos (13^th^ c.), and of architect, sculptor and miniaturist Momik (14^th^ c.).²⁹Hamlet Petrosyan, “Khachkar, ” Yerevan, 2008, 170,172-175, fig.236,237,240-241[in Armenian]. ↩ Some sculptors of the 16th-17th centuries Julfa khachkars were excellent masters in carving such small networks. This is especially evident in the execution of the pointed octagonal stars that border the khachkar below the cornices. These lace-like stars, strung on a thread like beads, gave extraordinary charm to the stone monuments. They seem to emphasized the length and slenderness of the monuments like endless ribbons descending from above. Crosses, rosettes, complex knots, and swastikas created with woven plant details appeared in the pointed octagonal stars. The Julfa masters probably copied them from the khachkars of masters Poghos and Momik and other examples. From them also originated the tradition of placing these stars on a netted base with almost jewelry-like delicacy, which in some cases has the appearance of a complex texture or woven crosses. The contrast of stone levels was used in the presentation of the latter, as well as various other ornaments. The pointed octagonal stars were carved higher than the base,³⁰Anatolij Jakobson, Armenian Khachkars, Yerevan,1986, 84-85 [in Russian with English summary]. ↩ again recalling the works of Poghos and Momik. With the contrasting placement of the height of the cross and other components on side-by-side surfaces, or in other words, with two-layer sculptures, a wonderful play of light and shadow was created. ³¹Ayvazian (1993), 8․ ↩

On the cornices of numerous khachkars the ornamentation with leaves or woven, plant details, crosses, turned into a three-part arch, placed in rows of repeating split quatrefoils, was more widely used. It was the most beautiful pattern loved by the most skilled craftsmen of Julfa at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. This ornament is known from the illustrations of manuscripts painted by the famous miniaturist Hakob Julfayetsi (the late 16th and early 17th c.).³²Irina Drampyan, “Akop Djughayetsi, ” Yerevan,2008 [in Russian], ill. 3,43,50,53,56,59-62,66, 67. ↩ It was registered on the khachkar of the mayor Khoja Khachik dated by 1604.³³Ayvazian(1993), fig. 55, 56, 100. ↩

In these artworks the presence of altars with deeply carved pointed arches also plays an important role. The pointed-arched arches, rows of eight-pointed stars, and complex arabesques known in khachkars from the 12th century are especially widespread in cross-stones of Julfa. In their late 16th and early 17th century specimens, these inspirations are further strengthened and come from oriental architecture.³⁴Khatcherian (W. d.,), 13. ↩ The pointed-arched altars, deepening into the stone surface, resemble the external niches of Armenian churches, emphasized the architectural character of the khachkars and at the same time contribute to the play of light and shadow.³⁵Levon Azarian, “Die Kunst der armenischen Kreuzsteine.Armenien, ” in: Museum Bochum, Institut für armenischen Studien, Hrsgb. Wiederentdeckung einer alten Kulturlanschaft, Museum Bochum 14.1.bis 17.4.1995, Bochum, 1995,113. ↩ In that altar, the cross is as if kept in a special box-shrine.

Among the multitude of carved slabs of Julfa of the late 16th century and especially the early 17th century, examples with one altar and one cross placed there seem to dominate.Some of the altars of this type of khachkars with one and three crosses have several, successive arches, which shelter the main large cross. This feature is also noticeable in those monuments that are carved with four, five, six altars.

In the khachkars of Julfa of this period, instead of one altar, four deeply carved altars are often presented, each with four small crosses placed one under the other.

In rare cases, one can see that sculptors endowed their creations with six small crosses placed one under the other in six altars, and in exceptional cases with the same number of crosses in five altars, with a symmetrical arrangement below and above the horizontal wings of the large cross. This last example is the khachkar erected in 1601 in memory of Hakob, which stands out among the multitude of all known cross-stones with its exceptional image, unparalleled beauty and almost jewelry-like execution.It is unique as the fifth, central altar is carved in the shape of a cross, and its shaft has pointed arches from below and above, and, in addition, on the ends of the wings. Inside this altar-cross, the main, large cross is carved, the inside of which is filled with a network of thin, small pores. This is the case when it is difficult to say which is more admirable: the unique idea of ​​​​creating an altar-cross, or the skill of mastering such a complex composition. After the destruction of the cemetery of Julfa, it is now no longer possible to find out whether there was a second such tombstone among the thousands of monuments there and who created it. The artistic charm of the most beautiful Julfa khachkars is largely determined by the special slenderness of the crosses and the elegance of their execution..

One of the favorite motifs of the masters of Julfa of the 16th-17th centuries is a two-bodied, one-headed mythical animal that appears on the cornices of numerous khachkars,³⁶Ayvazian (1993), fig.26,41,45,51,54,92,98,101,110,111,119,126,128. ↩ and is reminiscent of similar creatures known from Armenian art ³⁷Jakobson (1986), 86; Petrosyan (2008), 226; Thomas F. Mathews and Roger W. Wieck, eds., Treasures in Heaven. Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts, cat. exp. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, 4 May-7 August, 1994, Princeton, N.J., 1994, 193-194, Pl. 15; Armen Kyurkchyan and Hrair Hawk Khatcherian, “Armenian ornamental art, ” Yerevan, 2010, 63 [in Armenian and English]. ↩ as well as from the art of peoples near and far.³⁸Vilhelm Slomann, “Bicorporates, Studies in Revivals and Migrations of Art Motifs, ” Copenhagen, Munksgaard, 1967, 2 volumes. ↩

The names of the sculptors Grigor, Hayrapet, and Israel have become known from the inscriptions on a number of the most beuatiful khachkars; it appears that some of the masters who worked in Julfa, such as Simeon, also worked in other parts of Armenia.

The unique style of these khachkars is determined by the combination of the component parts of the khachkars: the disk, the pointed arches, the high sculpture, and the deep carving. The artistic design of the Julfa examples has had an impact on the design of Muslim cemeteries.

The style of the monuments of this area was a special phenomenon and characteristic only of the methods of the masters of Julfa.³⁹Jakobson (1986), 88. ↩

The destruction of the Julfa Cemetery, located in the Azerbaijani-occupied territory of historical Armenia, and its total annihilation by the planned, barbaric actions of the local authorities is a great loss from the point of view of both Armenian and world art.