Stepanakert (
Armenian ???????????; known as
Xank?ndi in
Azerbaijan; also rendered as
Khankendy) is the largest city and
capital of the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), a
de facto independent republic which is recognized as a part of Azerbaijan.
[2] The city comprises about 50,000 Armenians. The entire Azerbaijani population fled the city during the
Nagorno-Karabakh War.
According to medieval Armenian sources, the settlement was first mentioned as Vararakn (????????, meaning “rapid creek,” in Armenian) which it remained until it was renamed Khankendi in 1847.[3] Azerbaijani sources generally state that the founding of the town is traced to the late 18th century by the Azerbaijani Karabakh khan, and was thus called Khankendi ("Khan's village" in Azerbaijani).
The modern city was founded in 1917 after the October revolution in place of a village that was called Khankendi (Khan's village) in Azerbaijan. In 1923 it was renamed to Stepanakert, to honor Stepan Shahumyan, an Armenian communist leader from Baku and was made the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. During the Soviet era, Stepanakert grew to become the region's most important city.
In 1926, Soviet authorities adopted the new city layout designed by the prominent Armenian architect, Alexander Tamanian; two additional designs for expansion were approved later on in the 1930s and 1960s, both of which retained Tamanian's initial plan.[3] Stepanakert served as the region's main economic hub and by the mid-1980s, there were 19 production facilities in the city.[3]
