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The Armenian cemetery in Julfa ((アルメニア語:Ջուղաի գերեզման), ''Jughayi gerezman'')〔 was a cemetery near the town of Julfa (known as Jugha in Armenian), in the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan that originally housed around 10,000 funerary monuments.〔 The tombstones consisted mainly of thousands of ''khachkars'', uniquely decorated cross-stones characteristic of medieval Christian Armenian art. The cemetery was still standing in the late 1990s, when the government of Azerbaijan began a systematic campaign to destroy the monuments. Several appeals were filed by both Armenian and international organizations, condemning the Azerbaijani government and calling on it to desist from such activity. In 2006, Azerbaijan barred European Parliament members from investigating the claims, charging them with a "biased and hysterical approach" to the issue and stating that it would only accept a delegation if it visited Armenian-controlled territory as well. In the spring of 2006, a journalist from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting who visited the area reported that no visible traces of the cemetery remained. In the same year, photographs taken from Iran showed that the cemetery site had been turned into a military firing range. After studying and comparing satellite photos of Julfa taken in 2003 and 2009, in December 2010 the American Association for the Advancement of Science came to the conclusion that the cemetery was demolished and leveled.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.aaas.org/page/high-resolution-satellite-imagery-and-destruction-cultural-artifacts-nakhchivan-azerbaijan )〕 ==History== Nakhchivan is an exclave which belongs to Azerbaijan. Armenia's territory separates it from the rest of Azerbaijan. The exclave also borders Turkey and Iran. Lying near the Araks River, in the historical province of Syunik' in the heart of the Armenian plateau, Jugha gradually grew from a village to a city during the late medieval period. In the 16th century, it boasted a population of 20-40,000 Armenians who were largely occupied with trade and craftsmanship. The oldest khachkars found at the cemetery at Jugha, located in the western part of the city, dated to the 9th to 10th centuries but their construction, as well as that of other elaborately decorated grave markers, continued until 1605, the year when Shah Abbas I of Safavid Persia instituted a policy of scorched earth and ordered the town destroyed and all its inhabitants removed. In addition to the thousands of khachkars, Armenians also erected numerous tombstones in the form of rams, which were intricately decorated with Christian motifs and engravings.〔 According to the French traveler Alexandre de Rhodes, the cemetery still had 10,000 well-preserved khachkars when he visited Jugha in 1648.〔 However, many khachkars were destroyed from this period onward to the point that only 5,000 were counted standing in 1903–1904.〔 Scottish artist and traveler Robert Ker Porter described the cemetery in his 1821 book as follows: 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Armenian cemetery in Julfa」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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