Karabakh in the context of "Stepanakert"

The Kurds in Azerbaijan form a part of the historically significant Kurdish population in the post-Soviet space. Kurds established a presence in the Caucasus with the establishment of the Kurdish Shaddadid dynasty in the 10th and 11th centuries, Some Kurdish tribes were recorded in Karabakh by the end of the sixteenth century. However, virtually the entire contemporary Kurdish population in the modern Azerbaijan descends from migrants from 19th-century Qajar Iran.

The Armenian-Azerbaijani war (1918–1920) was a conflict that took place in the South Caucasus in regions with a mixed Armenian-Azerbaijani population, broadly encompassing what are now modern-day Azerbaijan and Armenia. It began during the final months of World War I and ended with the establishment of Soviet rule.

The conflict took place against the backdrop of the Russian Civil War and the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Mutual territorial claims, made by the newly formed Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and the Republic of Armenia, led to their respective support for Azerbaijani and Armenian militias in the disputed territories. Armenia fought against Azerbaijani militias in the Erivan Governorate of the former Russian Empire, while Azerbaijan fought Armenian claims to the Karabakh region. The war was characterized by outbreaks of massacres and ethnic cleansing (such as the March Days, the September Days, the Shusha massacre, and more broadly, the massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia), which changed the demographics of the region.

Aghdam (Azerbaijani: Ağdam) is a town and the nominal capital of the Aghdam District of Azerbaijan. Founded in the 18th century, it was granted city status in 1828 and grew considerably during the Soviet period. Aghdam lies 26 km (16 miles) from Khankendi at the eastern foot of the Karabakh Range, on the outskirts of the Karabakh plain.

Before the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, butter, wine and brandy, machine, and silk factories, and an airport and two railway stations functioned there. By 1989, Aghdam had 28,031 inhabitants. As Azerbaijani forces withdrew from Karabakh following political turmoil in the country during the war, Armenian forces captured Aghdam in July 1993. The heavy fighting forced the city's population to flee eastwards. Upon the seizure, Armenian forces sacked the town. Until 2020, it was de facto a part of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, and was almost entirely ruined and uninhabited.

The Principality of Khachen (Modern Armenian: Խաչենի իշխանություն, Khach’eni ishkhanut’yun) was a medieval Armenian principality on the territory of historical Artsakh (present-day Karabakh). The provinces of Artsakh and Utik were attached to the Kingdom of Armenia in antiquity, although they were later lost to Caucasian Albania. In the early medieval period, these provinces were under Sassanid and then Arab suzerainty until the establishment of the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia in the 9th century. From the 12th century, the principality of Khachen dominated the region. The Byzantine emperor Constantine VII addressed his letters to the prince of Khachen with the inscription "To Prince of Khachen, Armenia."

All of the contemporary sources refer to the ruler of the principality an Armenian prince. The Armenian princely family of Hasan Jalalyan began ruling much of Khachen and Artsakh in 1214. In 1216, the Jalalyans founded the Gandzasar monastery which became the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Catholicos of Albania, forced to Khachen from Partav (Barda) by the steady Islamization of the city. The Khamsa (The Five) principalities maintained Armenian autonomy in the region throughout the Persian-Ottoman Wars. In 1603 the Persians established a protectorate over the Khamsa and sponsored the establishment of a local khanate in 1750.

Nagorno-Karabakh (/nəˌɡɔːrnoʊ kərəˈbɑːk/ , nə-GOR-noh kər-ə-BAHK; lit. 'Upper Karabakh') is a region in Azerbaijan, covering the southeastern stretch of the Lesser Caucasus mountain range. Part of the greater region of Karabakh, it spans the area between Lower Karabakh and Syunik. Its terrain mostly consists of mountains and forestland.

Most of Nagorno-Karabakh was governed by ethnic Armenians under the breakaway Republic of Artsakh – also known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) – from the end of the first Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1994 to the announcement of the dissolution of the republic in September 2023. Representatives from the two sides held numerous inconclusive peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group regarding the region's disputed status, with its majority-Armenian population over time variously advocating either for Artsakh's independence from both states or for its integration into Armenia.

Shusha (Azerbaijani: Şuşa, (listen)) or Shushi (Armenian: Շուշի) is a city in Azerbaijan, in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Situated at an altitude of 1,400–1,800 metres (4,600–5,900 ft) in the Karabakh mountains, the city was a mountain resort in the Soviet era.

Most sources date Shusha's establishment to the 1750s by Panah Ali Khan, founder of the Karabakh Khanate, coinciding with the foundation of the fortress of Shusha. Some attribute this to an alliance between Panah Ali Khan and Melik Shahnazar, the local Armenian prince (melik) of Varanda. In these accounts, the name of the town originated from a nearby Armenian village called Shosh or Shushikent (see § Etymology for alternative explanations). Conversely, some sources describe Shusha as an important center within the self-governing Armenian melikdoms of Karabakh in the 1720s, and others say the plateau was already the site of an Armenian fortification. From the mid-18th century to 1822, Shusha was the capital of the Karabakh Khanate. The town became one of the cultural centers of the South Caucasus after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus region from Qajar Iran in the first half of the 19th century. Over the course of the 19th century, the town grew in size to become a city, and was home to many Armenian and Azerbaijani intellectuals, poets, writers and musicians (including Azerbaijani ashiks, mugham singers and kobuz players).

Arran (Middle Persian form; Persian: اران or اردهان), also known as Aran or Ardhan, was a geographical name used in ancient and medieval times to signify a historically-Iranian region which lay within the triangle of land, lowland in the east and mountainous in the west, formed by the junction of the Kura and Aras rivers, including the highland and lowland Karabakh, Mil plain and parts of the Mughan plain. In pre-Islamic times, it corresponded roughly to the territory of the modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan. The term is the Middle Persian equivalent to the Greco-Roman Albania. It was known as Aghvania, Alvan-k in Armenian, and Al-ran (Arabized form of Arran) in Arabic.

Today, the term Aran is mainly used in Azerbaijan to indicate territories consisting of Mil and Mughan plains (mostly, Beylagan, Imishli, Kurdamir, Saatly, Sabirabad provinces of the Republic of Azerbaijan). It has also been used by Iranian historian Enayatollah Reza to refer to the country of Azerbaijan, freeing the name "Azerbaijan" to refer to a region within Iran. The bulk of the territory of the republic of Azerbaijan was the historic Shirvan, as well as Quba/Qubbah).

Hasan-Jalalyan (Armenian: Հասան-Ջալալյաններ) is a medieval Armenian dynasty that ruled over parts of the South Caucasus. From the early thirteenth century, the family held sway in Khachen (Greater Artsakh) in what are now the regions of lower Karabakh, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Syunik in modern Armenia. The family was founded by Hasan-Jalal Dawla, an Armenian feudal prince from Khachen. The Hasan-Jalalyans maintained their autonomy over the course of several centuries of nominal foreign domination by the Seljuk Turks, Persians and Mongols. They, along with the other Armenian princes and meliks of Khachen, saw themselves as holding the last bastion of Armenian independence in the region.

Through their patronage of churches and monasteries, Armenian culture flourished in the region. By the late sixteenth century, the Hasan-Jalalyan family had branched out to establish principalities in nearby Gulistan and Jraberd. Along with the separately ruled melikdoms of Varanda and Dizak, these five principalities formed the Five Melikdoms of Karabakh, also known as the Melikdoms of Khamsa.