Church of Kish

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Church of Kish

The Church of Kish (Azerbaijani: Kiş kilsəsi) is located in the village of Kish approximately 5km north from Shaki, Azerbaijan and considered to be one of the centres of Albanian-Udi Christian community in Azerbaijan.

History

A medieval tradition, first set down in writing by Movses Kagankatvatsi in his "History of the Country of Aluank" says that the apostle St. Yegishe, a disciple of Thaddeus of Edessa, was martyred at a place called Gis. Kagankatvatsi wrote that in the 7th century …pious Vachagan, the king of Albania, erected a pillar over the dungeon of Yeghishe's martyrdom. Based on the similarity of the names, the location of Gis has been identified as present-day Kish by some commentators. However, because the geographical position of Kish does not seem to match that described by Kagankatvatsi, other commentators have dismissed that theory and have identified Gis as the village of Bomen / Bum 60km to the southeast of Kish, in Gabala district, Uti (Utik) province.

In the 12th century the inhabitants of Kish were Chalcedonian Christians who adhered to the Georgian Church. At that time the church was part of a monastery and was known as the Sourb Astvatzatzin Church. In later centuries it became known as St. Yeghishe the Apostle's Monastery, and continued to function until the 17th century. Kish's Christian population was forced to convert to Islam in the 1720s. After Russia took possession of this region as a result of the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan, many villagers renounced Islam and returned to their Christian faith, though the majority of the population remained Muslim. The Christians appear to have, in public anyway, identified themselves as being ethnically Armenian. The church was re-consecrated (sometime before 1839, when the sanctuary is mentioned in connection with a robbery of its church objects). In 1836 all active churches in this region that were not Georgian or Russian were incorporated into the Armenian Apostolic Church. The monastery had been re-founded by the 1860s, and quickly became an active place of pilgrimage because of its believed connection with St. Yegishe.

Media in Azerbaijan represents the Kish church as the first church built in Caucasian Albania and also the first church built in the Caucasus.

Kish and the Norwegians

In the 1990s Thor Heyerdahl developed a theory of the Black Sea origins of parts of the Scandinavian race. Heyerdahl accepted certain Norse legends as literal truth, in particular stories about Odin, and set about identifying persons and locations mentioned in those legends with real places. Based on similarities of names in Norse mythology and names in the Black Sea-region (e.g. Aesir and Azer / Azov, Odin and Udi) Heyerdahl claimed that the Udi ethnic minority in Azerbaijan was the descendants of the ancestors of the Scandinavians. He travelled to Azerbaijan on a number of occasions in the final two decades of his life and visited the Kish church. Heyerdahl's Odin theory was rejected by all serious historians, archaeologists, and linguists but was accepted as fact within a section of Norway's state-run church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway.

Norwegian Humanitarian Enterprise (NHE), part of Normisyon, an organisation within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway, was established in 1994, in the aftermath of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict, to give aid to internally displaced persons within Azerbaijan. Another branch of Normisyon, Viator Mikrokredit Azerbaijan, runs a bank in the town of Shaki, 5km south of Kish.

Bjorn Wegge, the Director of Information for NHE, initiated a 1997 album involving a Norwegian choir and Azeri musicians and singers. It featured a photograph of the Kish church on its cover. The belief in Heyerdahl's theory is explicitly stated in the choice of the album's title: "The Land We Came From", with the choir's leader stating that Azerbaijan was "a culture that may be our long-forgotten homeland".

In the late 1990s NHE initiated and organised restoration projects of a disused 19th-century Armenian church in the Udi-populated village of Nij, and the church in Kish. Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs funded both projects. Allegations of complicity with the Azerbaijan government in cultural cleansing and the re-writing of history have dogged both projects.

The Kish church project was also initiated by Bjorn Wegge, Storgfjell describes him as "the father of the project". The restoration of the Kish church was preceded by an archaeological excavation that was also run by NHE and paid for by Norway. The chief archaeologist was the Norwegian J. Bjørnar Storfjell. As a result of a visit to the site by Heyerdahl during the excavation, in 2001 Storfjell was appointed by Heyerdahl to be the chief archaeologist of a YUKOS-sponsored archaeological excavation to the Sea of Azov to find evidence to back up Heyerdahl's Odin theory.

Research and dating

In 2000-2003 the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs funded a joint project between Baku State University for Architecture and Construction and the Norwegian Humanitarian Enterprise for archeological research and restoration of the church of Kish. Dr. Vilayat Karimov of Baku's Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography served as the Director of Excavations, and the Archaeological Advisor for the project was J. Bjørnar Storfjell, who currently directs the Thor Heyerdahl Research Centre in Aylesbury, England. Radiocarbon analysis of various objects found on the site showed that the cultic site found beneath the altar of the church dates to about 3000 B.C., while the construction of the existing church building dates to about the 12th century (990-1160 A.D.).

The existing church building cannot be dated to the times of St. Elishe, but the archeological evidence demonstrates that the church is located on an ancient cultic site. It is very unlikely that St. Elishe built in Kish a church in the modern understanding of this word. Even if the person did exist, it appears likely that he built only the altar or used an existing pagan cult structure.

See also

• Udi people
• Caucasian Albania

External links

• Photo of Church
• Research on Armenian Architecture: Kish village, Shaki District, Republic of Azerbaijan
• The Kish Church