Oğuz (city)
41°04′15″N 47°27′30″E / 41.07083°N 47.45833°E
Oğuz | |
---|---|
City & Municipality | |
Coat of arms of Oğuz Coat of arms | |
Coordinates: 41°04′15″N 47°27′30″E / 41.07083°N 47.45833°E | |
Country | ![]() |
Rayon | Oğuz |
Established | 1968 |
Elevation | 630 m (2,070 ft) |
Population (2010)[1] | |
• Total | 7,002 |
Time zone | UTC+4 (AZT) |
• Summer (DST) | UTC+5 (AZT) |
Area code | +994 024 |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Afra_Hotel%2C_Oguz_%28P1090485%29.jpg/250px-Afra_Hotel%2C_Oguz_%28P1090485%29.jpg)
Oğuz (transliterated, Oghuz) is a city and municipality in, and the capital of, the Oghuz Rayon of Azerbaijan Republic. The city was known as Vartashen until 1991 and was renamed to Oğuz in 1991.
Etymology
Before 1991 the town was called Vartashen, which means town of roses in Armenian (Armenian: Վարդաշեն); 'Vard' meaning rose and 'shen' meaning town or village. This is in reference to the abundance of roses that naturally grow in this place.[2].
The name Oğuz, given to the town in 1991, was taken from the old Turkic tribe of Oghuz.
Population
Until 1991, Vartashen was mainly a Udi village, where the Vartashen dialect of the Udi language was spoken by about 3000 people in the 1980s. The Udis of Vartashen belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church and had Armenian surnames. During the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Udis as well as the Armenians were expelled to Armenia. Some 50 Udi people remained in the town.[3]
There were also Tat-speaking Mountain Jews in Vartashen. Most of them have emigrated to Israel, but possibly 80 have stayed.[4][5]
Twin towns — sister cities
Oghuz is twinned with:
Nova Gorica, Slovenia
References
- ^ World Gazetteer: Azerbaijan Archived June 22, 2011, at the Wayback Machine – World-Gazetteer.com
- ^ Jost Gippert «Relative Clauses in Vartashen Udi Preliminary Remarks» «Iran and the Caucasus» Brill Publishers 2011. Стр. 208: The Armenian-based etymology given there (Arm. vard ‘rose’ and šēn ‘village’, i.e. ‘rose-village’) seems first to have been proposed by A. Berger (Berže) as it is also found in Seidlitz 1863: 171 (where, however, the name is spelt ‘Wartaschîn’). The Udi pronunciation of today is vartašen.
- ^ Wolfgang Schulze: Towards a History of Udi. International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics 1, 2005, pp. 55–91.
- ^ Sarah Marcus: Mountain Jews. Tablet, Tbilisi, 18. Januar 2018.
- ^ Michael Zand: Language and Literature. In: Liya Mikdash-Shamailov: Mountain Jews: Customs and Daily Life in the Caucasus. The Israel Museum (Muzeon Yisrael), Jerusalem 2002, p. 37.
External links
- Oğuz (city) at GEOnet Names Server
- Бежанов М. Краткие сведения о селе Варташен и его жителях // СМОМПК. Тифлис, 1892. Вып. 14.