Nagorno-Karabakh

Nagorno-Karabakh is a landlocked region in the South Caucasus, lying between Lower Karabakh and Zangezur and covering the southeastern range of the Lesser Caucasus mountains. The region is mostly mountainous and forested.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but most of the region is governed by the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a de facto independent but unrecognized state established on the basis of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of the Azerbaijan SSR. Azerbaijan has not exercised political authority over the region since the advent of the Karabakh movement in 1988. Since the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994, representatives of the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group on the region's disputed status.

The region is usually equated with the administrative borders of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast comprising an area of 4,400 square kilometres (1,700 sq mi). The historical area of the region, however, encompasses approximately 8,223 square kilometres (3,175 sq mi).

Nagorno-Karabakh Republic

Nagorno-Karabakh, officially the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR; Armenian: Լեռնային Ղարաբաղի Հանրապետություն Lernayin Gharabaghi Hanrapetut'yun), Artsakh Republic or Republic of Artsakh (Armenian: Արցախի Հանրապետություն Arts'akhi Hanrapetut'yun), is a republic in the South Caucasus recognised only by three non-United Nations (UN) states. Recognised by the UN as part of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh controls most of the territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and some of the surrounding area, giving it a border with Armenia to the west and Iran to the south.

The predominantly Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh was claimed by both the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and the First Republic of Armenia when both countries became independent in 1918. After the Soviet Union established control over the area, it created the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) within the Azerbaijan SSR in 1923. In the final years of the Soviet Union, the region re-emerged as a source of dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In 1991, a referendum held in the NKAO and the neighbouring Shahumian region resulted in a declaration of independence. Large-scale ethnic conflict led to the 1991–1994 Nagorno-Karabakh War, which ended with a ceasefire that left the current borders.

Karabakh

Karabakh (Armenian: Ղարաբաղ Gharabagh or Արցախ, Artsakh; Azerbaijani: Qarabağ) is a geographic region in present-day eastern Armenia and southwestern Azerbaijan, extending from the highlands of the Lesser Caucasus down to the lowlands between the rivers Kura and Aras. It includes three regions: Highland Karabakh (historical Artsakh, present-day Nagorno-Karabakh), Lowland Karabakh (the southern Kura-steppes), and a part of Syunik.

Origins of the name

The name "Karabakh" or "Gharabagh" is generally believed to originate from Turkic and Persian, literally meaning "black garden". An alternative theory, proposed by Bagrat Ulubabyan, is that it has a Turkic-Armenian origin, meaning "Greater Baghk", a reference to Ktish-Baghk (later: Dizak), one of the principalities of Artsakh during the eleventh to thirteenth centuries.

The placename is first mentioned in the Georgian Chronicles (Kartlis Tskhovreba), as well in Persian sources from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The name became common after the 1230s, when the region was conquered by the Mongols. The first time the name was mentioned in medieval Armenian sources was in the fifteenth century, in Tovma Metsop'etsi's History of Tamerlane and His Successors.