Saki

Overview

Sheki is one of the most ancient cities of Azerbaijan. It is mentioned as Shaki, Sheka, Shakki and others in a number of medieval sources.

Sheki has been called Nukha for a long time. One of the ancient authors Ptolemy cited the settlement Niga among other Albanian cities. A. Bakikhanov wrote that Nukha is the same Nakhy and Naghy city judging from its location and it was considered one of the ancient cities of Shirvan. A.Y. Krymski also agreed on the version that Niga is the ancestor of Nukha.

Yet, there were a number of opponents to the said version in the early 19th century. Academician V. Dorn considered that Niga was a city that located between Liberia and Alazan and that it can not be confused with Nukha. The connection between the word Nukha and the Niga settlement, famous since ancient times, is quite a disputable issue.

The word Sheki originates from the name of the Saxon tribes that wandered from the north side of the Black Sea through Derbend passage and to the South Caucasus and from there to the Asia Minor in the 7th century B.C. They occupied the best lands in the South Caucasus and called the area Sakasena. Sheki was one of the areas occupied by Saxons.

Sheki was one of the biggest cities of Alban states in the 1 century. The temple of ancient Albania was located there. In its administrative division the Caucasus Albania was composed 11 provinces. One of them was Sheki province that located in...more

History

There are traces of the large-scale settlements in Sheki that date to more than 2700 years ago. The original settlement dates back to the late Bronze Age. During its history the town used to be devastated many times, so the most part of the historic and architectural monuments currently preserved are dated to the 16th-19th centuries. For many centuries, Sheki has been famous as the center of silkworm-breeding in Azerbaijan. Originally located on the left bank of the river Kish, the town sited lower down the hill, however Sheki was moved to its present location after a devastating flood in 1772 and became the capital of Sheki Khanate. In the second half of the 19th century Sheki became a large centre of silkworm breeding in Azerbaijan. At the Khanabad silk-mill the number of looms in 1854 reached 42. The looms, which earlier were driven by horses, now were operated by steam. In 1855 another silk-mill with 30 looms was in use in Sheki.In the 19th century in Sheki the historian Fattakh was working, he wrote "The Brief History of the Sheki Khans". Ashug Molla Djuma (1854-1920),the Sheki poet, worked at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. Rashidbek Ismailov born in Sheki, was the author of the "Brief History of the Caucasus", published in Tiflis in 1904. In the early years of the 20th century, according to some evidence, there were 127 silk-mills in the Sheki district, in which 3505 workers were engaged, the annual productivity these enterprises being worth 1,192,000 roubles. In the 1915 it approximately reached 10 million roubles. Apart from silk, they exported tobacco, ornaments, fruit, various agricultural produce. In 1856 the population was 18,000, while in 1897 it rose to 26,000. In 1908 the population was 37,000 while on January 1,1916 it reached 52,243. M.F.Akhundov greatly esteemed A.S.Pushkin, M.Y.Lermontov, N.V.Gogol and other Russian poets and writers, he maintained friendly relations with the Decembrists, who were exiled to the Caucasus by the tsarist government. As the new location was near the village of Nukha, the city became also known as Nukha, until 1960 when it reverted back to the name Sheki, after the Sak tribe.