Western Azerbaijan Heritage

It is located in the city of Lo­ru, 4 km from Stepanavan east of Jela­loghlu, on the left bank of the Kolagiren river in Dagh Borc­hali mahal.

Dag Borchali was named Lo­ru, Kolagiran river – Dzora­get, Jelaloghlu - Stepanavan.

Architec­ture

Loru district, one of the districts of Ka­ra­bakh Baylar­bay, and its cen­ter, Loru city, were destroyed after the Mon­gol invasion in 1236, and the castle was also damaged as a result of this destruction. Although it was repaired in the 14th-15th cen­turies, it was destroyed again as a result of the attacks that took place in the la­ter period. The castle whose re­mains are loca­ted in the area is presented as an Armenian mo­nu­ment.

Loru city and region are named after the castle. It was built for defense purposes in the area where Azerbaijanis live. Although Lori Castle is presented in the sources as an Armenian castle of the 11th century, located near the Lori Berd village of Lori Governorate, Armenia, it is written as if it was built by David Anhoghin in 1065 to be the capital of the Tashir-Dzoraget Kingdom, but the fact that Azerbaijanis lived in the area, does not confirm this.

In 1880, Borchali uezd was organized within Tbilisi Governorate, and its largest district was Loru. Since Loru forms the mountainous part of Borchali, it is also called Dagh (Mountain) Borchali. It is written that the city of Loru once existed in this area, and that city was destroyed by the Mongols in 1236, rebuilt in the 14th-15th centuries, and subjected to Ottoman and Iranian attacks in the 15th-18th centuries. In 1918, the armed forces of the Armenian Dashnak government suddenly attacked and occupied the territories of Loru and Pambak mahals. At the Armenian-Geor­gian conference held in Tbilisi in Ja­nuary 1919, Borchali mahal (actually Loru district) was declared a neutral zone. In September 1920, the Georgian government, worried about the occu­pation of Gumri by Turkish troops, took control of the Loru neutral zone. In 1921, an agreement was reached bet­ween the Bolshevik governments of Georgia and Armenia on the transfer of Loru to Armenia.

The fact that the interior archi­tec­ture of the mosque in the fortress, which is one of the nine mahals of the Karabakh Baylarbay of the Safavid sta­te, is similar to the Shusha Gov­haragha Mos­que con­firms that Azer­baijanis lived and ruled the area.