Дашкәсән: Тарихы мен мәдениеті

Dashkasan (, ) is a city, municipality and the capital of the Dashkasan District of Azerbaijan. It has a population of 10,801. The municipality consists of the city of Dashkasan and the village of Alunitdağ.

The official Azerbaijani name of the settlement is Dashkasan, which translated from Azerbaijani means "cutting stone" (Daş stone, kesan cut, cut). In the northeast and south of the city are the former Armenian villages of Upper Karhat and Lower Karhat, whose Azerbaijani names are Yuxarı Daşkasan and Aşağı Daşkasan.

The name of Karhat indicates what the local business was: it is composed of the word ‘kar,’ (Armenian for ‘stone,’) and the root ‘hat’ of the verb ‘hatel,’ i. e. (Armenian for ‘to quarry.’)

By the second half of the 19th century, the number of the Karhat Armenians engaged in husbandry was reduced because of the appropriation of most of the village lands by the Siemens German Company. Gandzak inhabitant Mrs. Yeghisabet N. Hambardzumian Malkhassiants sponsored the construction of that school in memory of her late husband Stepanos Malkhassiants. St. Stepanossian Unisex School opened in 1908. That year, the school had 54 pupils. In 1909, the school had a single teacher and 70 schoolchildren, including 4 girls. In 1911, the school had 82 pupils of which 6 were girls and 2 teachers. In 1913, the school closed since it had no teachers.

According to some manuscripts, Karhat had two churches: St. Hakob church, mentioned in 1656, and Sourb Astvatsatsin church (demolished in 1927), mentioned in 1656 and 1659. 1852, 1861, 1872, 1878) attest that the village had a church with a wooden roof called St. Stepanos. From 1882 (1882, 1885), the same sanctuary is known as a stone monument dedicated to the Holy Virgin. In the centre of the village, there are inscribed cross stones dating from the 9th to 11th centuries. Later the inhabitants of Karhat moved that valuable cross stone to the centre of the village, where it stood until the deportation of Armenians in 1989.

The church of Verin Karhat was built on the eastern edge of the village at the left mouth of Artinajr river. The building of the chւռցհ was consecrated with the name of Holy Translator. In 1914, the spiritual authorities satisfied the request of the village residents to repair the roof of the church. The church was destroyed in the 1920s.