Caravanserai in the village of Aruch

In the village of Talish, Ashtarak district, Karbibasar district

Ashtarak district – Ashtarak, Talish village, since 11.11.1970, Aruch

Architecture

The caravanserai belonging to Azerbaijanis in the village of Aruch was destroyed by Armenians in 2008 and left in a dilapidated state. Only the northeastern part of the building remains.

It is located 1 km northwest of the village of Talysh, on the left side of the Yerevan-Gumru highway. The caravanserai was built in the 13th century. The caravanserai belongs to the type of single-hall, three-aisled caravanserai and was distinguished by its elegant, clean masonry. Six pairs of pillars were installed in the longitudinal hall of the three-aisled structure, which carried the main weight of the vaulted roof. The only entrance door opened onto the southern facade, and the walls and corners of the building were reinforced with towers.
It was located on the roadside and served as a place to stay for people passing through, especially travelers, and as a warehouse for merchants to sell and store their goods.
The village of Talish, where the caravanserai is located, was the homeland of the Turkic-Oguz tribes, and only Azerbaijanis lived in the village.
The village of Talish in the Ashtarak region is a village rich in material and cultural monuments that are the heritage of ancient Armenian-Turkic and various Turkic tribes since the 7th century. The caravanserai, temple and part of the residential area in the village are surrounded by fortress walls. The thick fortress walls, built in the 13th-14th centuries, were able to withstand centuries of wars and attacks. The village population was forcibly relocated in the 1940s and 1950s, and Armenians (370 people in 43 families) brought from Iran and Turkey were settled in the village.

The information about the Talysh caravanserai is included in the detailed Ottoman notebooks compiled in 1590 and 1728 and in the sources of Tsarist Russia, and it is important in terms of being a monument of Azerbaijani heritage. The toponym is based on the ethnonym "Talysh" from the Turkic tribe of Qizilbash and is an ethnotoponym. It is a simple toponym in structure. .