Mounds in Aghtala village

In the village of Aghtala, Dilijan district, in Gazakh district of Ganja Governorate

Ganja Governorate-Yelizavetpol, Dilijan uezd-Tavush, Aghtala village were abolished on 03.01.1935.

Archaeological monument

Aghtala mounds were destroyed by Armenians, and many of the items removed from there are presented as "Armenian exhibits" in museums in Armenia.

In the 70s of the 20th century, the burial mounds discovered by Armenian archaeologists in these ruins were attributed to the end of the 1st millennium BC, approximately to the 3rd-2nd centuries BC, indicating that the settlement of Aghtala by the Oghuz Turks is at least 2000-2500 years old. In Armenian sources, the name of the village is found for the first time in the documents of 1873. According to official statistics, 34 Azerbaijani families (218 people) lived in this village at that time. The fact that the name of a village that existed until 1800 did not appear in I. Chopin's lists and reappeared almost 40 years after the compilation of these lists indicates that in the period of 1826-1829, the Armenian-Russian military formations destroyed the "dead villages whose names have been forgotten" and Aghtala was one of the 81 villages he summarized in the column. However, the ancient owners of the village, Azerbaijanis, restored Aghtala, and this historical reality is recorded in all documents after 1873. In 1897, the number of the village population was 314 people, in 1914 it was 396 people. In 1918, the village was burned and most of its population was destroyed. In 1922, after the Soviet government's guarantee of safety, only 62 people returned to the village, i.e. one less than the population in 1914. On September 9, 1930, Aghtala was included in the division of Sevan district as an administrative unit. By the decision of the Central Executive Committee of the Armenian SSC dated January 3, 1935, Aghtala was abolished as an administrative unit, and its territory was given to the Armenian villages of Sevan district.

Mounds tell about the ancient history of the village. It is important from the point of view of studying the ancient history of Azerbaijan. The toponym is derived from the combination of the word "ağ" which means "small, small, small" in the ancient Turkish language and the word "tala" which means "openness in the middle of the forest".