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.
Etymology
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.
History
Daskasan received the status of a city օn March 16, 1948․
The mountains of Dashkasan were used as pastures for a long time. The most beautiful pastures of the South Caucasus are located here and in Khoshbulag. Khoshbulag was inhabited by the primitive people in the Stone Age whose main engagement was hunting. In the 3rd century B.C. people engaged in animal breeding rose to Khoshbulag pastures. The tradition is followed up today. Dashkasan summer pastures are 2000 m high from sea level. Different animal-breeding tribes settled here and built Cyclops-like small towers to protect themselves from attacks. Since that period Dashkasan turned to the place of settlement.
Tumuli type burying monuments found in the archaeological digs carried out in 1959–1960 in the places of ancient settlement in Dashkasan show that people used this area as summer pastures and there was only one way to those pastures in summer- north-east, the valley of the river Kur.
The Middle Ages in Dashkasan are characterized with the development of cultural work.
After World War II Dashkasan was turned to an industrial town due to mining of iron ore deposits. It began to form on the basis of a temporary settlement of builders and a small mining settlement that arose during the period of preparation for the development of the richest iron ore deposits of industrial importance. In 1948 it received city status.
The region Dashkasan is very rich in natural resources. In the period of the Soviet Union the so-called strategic products of the region, i.e., ironstone, aluminum, cobalt, marble and others were actively exploited.
Many of the buildings in present-day Dashkasan were constructed by German POWs during the aftermath of World War II. Workers that died during the city's construction are buried in a German cemetery alongside the road between Dashkasan and Gəncə.
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.
Lower Karhat
The village is situated on the southeast-facing slope of a gorge lying on the left bank of the river Artinajur, a kilometre east of the district centre, at an altitude of 1,280 to 1,380 metres above sea level. It retains some burial mounds dating back to the period between the Bronze and Iron Ages, as attested by the results of excavations conducted there.
The monuments of material culture preserved in its territory prove that it has existed since at least the Middle Ages, although the earliest sources mentioning it date from the 17th century, when it became a scriptorium. There are 6 manuscripts that have reached us or are known. According to a record from 1691, a certain Hakob was Head of Karhat village.
Economy
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.’)
The locals used to extract iron ore and obtain iron, but when iron imported from Russia proved far cheaper, they gave it up.
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.
Between 1894 and 1895, some of the local Armenians founded another village in the area of the upper course of the river Artinajur, 4 kilometres south-west of their previous place of living. It was called Verin (i.e. ‘Upper’) Karhat while the old village which was later renamed Nerkin (i.e. ‘Lower’) Karhat.
Education
In 1905, when the Tsarist Government had granted permission to Armenian educational institutions to resume their activity, the Armenians of Karhat convened a meeting on September 27 of the same year and decided to found a one-year school. Gandzak inhabitant Mrs. Yeghisabet N. Hambardzumian Malkhassiants sponsored the construction of that school in memory of her late husband Stepanos Malkhassiants.