Lachin

Lachin; is a town in Azerbaijan and the administrative centre of the Lachin District. It is located within the strategic Lachin corridor, which links the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. The town was occupied by Armenian forces in 1992, during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, and its local Azerbaijani and Kurdish population was expelled, while Armenians settled in. The town came under the de facto control of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh, administered as part of its Kashatagh Province. It came under the supervision of the Russian peacekeeping force following the ceasefire agreement that ended the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Lachin and the villages of Sus and Zabukh were returned under Azerbaijan's control on 26 August 2022 as part of the 2020 ceasefire agreement. History Early history Cuneiform inscriptions dating back to the Urartian period have been found in the caves surrounding the town. The area was first mentioned by Armenian sources as Berdadzor, a canton of the historic Artsakh province of Greater Armenia; it was alternatively transcribed as Beradzor, Berdzor, or Berdzork. The reputed author Movses Kaghankatvatsi mentions a so-called Berdzor horse purportedly indigenous to the region, as does Makar Barkhudaryan, an Apostolic bishop, traveler, polymath, and ethnographer from Shusha. During the mediaeval period, the town Berdzor was mentioned as being a part of the Artsakh province within the domain of the Armenian Bagratid Kingdom.