General information about the Ordubad district
A district stretching along the Araz at the foot of the Lesser Caucasus: its borders, villages, history and protected monuments in one place.
Ordubad lies in the south-east of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, at the foot of the Lesser Caucasus range. Its terrain is mostly mountainous, partly foothills, and only 5–6 per cent is lowland. It borders Iran to the south and Armenia to the north and east, and neighbours the Julfa district to the west. Its centre is the town of Ordubad.
The district covers 978.99 square kilometres; according to 2019 data, more than 50 thousand people live here. It comprises one town, two settlements — Shahriyar and Paraghachay — and 43 villages. Each of the villages, such as Aylis, Nusnus, Dirnis, Kalaki, Tivi, Nasirvaz and Pazmari, keeps its own history and its own customs alive.
Ordubad was established as an administrative district on 8 August 1930. In 1963 it was abolished and merged into the Julfa district, and in January 1965 it was restored as an independent district.
The exact date of Ordubad's founding is unknown, but this land is regarded as one of the most ancient human settlements. The rock carvings of Gamigaya, and the settlements and necropolises of the II–I millennia BC around Sabirkand, Plovdag and Kharaba Gilan, are pages of this memory written in stone.
Lying at the crossroads of important trade routes, Ordubad has always been connected with the Near and Middle East. From the second half of the XVI century, Ordubad silk was exported to Venice, Marseille and Amsterdam; in the early XX century it won gold medals 13 times at international exhibitions. It is recorded that 40 varieties of grape were once grown in the district.
The district has more than 100 historical, architectural and archaeological monuments, large and small, more than 30 of which are protected by the state: the Juma, Sərşəhər, Anbars and Mingis mosques, the Qeysariyya, a XVI-century bathhouse, 48 kahrizes, the Aza bridge on the Silk Road, the Kharaba Gilan reserve, and the house museums of academician Yusif Mammadaliyev and the writer Mammad Said Ordubadi. Plane trees more than 600 years old still cast their shade in the town.
Distinguished by its architecture and monuments, Ordubad was declared a town-reserve in 1977. Travellers such as I. Chopin, the Polish researcher A. Petzold and the French writer Alexandre Dumas wrote with admiration about the beauty of this land. (Source: Presidential Library.)
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