Church > Saint Gevorg Church of Herik

Saint Gevorg Church of Herik

Location

The church is located in Herik village of Kashatagh region (Lachin region) of the Artsakh Republic. In the Middle Ages, the village was mentioned as Hayri, Heri, Herik and it was one of the tax-paying villages of Tatev Monastery (Hakobyan 2009, 23-24). In Soviet years it was called Ahmadlu. The village is located on the right bank of the Aghavnaget River, in its upper stream (Karapetyan 2001, 132).

Architectural-compositional description

The church is located in the center of the village (Fig. 1), it is a single-nave, vaulted church externally with a gable roof which is supported by an arch composed of a pair of pilasters (Fig. 2, 3). It is built of raw stone and lime mortar. The only entrance is from the south, it lacks any vestries (Fig. 4). The baptismal font is inbuilt in the northern wall. The walls of the building are fastened with old gravestones, the entrance lintel is also an old gravestone, and on the right side of the entrance there is an embedded khachkar made of yellow limestone (Fig. 5). The inscription and crosses engraved on the cornice and corbels of the latter were deliberately scratched in the late 1980s. At present, only one line of the inscription on the corbels can be read, which presents the date of the creation of the khachkar: “In the year of 1517”, and in the 1960s it was also possible to read “God have mercy․․․ /” (CAI 1982, 195).

Fig. 2 The plan of the church, S. Karapetyan, Armenian cultural monuments in the region of Karabakh, Yerevan, 2001, p. 132.

Fig. 4 The southern front of the church, photo by Z. Rkoyan.

The condition before and after the war

The Kurds who had settled in the village and later Turkified used the church as a barn, also added a new entrance. During the Soviet years, the church was not subjected to intentional destruction or artificial modifications, only the crosses and inscriptions on the khachkar next to the entrance lintel were scratched. The church was not damaged during the Artsakh wars either.

After the transfer of Kashatagh region under Azerbaijani control in December 2020, changes and destruction in the site of ​​the monument have not been documented so far.

Fig. 1 The general view of the church, photo by Z. Rkoyan.

Fig. 3 The interior of the church, photo by Z. Rkoyan.

Fig. 5 The khachkar embedded in the entrance of the church, photo by Z. Rkoyan.

Bibliography

  1. CAI 1982 – Corpus of Armenian Inscriptions, Release 5, Artsakh, compiled by S. Barkhudaryan, Yerevan.
  2. Karapetyan 2001 – Karapetyan, Armenian cultural monuments in the region of Karabakh, Yerevan.
  3. Hakobyan 2009 – Hakobyan A., Historical-geographical and epigraphic studies (Artsakh and Utik), Vienna-Yerevan.
Saint Gevorg Church of Herik
Saint Gevorg Church of Herik
Saint Gevorg Church of Herik
Artsakh