BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 29
By Ilhama Isabalayeva – Trend:
The Armenians, who profaned the Islamic and Christian cultural heritage of Azerbaijan during the period of occupation of Azerbaijani lands, hypocritically claim that the Azerbaijanis destroyed the Armenian "church" in the Jabrayil district during the Second Karabakh War, Deputy Director of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS), Najaf Musabayli, said, Trend reports.
“However, Armenians have never lived in Jabrayil and, accordingly, there are no traces of Armenian history there,” Musabayli said.
“We are actually talking about a new building, which was commissioned in 2017 for the performance of religious rites by the Armenian military occupiers,” the ANAS representative stressed.
“The Armenians believe that they can destroy hundreds of our villages and cities, build a "church" for themselves and declare it a historical monument, and, according to their logic, this is normal,” the scientist added.
“In violation of international law, the Armenians, by involving scientists from other countries, carried out archaeological excavations in the ancient Azerbaijani Azykh Cave, which is one of the world's oldest sites of primitive man,” said Musabayli.
“Azykh Cave is one of the monuments of exceptional importance in world archeology. In his recent speech, the head of the Azerbaijani state once again reminded that this cave was discovered by the Azerbaijani scientist Mammadali Huseynov in 1960, and since then research has been carried out in it. The president of Azerbaijan noted that during the occupation, Armenia illegally conducted excavations there, and stressed that from now on, Azerbaijani scientists, together with invited foreign scientists, will continue scientific research in the cave. The Azykh Cave camp, which is more than a million years old, is the only monument reflecting the sequence of the most ancient stages in the history of mankind,” the scientist said.
According to Musabayli, April 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Professor Mammadali Huseynov (1922-1994), who discovered the Azykh Cave and conducted intensive research there for more than 20 years.
“One of the first steps in continuing legal research in the cave could be the organization of an international scientific conference timed to coincide with the anniversary of this scientist,” he added.