A Truthful History

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THE INVASION OF THE QIZILBASH ARMY TO KARABAGH AND THE WAR AGAINST COLONEL KARIAGIN

At that time Qizilbashs thought: "As Ibrahim Khan was defendingKarabagh and now he is dead, so we must go and conquer it".

Colonel Kariagin was dispatched from Tiflis to (113b) Karabagh withfour hundred soldiers. He had a battle with the Qizilbash troops in the vicinity ofAskeran. He could not move further from there, because of the counteractions of the hugeQizilbash forces. Therefore, he was back to Tarnakiut. However Abbas Mirza had senta detachment of his army under the command of Amir Khan Jahanbiglu to the aforementionedfortress ahead of time to defend it. So when the Colonel reached the fortress Tarnakiutwith his soldiers, he found the gates blocked. He ordered to open fire at the gate. It wasdestroyed. The Russian troop entered the fortress and murdered all the Qizilbashs there. Amir Khan Jahanbiglu, their Commander-in-Chief was so scared that threw himself down thefortress wall and died.

The Russians stayed there for several days, surrounded by Qizilbasharmy. They were short of food and Vani Atabegov of Jraberd provided them with food duringthe nights several times. Finally, they realized it was hard to get bread like that, andthe Colonel with his hundred soldiers came out of the fortress at night and passed by thelane through the mountains towards the fortress of Jermuk. There the Armenians providedthem with food and they picked the way to Ganje, from there moved to Tiflis. Once againthe Colonel took an army [from Ganje] and fought with Abbas Mirza by the ZagamRiver, defeated him and made him run away to Iran. At that time Fath Ali Shah hadcome (114a) with a huge army and stopped by the bank of the Arax. In August of the sameyear H. Ex. Prince Tsitsianov took an army and went to fight against him. He [Tsitsianov]smashed him and made him flee to Araq and Azerbaijan. Then again he returned to Georgia.