Oğuz (city)

Oğuz (transliterated, Oghuz) is a city and municipality in, and the capital of, the Oghuz Rayon of Azerbaijan Republic. The city was known as Vartashen until 1991 and was renamed to Oğuz in 1991.

Oğuz
City & Municipality
Coat of arms
Oğuz
Coordinates: 41°04′15″N 47°27′30″E
Country Azerbaijan
RayonOğuz
Established1968
Elevation
630 m (2,070 ft)
Population
 (2010)[1]
 • Total7,002
Time zoneUTC+4 (AZT)
 • Summer (DST)UTC+5 (AZT)
Area code(s)+994 024
Afra Hotel, Oğuz

Etymology

Before 1991 the town was called Vartashen, which means town of roses in Armenian (Armenian: Վարդաշեն); 'Vard' meaning rose and 'shen' meaning town or village. This is in reference to the abundance of roses that naturally grow in this place.[2].

The name Oğuz, given to the town in 1991, was taken from the old Turkic tribe of Oghuz.

Population

Until 1991, Vartashen was mainly a Udi village, where the Vartashen dialect of the Udi language was spoken by about 3000 people in the 1980s. The Udis of Vartashen belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church and had Armenian surnames. During the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Udis as well as the Armenians were expelled to Armenia. Some 50 Udi people remained in the town.[3]

There were also Tat-speaking Mountain Jews in Vartashen. Most of them have emigrated to Israel, but possibly 80 have stayed.[4][5]

Twin towns — sister cities

Oghuz is twinned with:

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References
  1. World Gazetteer: Azerbaijan Archived June 22, 2011, at the Wayback Machine – World-Gazetteer.com
  2. Jost Gippert «Relative Clauses in Vartashen Udi Preliminary Remarks» «Iran and the Caucasus» Brill Publishers 2011. Стр. 208: The Armenian-based etymology given there (Arm. vard ‘rose’ and šēn ‘village’, i.e. ‘rose-village’) seems first to have been proposed by A. Berger (Berže) as it is also found in Seidlitz 1863: 171 (where, however, the name is spelt ‘Wartaschîn’). The Udi pronunciation of today is vartašen.
  3. Wolfgang Schulze: Towards a History of Udi. International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics 1, 2005, pp. 55–91.
  4. Sarah Marcus: Mountain Jews. Tablet, Tbilisi, 18. Januar 2018.
  5. Michael Zand: Language and Literature. In: Liya Mikdash-Shamailov: Mountain Jews: Customs and Daily Life in the Caucasus. The Israel Museum (Muzeon Yisrael), Jerusalem 2002, p. 37.


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