Video circulating from occupied Artsakh shows the 17th-century Yerits Mankants Monastery in a state of deliberate ruin, with evidence pointing to vandalism carried out by Azerbaijan. The footage captures the interior stripped and damaged: church models once displayed on the platform are gone, a khachkar that leaned beside the Holy Altar has disappeared, the lower half of another carved cross-stone has been smashed into fragments on the floor, and a sculpture from the right-side niche has been pushed face-down.
Built in 1691 in the historic county of Jraberd by the Melik-Israelian princely family and funded by Shah Suleiman I of Persia, Yerits Mankants represents the most important example of late medieval Armenian ecclesiastical architecture in Artsakh after a two-hundred-year construction hiatus. The monastic complex includes a central church, refectory and quarters, auxiliary secular buildings, and an older cemetery with khachkars predating the monastery itself. Once comparable in stature to Gandzasar, it served as a Catholicosate until 1819, ending with the death of Catholicos Simeon II.
The site’s modern history is no less weighty. During the First Artsakh War it sheltered between two and three thousand Armenian civilians fleeing Azerbaijani forces near Gulistan, Shahumyan region of Artsakh. Restoration initiatives launched after the war were halted in 2020 when renewed conflict engulfed the region, leaving the monastery vulnerable and unfinished.
“This is not just vandalism; it is cultural erasure,” stated historian Anahit Ter-Minasyan, who focuses on heritage of the Caucasus. She stressed that Yerits Mankants is irreplaceable, and its destruction targets the foundations of Armenian identity itself.
The incident renews long-standing fears over what happens to Armenian cultural heritage in territories occupied by Azerbaijan, echoing earlier disputes and international concern.
