UNDER CONSTRUCTION

   At the entrance to Ejmiatsin, the main highway angles right to bypass the city.  The first paved road on the right leads to a tall stone pillar, a monument erected in 1833 in the presence of the visiting Czar Nicholas I to commemorate the 1131 Russian soldiers   who   fell     nearby     at     the

   Next     village     is     Shahumian (renamed from Mullah Dursun ["Let the Mullah Stop"?] in 1935 for the martyred Baku Commissar).

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

so-called battle of Oshakan on August 17, 1827 “defending Holy Ejmiatsin” against the Persian army. The spur road then curves W to join the road N from Ejmiatsin to Mrgastan (till 1935 Hajjilar, with S. Hovhannes church built 1912) and beyond.  Back toward Ejmiatsin, only 50 m E of the road to Oshakan, is Shresh Blur, a Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age settlement.