"[8] The name Gandzasar, which means "treasure mountain" in Armenian, is believed to have originated from the tradition that the monastery was built on a hill containing ores of silver and other metals.

[10][11] The site was first mentioned in written records by the tenth century Catholicos Anania of Moks (r. 946-968),[10] who listed Sargis, a monk from Gandzasar, among the participants of a 949 council convened in Khachen to reconcile Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Armenians.

[14] Rouben Paul Adalian considers the foundation of the see a result of an ancient bishopric seeking "ecclesiastical autonomy to compensate for the lack of control and communication from a central pontificate" and part of various local strategies in an Armenia dominated by foreign and Islamic rule to "preserve some semblance of religious authority among the people".

[16] According to contemporary sources, in early 1700s the patriarch of Gandzasar had authority over some 900 villages with hundreds of households in each, composed of peasant and merchant Armenians.

[17] In the 17th and 18th centuries Gandzasar became the center in the liberation efforts by Karabakh Armenian meliks, who were united around Catholicos Yesayi Hasan-Jalalyan (d.

[14][18] He was staunchly pro-Russian and in a 1701 letter signed by Karabakh and Syunik meliks, he asked Peter the Great to protect Armenians from Muslims.

The Armenians broke the siege, which saved Gandzasar and enhanced its spiritual status, wrote Thomas de Waal.

[27] On August 16, 1992 some of the outlying buildings within the monastery complex were destroyed as a result of Azerbaijani bombardment by helicopters, which intentionally targeted the church.

[29] On January 20, 1993 an air strike conducted by two Azerbaijani attack aircraft caused serious damage to the monastery, killed several people nearby and wounded a priest.

[26][30] Following the war, the monastery was completely refurbished through the funding of Russia-based businessman and philanthropist Levon Hayrapetyan [hy], a native of Vank.

While Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan said the wall was not medieval and did not have much architectural significance, therefore tiling was justified, critics argued it was part of the historic complex.

[44][45] Simultaneously, Azerbaijan's State Service of Cultural Heritage issued a statement that claimed that the "Ganjasar monastery" is "one of the most prominent monuments of Christian architecture of Caucasian Albania".

[48][49] Armenia's representative to UNESCO, Christian Ter-Stepanian accused Azerbaijan of an attempt to "appropriate and distort the identity of Gandzasar, one of the most famous medieval Armenian monasteries.

[51] The monastery is located atop a hill, at an altitude of 1,270 metres (4,170 ft),[13] to the south-west of the village of Vank (Azerbaijani: Vəngli) in the province of Martakert.

[52] The walled monastery complex includes the church with its narthex (gavit), living quarters, bishop's residence, refectory, and a school building.

"[27] Felix Corley wrote that it is, along with Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi (Shusha), a powerful symbol of history and identity of Karabakh Armenians regardless their religiosity.

[63][64][65] In the 1970s, Soviet Azerbaijani historians, particularly Rashid Geyushev and Ziya Bunyadov, asserted a negationist theory that postulated that Gandzasar was a Caucasian Albanian monument.

"[67] Historians who have challenged the Azerbaijani state version of the region's local history, including Victor Schnirelmann, note that Caucasian Albania disappeared in the 10th century, and that the Armenian Church simply adopted the name for its easternmost diocese out of tradition.

[66] Thomas de Waal noted that in a 1997 pamphlet titled "The Albanian Monuments of Karabakh" by Igrar Aliyev and Kamil Mamedzade "carefully left out all the Armenian writing" in the depiction of the façade of Gandzasar on its cover.