[4] In these accounts, the name of the town originated from a nearby Armenian village called Shosh or Shushikent (see § Etymology for alternative explanations).

[11][12] Shusha also contains a number of Armenian Apostolic churches, including Ghazanchetsots Cathedral and Kanach Zham, and serves as a land link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, via the Lachin corridor to the west.

[31][32] According to several sources, a settlement called Shosh served as an ancient fortress in the Armenian principality of Varanda, and had traditionally belonged to the Melik-Shahnazarian princely dynasty.

[37] Armenian historian and Shusha native Ashot Hovhannisian wrote that the fortress walls must have been built by Avan Yuzbashi in 1724, if not earlier.

There are rumors that the Armenians have defeated the Turks in a number of skirmishes in Karabagh …[38]A 1769 letter by Georgian king Heraclius II to Russian diplomat Count P. Panin states that there was "an ancient fortress in the realm of the Khamsa [melikdoms]" which was "conquered, through deceit" by "one Muslim man from the Jevanshir tribe.

[39][40] Suvorov writes that the Armenian prince Melik Shahnazar of Varanda surrendered his fortress Shushikala to "certain Panah", whom he called a chief of nomadic Muslims living near the Karabakh borders.

According to Mirza Jamal Javanshir, before Panah Ali Khan constructed the fortress there were no buildings there and it was used as cropland and pasture by the people of the nearby village of Shoshi.

[48] Another account is presented by Raffi (1835–1888), an Armenian novelist and historian, in his work The Princedoms of Khamsa, which asserts that the place where Shushi was built was desolate and uninhabited before Panah Ali Khan's arrival.

[50] Less than a year after Shusha was founded, the Karabakh Khanate was attacked by Mohammad Hassan Khan Qajar, one of the major claimants to the Iranian throne.

[citation needed] By early 1795, he had already secured mainland Iran and was directly afterwards poised to bring the entire Caucasus region back within the Iranian domains.

Not being able to capture Shusha, Agha Mohammad Khan ceased the siege[60] and advanced to Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi), which despite desperate resistance was occupied and exposed to unprecedented destruction.

[62] From the early 19th century, Russian ambitions in the Caucasus to increase its territories at the expense of neighbouring Qajar Iran and Ottoman Turkey began to rise.

[64] Absolute consolidation of Russian power over Karabakh and the recently conquered parts of the Caucasus from Iran were confirmed with the outcome of the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828 and the ensuing Treaty of Turkmenchay of 1828.

Shusha grew and developed, with successive waves of migrants moving to the city, particularly Armenians, who formed a demographic majority in the surrounding highlands.

Shortly before Andranik could arrive, British troops under General W. M. Thomson encouraged him to retreat, out of concerns that Armenian military activity could have an adverse effect on the region's status, which was to be decided at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

The British command provisionally affirmed Sultanov (appointed by the Azerbaijani government) as the governor-general of Karabakh and Zangezur, pending the final decision by the Paris Peace Conference.

Despite signing the agreement, the Azerbaijani government continuously violated the terms of the treaty,[17][74] and Sultanov employed severe measures against them, such as terror, blockade and famine.

[74] A minority of Karabagh National Council representatives gathered in Shusha to accept Sultanov's demands, while the rest met in nearby Shushikend to reject the ultimatum.

Houses in the Armenian part have been partially demolished, plundered and reduced all to ashes, everyone led away women to submit to the wishes of executioner musavatists.

During these historically artful forms of punishment, Khosrov-bek Sultanov, spoke about holy war (jihad) in his speeches to the Moslems, and called on them to finally finish the Armenians of the city of Shusha, not sparing women, children, etc.

[83][verification needed]Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote about Shusha in the 1930s, "in this town, which formerly of course was healthy and with every amenity, the picture of catastrophe and massacres was terribly visual.

[84] In 1920, the Bolshevik 11th Red Army invaded Azerbaijan and then Armenia and put an end to the national de facto governments that existed in those two countries.

To attract Armenian public support,[citation needed] the Bolsheviks promised to resolve the issue of the disputed territories, including Karabakh, in favour of Armenia.

A few years later, Stepanakert, named after the Armenian communist leader Stepan Shaumyan, became the new regional capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and soon became its largest town.

The decision make Nagorno-Karabakh an autonomous region within Azerbaijan is frequently attributed to Joseph Stalin, who was Commissar of Nationalities at the time, purportedly with the purpose of ensuring Moscow's position as power broker between the Armenian and Azerbaijani SSRs.

[92] Another British journalist who visited Shusha in 1997 reported that the gravestones in the Azerbaijani cemetery on the edge of town were "methodically smashed and vandalised".

[97] The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence denied the shelling of the cathedral by stating that "destruction of the church in Shusha has nothing to do with the activities of the Army of Azerbaijan"[98] The House of Culture was also badly damaged in the fighting.

[129] The Shushi History Museum is located in a 19th-century mansion, in the centre of the historical quarter, and had a collection of artefacts related to Shusha from ancient to modern times.

CHW asks Azerbaijani authorities to disclose the location of the confiscated sculptures and plans for public access" read the Facebook page of the organization.

The two remaining Armenian churches (Ghazanchetsots and Kanach Zham) were renovated, and schools, museums and the Naregatsi Arts Institute have opened.