The oldest crosstones at the cemetery in Jugha

 christianity, cemetery, Medieval / Middle Ages, destroyed

The oldest khachkars found at the cemetery at Jugha, located in the western part of the city, dated to the ninth to tenth centuries but their construction, as well as that of other elaborately decorated grave markers, continued until 1605, the year when Shah Abbas I of Safavid Persia instituted a policy of scorched earth and ordered the town destroyed and all its inhabitants removed. In addition to the thousands of khachkars, Armenians also erected numerous tombstones in the form of rams, which were intricately decorated with Christian motifs and engravings. According to the French traveler Alexandre de Rhodes, the cemetery still had 10,000 well-preserved khachkars when he visited Jugha in 1648. Scottish artist and traveler Robert Ker Porter described the cemetery in his 1821 book as follows:

"...a vast, elevated, and thickly marked tract of ground. It consists of three hills of considerable magnitude; all of which are covered as closely as they can be set; leaving the length of a foot between, with long upright stones; some as high as eight or ten feet; and scarcely any that are not richly, and laboriously carved with various commemorative devices in the forms of crosses, saints, cherubs, birds, beasts, besides the names of the deceased. The most magnificent graves, instead of having a flat stone at the feet, present the figure of a ram rudely sculpted. Some have merely the plain form; others decorate its coat with strange figures and ornaments in the most elaborate carving."