About the city
One silhouette outlived it all: the mosque’s minaret above a sea of ruins.
Aghdam is a city in western Azerbaijan, at the foot of the Karabakh range. Before the war it was a major economic and cultural centre of the region: a theatre, museums, factories, a racecourse and around thirty thousand residents.
In July 1993, during the First Karabakh War, the city was seized and its population fled. In the years that followed Aghdam was methodically destroyed and looted — it became a ghost town that journalists called the “Hiroshima of the Caucasus”.
In November 2020 the Aghdam district returned under Azerbaijani control. Reconstruction began: a master plan, a “smart city”, restoration of the surviving Juma Mosque, and the first steps toward people coming home.
In brief
Three dates, one fate
Before 1993Once
The cultural capital of Karabakh
Aghdam was a city of theatre and music, known far beyond the region. It had a one-of-a-kind Bread Museum, a drama theatre, a 19th-century mosque and a famous racecourse where Karabakh horses were bred.
Roads and a railway line ran through the city; it was the trading heart of a fertile valley. Life was in full swing — until the summer of 1993.
Silence
Twenty-eight years of silence
After 1993 Aghdam emptied. Houses were stripped for bricks and metal, and over the years of occupation almost nothing was left of the city — its quarters turned into fields of broken stone overgrown with grass.
Above this sea of ruins the silhouette of the Juma Mosque stood alone. The building survived, though it was desecrated — cattle were kept inside. Its minaret became the symbol of a city that refused to vanish entirely.
“Do not curse the ruins — build again.”
The Juma Mosque of Aghdam
After 2020Return
The city is being rebuilt
After November 2020 Aghdam became one of the country’s great construction projects. A master plan was adopted; quarters, roads and utilities were laid out; the Juma Mosque was restored first.
Aghdam is conceived as a “smart city” with modern infrastructure and an industrial park. Those who remember it as it was are gradually returning — along with their children, who know the city only from stories.
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