page_title: Shusha fortress
hierarchical_section_title: Shusha fortress
caption_attribution_description: Walls of Shushi fortress
context_page_description: Shusha fortress — the fortress walls surrounding the historical center of Shusha. Newly established castle town was called "Panahabad fortress" named after Panah Ali Khan who was the founder of the fort. In later years, city was just called "Fortress". After a certain period of time, people named it as "Shusha fortress" and later it was simply called "Shusha". The name of Shusha was probably derived from the name of Shushekend village which was near the location where the fort was built.
  Molla Panah Vagif, poet and also the Vizier of Khan of Karabakh, personally supervised and controlled the construction of Shusha fortress. Hasan Ali Khan Garadaghi, the historian of Karabakh Khanate, commented that "Several buildings in Shusha as well as Shusha fortress was built under the direct supervision of Molla Panah Vagif".
  The area where Shusha fortress was built is a mountainous plateau in the form of amphitheater from the west with numerous hills and rifts. The highest area of plateau is 1600 m and the lowest area is 1300 m above sea level. At present, the territory of Shusha city consists of plateau with a hill located lengthwise in its center.
context_section_description: Shusha fortress — the fortress walls surrounding the historical center of Shusha. Newly established castle town was called "Panahabad fortress" named after Panah Ali Khan who was the founder of the fort. In later years, city was just called "Fortress". After a certain period of time, people named it as "Shusha fortress" and later it was simply called "Shusha". The name of Shusha was probably derived from the name of Shushekend village which was near the location where the fort was built.
  Molla Panah Vagif, poet and also the Vizier of Khan of Karabakh, personally supervised and controlled the construction of Shusha fortress. Hasan Ali Khan Garadaghi, the historian of Karabakh Khanate, commented that "Several buildings in Shusha as well as Shusha fortress was built under the direct supervision of Molla Panah Vagif".
  The area where Shusha fortress was built is a mountainous plateau in the form of amphitheater from the west with numerous hills and rifts. The highest area of plateau is 1600 m and the lowest area is 1300 m above sea level. At present, the territory of Shusha city consists of plateau with a hill located lengthwise in its center. The architecture of Shusha fortress represents basic principles of architecture of feudal period in terms of both the choice of location, structural planning and the artistic appearance of the fort. 
  Shusha fortress had three main gates: Ganja Gate, İrevan Gate and Aghoghlan Gate. The names of all these gates are often mentioned in historical sources, as well as in all the drawn plans of 19th-century Shusha.
caption: Ganja Gate, located in the north of the fortress walls, in 2015. After the occupation of Shusha, the inscription which was on the gate and considered as one of the symbols of Shusha was replaced with the one in Armenian language.
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