"Galarsan-Gorarsan” Fortress

- 7-01-2025, 00:05
- Fortresses
- Elnur Nəciyev
The “Galarsan-Gorarsan” Fortress is located northeast of the village of Kish, on the left bank of the Damarchin River — one of the tributaries of the Kish River — along a road stretching eastward from the Garadere Forest and Mount Ot. According to Annex No. 1 of Decision No. 132 dated August 2, 2001, of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan, “On the approval of the classification of immovable historical and cultural monuments under state protection in the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan based on their significance,” the fortress is registered under inventory number 322 with the name “Galarsan-Gorarsan” as a monument of the 15th century.
While the Kaldak-Yavuz fortress, dated to the 6th–8th centuries, is characterized by rectangular and circular towers, the 15th-century “Galarsan-Gorarsan” Fortress is defined solely by rectangular towers. In times of war, the non-combatant population and livestock were sheltered in hideouts. In the Kish River gorge alone, five shelters have been documented, some of which were connected by secret paths.
The “Galarsan-Gorarsan” Fortress was built of broken river stones and is surrounded by high towers (7 meters), with walls that are up to 2.7 meters thick in some places. Although no major archaeological excavations have been conducted at the fortress, occasional searches have uncovered various material culture samples — remains of residential buildings made of fired bricks and river stones, household wells, ceramic fragments, a pool, construction materials, and so on.
The fortress’s geographic location, solid walls, and steep terrain made it an impregnable defensive stronghold. Although some authors associate the fortress with the 16th century due to the frequent mention of its name during the Safavid period, various sources suggest that the monument was built earlier. For example, according to the Arab author Ibn Arabshah, on July 28, 1402, while returning from the famous Battle of Ankara to Karabakh, Amir Timur briefly besieged and ultimately captured two fortifications en route. One of these was a place called "Mağaralıq," and the other was the fortress named “Gel-Gor-Get” ("Come-See-Go").
Ahmad Zaki Validi also identified the “Gel, gor, get” fortress with the current “Galarsan-Gorarsan” Fortress. It is plausible that this “Gel-Gor-Get” fortress is the same as the present-day ruins located 1 km north of Kish village in the Shaki region. The description of the fortress given by Ibn Arabshah corresponds to the “Galarsan-Gorarsan” fortress. Locals in Kish refer to the “Galarsan-Gorarsan” Fortress as “Qız qalası” (Maiden’s Tower), or sometimes “Qızlar qalası” (Girls’ Tower). In Turkic mythological thought, the word qız (girl) symbolizes “impregnability,” “invincibility,” as well as “inviolability” and “virginity.”
In 2023, during archaeological excavations conducted under the leadership of Khagani Almammadov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS), no cultural layer dating after the 16th century was found at the site. Therefore, it was concluded that the fortress was never restored or reused after being destroyed by Shah Tahmasib in 1551.