Western Azerbaijan Community

 On marking the 125th Anniversary of the Ulukhanli School of Iravan Okrug

Order of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan

In 2006, the 125th anniversary of the Ulukhanli school of the Iravan Okrug will be celebrated. Since the second half of the XIX century, the educational movement, which gained a large scale in the region and created favorable conditions for the progress of society by  being an important political and cultural event, gave impetus to the  process of organizing a new type of theater, journalism, and, along with traditional educational institutions, modern secular schools. The Ulukhanli school, founded in 1881, played an important role in spreading educational ideas in the Iravan region, whose population at that time mainly consisted of Azerbaijanis. The outstanding merits of  prominent educators of that time were that the school developed on the basis of rich traditions. This is the school where the great thinker Jalil MammadgUluzade began his first teaching activity; thanks to the initiative of the writer, it became one of the leading educational and cultural centers.

Despite the fact that, at the beginning of the 20th century, as a result of complex geopolitical processes, the city of Iravan and other Azerbaijani lands were included in the Armenian state, the Ulukhanli school continued its work in the direction of preserving the Azerbaijani language and culture and national moral traditions.

The Ulukhanli school, whose graduates are closely connected with the socio-political, economic, scientific, and cultural life of our country to this day and contribute to the prosperity of independent Azerbaijan, has written many bright pages in the history of Azerbaijani education. The policy of ethnic cleansing carried out by Armenian militants against Azerbaijanis in connection with the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict put an end to the activities of the school.

Taking into account the great role in the education of Azerbaijanis,  in order to ensure a worthy celebration of the 125th anniversary of the Ulukhanli school of the Iravan Okrug, I hereby resolve as follows:

1. The Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan shall prepare and implement an action plan dedicated to the 125th nniversary of the Ulukhanli school of Iravan Okrug.

2. The Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan shall resolve issues arising from this Order.

Ilham Aliyev

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan

Baku, December 29, 2006.

№ 1883