Akademik Məlumat İdarəetmə Sistemi
«РЕЛИГИЯ И ИСТОРИЯ», vol.7, no.материалы V МЕЖДУНАРОДНОЙ НАУЧНО-ПРАКТИЧЕСКОЙ КОНФЕРЕНЦИ, pp.75-82, 2018 (Conference Book)
The Albanian Apostolic Church maintained confessional ties with the Jerusalem, Byzantine, Georgian, and Syro-Persian churches, and in the 4th–8th centuries with the nomadic steppe dwellers
of the Turkic world beyond the Caucasian passes, beyond the Albanian gates
(beyond Derbent). The Albanian Apostolic Church accepted the decrees of the first three Ecumenical Councils. Due to certain historical events, the Albanian ethnic community was subjected to processes of confessional de-ethnicization (Islamization, Gregorianization, and the adoption of Orthodoxy). The process of Islamization began with the arrival of the Arabs in the 8th–9th centuries. Most of the Udis also underwent ethnolinguistic, cultural, and ideological assimilation by The Turkic Muslim population of the country. The other portion, the Udis, living in the mountainous regions of the Greater and Lesser Caucasus, managed to preserve their language, Christian faith, culture, identity, and ethnonym. They formed the main integral part of the flock of the Albanian Apostolic Church until 1836. The Albanian Christian population of Karabakh, a large percentage of whom were Udis, sought, with Russian assistance, to revive the Albanian Kingdom in the 17th–19th centuries. After conquering the South Caucasus, Armenians, with Russian assistance, attempted to settle there and assimilate the Albanian and Udi ethnocultural heritage. Nicholas I's decree of 1836 abolished the Albanian Gandzasar Catholicosate. This policy served the interests of tsarism in the South Caucasus. While the process of Islamization and Turkification of the Albanians took place over centuries, their Gregorianization (Armenization) was forced.