Tashir

Coordinates: 41°07′28″N 44°16′55″E / 41.12444°N 44.28194°E / 41.12444; 44.28194 Tashir (Armenian: Տաշիր), is a town located in Lori Province of Armenia. It is located 42 km north of the provincial centre Vanadzor, in a valley on the Stepanavan-Tbilisi highway, at a height of 1,500 metres above sea level.

As of the 2011 census, the population of the town is 7,773.

Tashir was known as Vorontsovka under the Russian rule, and Kalinino during the Soviet period.

History and geography

The town was established in 1844 by Russians who had arrived to the region from the Russian Empire, mainly from the region of Saratov. The newly established settlement was called Vorontsovka after the Viceroy of the Caucasus Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov.

In 1935, during the Soviet rule, the settlement was renamed Kalinino after the Russian Bolshevik revolutionary leader Mikhail Kalinin and was called. In 1961, Kalinino was granted the statues of a town-settlement. In 1983, it became a town.

With the independence of Armenia in 1991, the town was renamed Tashir after the historic Tashir canton of Gugark, the 13th province of Greater Armenia.

Tashir (historical region)

Tashir (Armenian: Տաշիր, Georgian: ტაშირი) is a historical region in the South Caucasus, part of the marchlands between Armenia and Georgia since ancient times, and still divided between the two countries, in the Armenian Lori Province and the Georgian region of Kvemo Kartli.

The name of Tashir, or Tashiri in Georgian, has designated since Antiquity the high plain between the Upper Debeda and the Pambaki rivers. The region is first mentioned, by the Armenian historian Moses of Chorene, in the 5th century, as one of the apanages of the lords of Gugark (or Gogarene), a former province of Greater Armenia, which had become part of the Kingdom of Iberia (one of the Georgian kingdoms). Both Armenian and Georgian lords already had pretention over the land of Tashir, and it passed hands following the political fortunes of each.

In the following centuries, the area was ruled mostly by Armenian lords. When the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia fell apart in the 10th century, the region was the basis of the Kingdom of Lori, or Kingdom of Tashir-Dzoraget (978-1118). It was conquered at the beginning of the 12th century by David IV of Georgia. It remained Georgian land until the Mongol invasions devastated it and weakened the Georgian state. From then on, the region suffered many other invasions, lost much of its population and importance. It belonged to the domains of the noble House of Orbeliani and was part of the Persian Empire until the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. The name of Tashir declined in use, and was replaced by that of Lori.