Khojaly (Azerbaijani Xocalı) / Ivanyan (Armenian Իվանյան) is a settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh. Located 10 km northeast of Stepanakert on the road connecting Stepanakert and Aghdam. According to the administrative-territorial division of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which actually controls the settlement, it is the village of Ivanyan and is located in the Askeran region of the NKR. According to the administrative-territorial division of the Republic of Azerbaijan, it is the city of Khojaly, the administrative center of the Khojaly region of Azerbaijan.

History
Khojaly-Gedabey culture
Near Khojaly there are monuments of the Khojaly-Gedabey culture dating back to the 13th-7th centuries. BC e. The name was given by the first finds of monuments near the villages of Khojaly, as well as Gadabay. The culture has been studied from burials — ground graves, stone cists, and mounds with burials. The funeral inventory is characterized by bronze items: long swords (the most ancient in the USSR), as well as various beads made of glass, carnelian and bone, stone vessels and many earthenware, of various shapes, black-polished with carved ornaments. An agate bead with the name of the Assyrian king Adadnirari II was found in one of the burial mounds near Khojaly. The tribes of the Khojaly-Kedabek culture were engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding (including horse breeding). Metallurgy reached a high level of development among them. There are reasons to believe that the tribes were the distant ancestors of the modern peoples of Transcaucasia.

Soviet time
In Soviet times, Stepanakert Airport was built near Khojaly – the only airport in Nagorno-Karabakh capable of receiving large aircraft.

Population
According to the Caucasian calendar of 1911-1912, 172 Tatars (Azerbaijanis) and 52 Russians lived in the village of Khojaly.
A number of high-ranking Armenians and Armenian publicists claim the Armenian origin of the village. According to Maksim Mirzoyan, an NKR deputy, the first Azerbaijani family settled in Khojaly in 1935, and by the 1960s Khojaly became Azerbaijani, and most of the Armenians had already left the village.
Zori Balayan describes the demographic situation in the village as follows:
Particular attention was paid to the Armenian village of Khojalu, founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the inhabitants of a mountainous village Kyatuk (I note with trepidation that we are talking about many of my relatives on the side of my mother). From childhood, even before the start of the war, I saw (during trips to relatives in Askeran and Kyatuk) how new stone houses were being built in Khojalu exclusively for Azerbaijanis. And already after the war, we, young and old, saw how every day there were fewer and fewer Armenians left there. The last Armenian families were forced to leave Khojaly at the end of the sixties.
In 1987, the number of Azerbaijanis reached 2025, in 1989. – 2135, and already in 1991. – 6300 people. Thus, in just 5 years, between 1987 and 1991, the number of Azerbaijanis in the village increased by more than 3 times, and most of the Azerbaijanis who arrived were from Stepanakert. In 1990, about 300 Meskhetian Turks who fled from Uzbekistan were also placed in the village.
In 1988, the population of Khojaly was 2135 people. Since 1988, the Azerbaijani authorities have carried out intensive construction in Khojaly, the population of Khojaly has rapidly increased, including due to Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia, as well as Meskhetian Turks. The Armenian side considered this purposeful action to change the demographic situation in the region.
In April 1990, the village of Khojaly was given the status of a city by the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR. By 1991, the population of Khojaly reached 6300 people.

Here is what V.V. Krivopuskov, who in October-December 1990 held the post of chief of staff of the Investigative Task Force (SOG) of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in the NKAR, writes in his memoirs about his visit to Khojaly:
What I saw was impressive. New brick houses sprouted like mushrooms after the rain. And the closer to the airport zone, the houses were built larger and higher, as if from their roofs you could get take-off planes with your hands … The scale of the objects being built, mountains of bricks, lumber, bags of cement, an abundance of other building materials seemed all the more amazingthat all this was completely absent not only in Armenian villages, but also in the capital of the NKAO, the city of Stepanakert … The Azerbaijani authorities, as if implementing the programs of the socio-economic development of the NKAO, purposefully used unilaterally union and republican funds for preferential non-refundable financing of individual construction in this village, moving to not only refugees from Armenia, but also all comers from other regions of Azerbaijan. Such new settlers, in addition to benefits for housing construction, were given cash benefits, and their children were given the opportunity to enter the universities of the republic without passing entrance exams. There was an obvious purpose. To increase the Azerbaijani population in Karabakh. This task, according to available information, was carried out not only in Khojaly, but also in other Azerbaijani settlements of the NKAO. But another idea was even more sophisticated: to build up the territory adjacent to the airport with gross violations of urban planning standards. The calculation was that the proximity of housing to the airport would make it dangerous to take off and land aircraft. The closure of the airport was becoming inevitable.
In November 1990, the airport was closed. The then President of Azerbaijan A. N. Mutalibov ordered to destroy the runway and airfield equipment of the airport, but it was not carried out.
On February 26, 1992, during the Karabakh war, Khojaly came under the control of the Armenian forces. During the assault and after it, many residents of the city died, the Khojaly massacre took place.
By the authorities of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, the settlement has always been considered a village and was renamed Ivanyan in honor of Christopher Ivanyan.
According to an estimate for 2012, 1273 people lived in Khojaly – all Armenians.