Kelbajar, Kelbajar (Azerbaijani Kəlbəcər), or Karvachar (Armenian Քարվաճառ – “fortress-market” or “stone sale place”) is a city in Transcaucasia, in the upper reaches of the Terter River, the right tributary of the Kura. According to the administrative-territorial division of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which actually controls the city, the center of the Shaumyan region of the NKR. According to the administrative-territorial division of the Republic of Azerbaijan, it is the administrative center of the Kalbajar region of Azerbaijan.
This territory is part of the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh Security Belt, which is outside the originally declared territory of the NKR, but has been controlled by Armenian forces since 1993.

History
The period of antiquity and the Middle Ages
In ancient times, the territory where Kalbajar is located was part of the Gavar Berdzor of the Artsakh province of Greater Armenia.
From the 9th to the 16th centuries, it was part of the Armenian principality of Khachen, and after its collapse, of the Armenian melikdom of Jraberd, one of the five melikdoms of Khams.
In the 14th century, Upper Khachen was subjected to invasions by Khan Tokhtamysh and Tamerlane, and in the 15th century it became part of the Turkic states of Kara-Koyunlu and Ak-Koyunlu. In Armenian sources, it was first mentioned as the village of Karavachar in the 15th century. At the beginning of the 16th century, Khachen became part of the Safavid state. Administratively, the Khachen district was part of the Ganja-Karabakh beylerbekdom (later the Ganja Khanate), which was ruled by the Ziyad oglu clan from the Turkoman tribe of the Qajars. Their power, however, extended mainly to flat Karabakh, whose population was Muslimized and Turkified, while Nagorno-Karabakh, where Armenians continued to live, remained in the hands of Armenian rulers.
The Kurdish tribes were resettled by the Persian authorities to the area located between Nagorno-Karabakh and Zangezur (on the territory of modern Kalbajar, Kubatly and Lachin regions of Azerbaijan), around 1600. This move was intended to weaken the ties of the Armenian rulers of Nagorno-Karabakh with the main Armenian territories. Part of the later Muslim (Kurdish and Turkic) population of the Kelbajar region (who lived here until the Karabakh war in the early 1990s) was thus the descendants of nomadic settlers from the plains. Karabakh. In 1924, the Soviet scientist E. Pchelina, having visited the Kurdistan district with an expedition, noted that in the Middle Ages there was a Christian-Armenian population, as evidenced by the archaeological sites she encountered in this area. The displacement of Armenians from their lands was recorded by her in Kurdish folk tales and genealogies, which speak of the arrival of the Kurds in the region.
Nadir Shah, who occupied the Persian throne in 1736, in order to weaken his enemies – the Ganja khans, devoted to the house of the Safavids, resettled many Qajars (tribes of Otuziki, Jevanshir and Kebirli) from Karabakh to Khorasan and removed the meliks of Khamsa from subordination to Ganja. In 1747, however, the death of Nadir Shah led to the collapse of the state he created, the return of the exiled Turkic tribes from Khorasan and the loss of independence of the Khamsa melikdoms, which fell under the control of the Karabakh Khanate created by Panah Ali Khan.
In 1805, the khanate was annexed to Russia, and in 1822 it was abolished and transformed into a province of the Russian Empire. In 1840, the Karabakh province was renamed into the Shusha district, which became part of the Caspian region, since 1846 – into the Shemakha province (in 1859 renamed Baku), and since 1867 – into the Elizavetpol province.

20th century
According to the “Caucasian calendar” of 1912, 300 Azerbaijanis, indicated in the calendar as “Tatars”, lived in the village of Kelbajar, Jevanshir district, Elizavetpol province.
In 1930, the Kelbajar region with an area of ​​1936 km² was formed as part of the Azerbaijan SSR, the administrative center of which was the urban-type settlement of Kelbajar, which received the status of a city in 1980. As of 1970, the population of Kalbajar was 5,000.
According to the All-Union Census of the USSR in 1989, 7246 people lived in Kalbajar.

Karabakh war
With the beginning of the Karabakh war, the Kelbajar region, sandwiched between the NKR and Armenia and separated from the rest of the territory of Azerbaijan in the north by a mountain range, found itself in a semi-blockade. Since the summer of 1992, the situation of the local population has improved somewhat, as the Azerbaijanis occupied the northern part of the NKR and communication through Mardakert was restored. After the Armenian forces recaptured the Mardakert region, the Kalbajar region was completely blocked (since the passes were still covered with snow). Before the occupation of the region by Armenian forces, the population of the region was about 60 thousand, mostly Azerbaijanis and Kurds, who were later forcibly expelled from their homes. During the operation to seize the region, the Armenian forces used violence against civilians, fired at them, took them hostage.

post-war period
Since then, the area has been completely controlled by the NKR. Its former population is placed on the territory of Azerbaijan as refugees.