Shusha (Azerbaijani Şuşa) / Shushi (Armenian Շուշի) is a city in Nagorno-Karabakh. Located in the foothills of the Karabakh ridge, at an altitude of 1368 m above sea level, on the Stepanakert-Goris highway, 11 km south of Stepanakert (Khankendi). According to the administrative-territorial division of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), which actually controls the city, it is the administrative center of the Shusha region of the NKR; according to the administrative-territorial division of the Republic of Azerbaijan - the administrative center of the Shusha region of Azerbaijan (which does not coincide with the NKR region of the same name).

Climate
The city is located in a zone of mild temperate climate. Average annual temperature +8.8 °C; the average temperature in January is +2.9 °C, in April - +7.4 °C, in July - +18.9 °C, in November - +4.7 °C. The amount of precipitation is 639 mm.

Origin of the name
The 19th-century Armenian author Raffi wrote that Shusha got its name from the Armenian village of Shosh, whose inhabitants were resettled in a nearby fortress. The Armenian author M. Sargsyan identifies the “Shushu village of the Amaras region”, mentioned in the manuscript of 1428, with the modern village of Shosh (Shushikend). A number of later sources (ESBE, Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, etc.) also stated that the name of the city of Shushi comes from the name of a neighboring village.
Some Armenian historians believe that, on the contrary, the village got its name from the neighboring Shusha fortress.
According to the Azerbaijani version, the creator and first ruler of the Karabakh Khanate, Panah Khan, came to visit the ruler of Barda and was invited by him to hunt in the nearby mountains and forests. Fascinated by the local nature, the Khan allegedly said to himself: “What a wonderful place, what a clean and transparent air here, as if made of glass (Azerb. şüşə). You can build a beautiful city here.” And so it happened - by order of Panah Khan, a city called Shusha was founded in this place.
In 1834, this version of the origin of the name of the city was given in his notes by the Russian writer and military historian Platon Zubov, who had the opportunity to communicate with contemporaries of the founding of Shushi.

History
According to the ESBE, Shusha was founded in 1752 by the founder and first ruler of the Karabakh Khanate, Panah-Ali-bek. Big Encyclopedic Dictionary and Institute of Geography RAS also called the date of foundation of the city 1752. According to the TSB, Shusha was founded in the middle of the 18th century as a fortress to protect the Karabakh khanate.
The British historian Christopher Walker names Panah Ali Khan and his ally, the Armenian melik Shahnazar, as the founders of Shusha. The Encyclopedia of Islam also notes that the city built in 1752 by Panah Ali Khan was called Panahabad.
There are two versions of the founding of the city.

Azerbaijani version
According to the Azerbaijani version, the construction of the Shusha fortress is directly connected with the name of Panah Ali Khan, the founder of the Karabakh khanate, which emerged as a result of the collapse of the Persian state of Nadir Shah. As the Karabakh historian of the 18th-19th centuries wrote. Mirza Jamal Jevanshir,
Even at a time when the Armenian mahals of Khamsa did not obey him (Panakh Khan), he found it expedient to build a fortress among the ilats in a convenient place in order to protect relatives, employees, close and noble people in it in the event of a campaign of the surrounding khans against him.
Shusha became the third fortress erected by Panah Ali Khan. In 1748 he built a fortress in the town of Bayat. According to Mirza Jamal Jevanshir, having repulsed the siege of Bayat by the rulers of Sheki and Shirvan, “Panakh Khan decided to subjugate the Armenian mahals of Hamsa.” Shakhnazar was the first of the meliks to submit to Panah Khan. In 1751, Panah Khan built a new fortress at the Shahbulag spring in the plains of Karabakh. The decision to build another fortress in an impregnable mountainous area was made after it became known that the Qajar Khan Mohammad Hassan Khan became the ruler of Mazandaran and Gilan. This decision was made with the direct participation of the Armenian melik Varanda Shahnazar.
According to Mir Mehdi Khizani, the place for construction was chosen so that the fortress would be located on the way between winter and summer pastures.
The new Panahabad fortress was founded around 1751. Deacon Hakob Poghosyan-Zakarian-Shushetsi describes the construction of the fortress as follows: “... Ordered (khan) to come one man with his provisions from each family from all provinces for the construction of the fortress. By order of the Khan, the peasants were to come at the head of the princes. Here, on the mountain, all the architects were also called. And they erected a building with fifty towers and fortresses walls five thousand cubits long. The city was first called Panahabad in honor of its founder, and later became known as Shusha, after the name of the neighboring Armenian village of Shosh (Shushikend), some of the inhabitants of which were resettled to the new city along with the inhabitants of Shahbulag and several other villages.
Subsequently, Panah Ali Khan gradually subjugated all the Armenian meliks of Khamsa to his power and extended his power to neighboring territories. Thus, as a result of the civil strife of the Armenian meliks, Nagorno-Karabakh for the first time in its history came under the rule of a Turkic ruler.

Armenian version
Page of the Armenian "Gospel" of 1428, rewritten, according to the colophon of the manuscript, "in the village of Shushu of the region of Amaras."
The existing Armenian versions boil down to the fact that by the middle of the 18th century the fortress already existed and belonged to the Armenian melik Shakhnazar, who handed it over to Panah Ali Khan.
One of the historical documents says that "the village of Shosha is surrounded by stone mountains." By "stone mountains" here is meant a rocky plateau, impregnable at that time, which is surrounded on three sides by sheer cliffs. This area served as a natural fortification or fortress to protect against enemies. According to Shahen Mkrtchyan, the founder of the fortress was Avan-yuzbashi, the commander of the fighting forces of sygnakhs (strongholds), whose headquarters was located on the top of a small plateau, not far from the village of Shosh. This area in archival sources is called "Fortification of Shosh", or "Kar" ("Rock" or "Rock"). A native of the family of local meliks, Avan-yuzbashi, probably at that time arrived in Karabakh from Shirvan. One of the Armenian chronicles states that “Avan-yuzbashi, having arrived and fortified himself in the rock of Shosha, became famous. This took place in 1717." In a letter from the Russian general Matyushkin dated December 19, 1725, it was said that “the centurion of Avan, listening to the requests of the population of Karabakh, with his people numbering 10 thousand ... remains in the skhnakh and builds a fortress.” On November 15, 1726, Avan-yuzbashi reported to the commander of the Russian troops that the Ottomans “with the whole army attacked Shoshi - the fortress of Avan yuzbashi and Ohana yuzbashi. Eight days they fought with cannons and shells. They captured half of the cliff, but could not go further. Ashot Ioannisyan believes that the foundation of the fortress wall began to be laid back in 1724 by Avan-yuzbashi, and Panah Ali Khan only erected a high wall on the fourth side of the plateau, so that “on the top of the plateau, an urban-type settlement would be protected from all four sides.”
In 1733, the Karabakh Armenians expelled the Turks from their possessions, while killing the seraskir Sara Mustafa Pasha, after which internecine strife arose between the owners of the Armenian melikdoms, which resulted in a 20-year war. Melik Shahnazar, trying to get the better of his opponents, invited the leader of the nomadic Jevanshir tribe to help him, surrendering the fortress of Shushi to him
In the report of A. V. Suvorov, sent from Astrakhan to Prince G. A. Potemkin, it was reported:
Shakhnazar... this traitor to his fatherland, called on Panah Khan, who had previously been the head of the ignoble part of the nomadic Mohammedans near the Karabakh borders, gave him his strong castle of Shushikala into his hands and obeyed him with his submissive signag.
A Russian document from the middle of the 18th century reported:
Shusha is the strongest village in terms of location. It belonged to the melik Shakhnazar of Varandinsky, who, having quarreled with the other two meliks ... allied with each other since ancient times, entered into an alliance with Fon-Khan (Pena-Khan), an obscure ruler of the Chavanshir (or Shavanshor) Tatar (that is, Azerbaijani - approx.) people, after the death of Nadyr; gave him the Shushi village ...

The note of the king of Georgia, Erekle II, mentions the capture of the Armenian fortress by Panah-Ali Khan: the people of Zhavanshir, took power; among that reign, Hamsa, is an ancient fortress, which he took by deceit ... ". According to modern Armenian historians, this note refers to the Shusha fortress
The Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia stated that the Shusha fortress was known in the early Middle Ages under the name Shikakar - it was here in the 9th century that Prince Sahl Smbatyan defeated the Arab army. In the late Middle Ages, this fortress was referred to as Karaglukh, Kar, Signakh Karaglukh, Shosh Fortress, Signakh Shosh.
According to another version, Shusha was built on the ruins of the ancient city of Shushi, destroyed by the Mongols. Opinion about the pre-existing Armenian fortification,