Erivan Fortress

The palace was in the north-western part of the fortress. The palace hanged on the Hrazdan gorge. It was a square wide building with many sections. The harem was one of the biggest sections, it was 61 metres (200 ft) long and 38 metres (125 ft) wide. It was divided into many rooms and corridors. This palace was built in 1798 during the reign of Huseyn-Ali khan's son, Mahmud. [5]

All palaces built previously had been destroyed whenever the khans built a new one. The last was built in 1798 in Persian architectural style, containing "Shushaband-ayva" ("A Hall of Mirrors"), whose cornice was covered with colorful glass. The ceiling was decorated by the pictures of sparkling flowers. And in the walls of the hall were eight images drawn on the canvas: Fat′h-Ali Shah, Huseyn-Ghuli and Hasan, Abbas Mirza, Faramarz, etc.[6][7]

After the capture of Erivan by the Russians, in one of the halls of the palace, Aleksandr Griboyedov's famous comedy, Woe from Wit, was performed by the military garrison with stand by of the author. A marble memorial plaque which commemorates the performance is in the Yerevan Ararat Wine Factory, which currently occupies the location where the fortress once existed.[8]

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  The interior of the Saradar Palace
• 
  Interior of the Kiosque of the Sirdars
• 
  A detail of wall decoration of the Sardar Palace, 1828, by an Azerbaijani artist Mirza Gadim Iravani

The inner walls of khan's harem were covered by marble, with colorful patterns. There was a swimming pool (measurements were 15 sazhen (32 meters) in length, 4 sazhen (9 meters) in width and 3 arshin (2,1 meters) in depth).[9]

Abbas Mirza Mosque

There were two Persian mosques inside the Erivan Fortress. One was Rajab-Pasha Mosque; the other was Abbas Mirza Mosque. The ruins of Rajab-Pasha Mosque remained until the beginning of the works of reconstruction of Erivan in 1930s. Only one wall of Abbas Mirza Mosque remains standing.

This mosque was built in 1725 during the reign of Turkish Rajab-Pasha khan. It was a 4-columned arched big building with beautiful exterior. During the Persian rule it was used as an arsenal, because it was a Sunni mosque, and the new owners, the Persians, were Shia Muslims. In 1827, this mosque was converted to a Russian Orthodox church, and named after the Holy Virgin.[10]

This mosque was Shia and was built in the beginning of the nineteenth century, during the reign of the last khan of Erivan Khanate Huseyn-khan. It was a Shia mosque, called “Abbas Mirza Jami”, named for the son of Huseyn-khan. The façade was covered by green and blue glass, usually found in Azeri-Iranian-style architecture. After the capture of Erivan by the Russians, the mosque was used as an arsenal.[11][12][13][14][15] During Soviet times the mosque, along with other religious structures (Armenian churches, temples and monasteries) was derelict and currently only the frame of the mosque has been preserved.[16][17]