YUKHARI NAJILI (HASANAVAR),
PALASLY, BALASHLY NEJILI, NIZAMI)

It is located in the Zangibasar district, 1.5 km north of the village of Ulukhanli, the center of the Zangibasar district, on the left bank of the Zangi river.

Until 1950, only Azerbaijani Turks lived in the village (with the exception of a short period after 1828), and in 1951-1988 Azerbaijanis and Armenians. In 1988, the village was completely Armenianized.­

In 1832, 155 Azerbaijani Turks (86 men, 69 women) in 20 households and 76 Armenians who emigrated from Iran (38 men, 38 women) in 14 households were registered in the village.

The statistics of 1873 indicate that 540 Azerbaijani Turks (317 men, 223 women) lived in 75 households in the village. The fact that not a single Armenian was registered in the village in 1873 confirms that 76 Iranian Armenians who moved to the village in 1828-1829 left the village soon after and went to other settlements.

In 1886, 654 people (376 men, 278 women) lived in 101 households in the village, in 1897 - 791 people, in 1905 - 933 people, in 1914 - 995 people.

In 1918, Armenian armed detachments of Dashnaks, who attacked the village, looted the village, killed part of its population, the survivors crossed the Araz and emigrated to Turkey, Iran.­ The village was in desolation for several years, only in the first years of Soviet power, part of the fugitive population of the village was able to return to their native land.­ The population restored the destroyed, burned houses, improved the village. In 1922, their number was 319 people, in 1926 - 361 people, in 1931 - 379 people.

In 1948-1953, part of the population of the village of Yukhary Nejili was forcibly deported to Azerbaijan, resettled in the Ujar district. But after a while, the community returned from Zangibasar, which could not adapt to sharply different climatic conditions.

The Armenians' long-standing dream was the Armenization of the Zangibasar villages of Barakat and Abad.­ Therefore, in order to gradually Armenize the village, 50 Armenian families from the village of Artyts of the Ellery (Kotayk) district were resettled here in 1951.

On January 25, 1978, the name of the village of Yukhary Nedjeli was renamed to Nizami.

The genocide of 1988 reached the village of Yukhary Nejili at the end of November of the same year, when, with the participation of all state and administrative bodies of the district, the Azerbaijani population of the village was expelled from the hearths of their ancestors with the cruelty characteristic of Armenians. During these events, a resident of the village was killed by Armenians Mehdiyev Sabir Gurbanali oglu was ­born in 1932.

In the village of Yukhary Nejili in the past there was a cemetery, a mosque.­ Since the cemetery was located on the side of the pilgrimage road, the corpses of the most honorable people were brought from the surrounding villages and buried here so that the pilgrims would read alms.­ It is said that the place of this cemetery was bought about 300 years ago by non-residents from the khanate for gold money.