Sabirabad

Sabirabad is an agricultural centre sitting at the junction of the great Araz and Kura rivers. Apart from predictable statues of Sabir (The city was renamed in honor of the poet Mirza Alekper Sabir) the town has absolutely nothing to show for millennia of history as Galagayin, as Petropavlovka and especially as Javad (Djevat), settlements here have long been so strategic as to assure their thorough destruction by invaders.

Changes in the course of the rivers have left so little for archaeologists that the Khanate of Javad is now one of the least documented entities of mediaeval Azerbaijan. Today's villages of Qalaqayin (2km west, whose castle Nadir Khan was asked in vain to spare) and Cavad (5km north) are sentimental recent namings and don't appear to represent the site of their histoncal forbears. The only attraction of visiting Cavad is crossing the low-slung pontoon bridges across quietly scenic riverbanks to reach it. Along with Ganja, Sabirabad/Cavad was one of the main centres of resistance to the communist takeover in the 1920s.