The highlight tour for me in Shaki was searching for an ancient Albanian Church in the tiny Albanian village of Kish. This village is 5 km from Shaki and has a population of about 6,880 people living in it. Its most famous monument is the Kish Church, a beacon of Albanian history that was built in the 1st century by the apostle St. Elcius on the site of a Pagan temple.
The village is situated at the shore of the river Kish, and the village extends to the foothills of the mountain Tat. Opposite to the temple is the portrait of a Norwegian archaeologist called Thor Heyerdahl. One has to take an entry ticket of nine manat to get inside the Kish Church and walk amongst its gardens. As I entered, I was entertained by a group of three traditional Azerbaijani ladies in their thirties and forties. I got chatty with them, and we sang songs of Mitun’s disco dancer and Raj Kapoor’s “Awara hun Awara hun” song; everyone knows this song in this country; it’s like a national anthem. I sang songs and took pictures with them as they sat on a stone bench, giggling and enjoying themselves.
There are four fortresses in the Kish church called Galasan, Gorarsan, Dulusalar, and Maaflar. Since 2003, the temple has also been doubling up as a museum with copies of archaeological breakthroughs and discoveries on display for people to see and learn from.
The inner sanctum of the church has a circular hall and a domed ceiling. There are large windows that let sunlight in, and as the sun seeps through the stone windows, it makes for some great natural light photography. There is a large brown metal lamp cum candle stand right in the middle of the room next to one of the stone windows, and there is a pair of books on the slab jutting out of one of the stone walls. That’s it; the rest of the room is bare and hollow. There are burial graves on the side of the church with skeletons of dead people and remains of people who were buried after the church ceremony. I managed to snap one such skeleton; it was encased under a glass ceiling. The cling of the church, a circular dome, is made out of redwood; the walls of the church are yellow and grey stones with brick and even river stones.
In the 10th century, the people of Kish turned to the Georgian Orthodox church, and in the 17th century, it turned into the residence of a Georgian Bishop. There is a tradition of sticking coins on the lime-yellow stained walls of the temple. One has to make a wish and throw the coin; if it sticks to the wall, it means that the person’s wish will come true. Some say that the wall has a magnetic phenomenon around it; some say that while prayers candles were stuck in the walls and the wax helps to make the coins stick. No matter what you believe, people come here to wish for things they deeply desire. Along with that, if you leave children with mental and physical ailments here for a day or two, their ailments have been known to heal. Thus, this temple has healing qualities, and people thus want to preserve it.
The church has been rebuilt several times; the history of the temple’s formation coincided with the spread of Christianity in the Caucasus region. Kish Church is the mother of all Albanian Churches, and it is believed that even before Christianity, people used this as a sacred place of worship for primeval religions.
Some historians and carbon dating have shown that the Church could have been built around the twelfth century. But all in all, the Kish Church is an intriguing place to visit when in Shaki. I was also a lucky envoy to venture upon the green mountain path to explore how the local villagers lived and farmed, so definitely have a look at those pictures of mine.