Monument unveiled to Köroğlu in Baku

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev unveiled a monument to the National Hero Köroğlu in Baku today. The 23-meter tall monument with a granite base was designed by Tokay Mamedov.

The monument was built at the 1.3-hectar park on the crossing of Azadlyg and Vagif Avenues, where the former monument to Baku Commissar A.Japaridze used to stand. The park was reconstructed.

Köroğlu (son of a blind man) is a historic figure of the 16-17th centuries, an outlaw and an ashug, a leader of Jalali uprising against the Ottoman Empire in Eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan. He wanted to revenge for his blinded father. Historian Arakel Davrijetsi first mention the figure in 1662 as a rebel leader. Köroğlu has become a hero of ashug songs and epos in Middle Asia and Balkans.