Qabala

Qabala was an ancient walled city at the southern foot of the Greater Caucasus and an early capital of Caucasian Albania. Its position between mountain streams helped protect the settlement, while trade and crafts sustained it long after the royal capital moved to Barda. Its ruins preserve traces of pagan, Christian and Islamic religious life, reflecting successive changes in the region.

Qabala endured attacks by Georgian and Mongol armies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Timur's campaign reached it in the late fourteenth century, and Shah Tahmasp I attacked it in 1538. Despite repeated invasions, occupation continued in the fortified area known as Gala into the eighteenth century. The surviving walls and gates recall a city whose history stretched from classical antiquity into the age of the Safavids and Nader Shah.