Stavropol

Stavropol rises on the heights between the Kuban and Terek basins, at the edge of the North Caucasian steppe. It began as a Russian fortress on the line extending from Azov towards Mozdok, and its name, derived from Greek, means the city of the cross. Soldiers and Cossacks established the settlement that grew around its earthworks, while the surrounding country remained a meeting place of steppe and mountain peoples.

The fortress was founded in 1777, after the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, as one of ten strongholds ordered to secure the southern frontier. Dragoons of the Vladimir Regiment and Khopyor Cossacks built its defences; Nogais also carried building materials to the site. Cossack families followed the soldiers, and by 1781 the Khopyor regiment had been settled in four stanitsas along the line, including Stavropolskaya beside the fort. Stavropol received town status in 1785. In 1809 Alexander I invited Armenian families to settle near the fortress to encourage trade, and in the early nineteenth century the town became a commercial centre of the northern Caucasus.