Ninotsminda

Ninotsminda (Georgian: ნინოწმინდა, Armenian: Նինոծմինդա, Turkish: Altunkale) is a town and a rayon located in Georgia's southern district of Samtskhe-Javakheti. The rayon has a population of 34,305 according to 2002 Census. The Armenians number 32,856, Georgians 476 and Russians 943. It is near the border with Armenia. During the Ottoman rule, this was a sanjak of Çıldır Eyaleti, called Altunkale, which means "Golden Castle" in Turkish. Before 1991, the town of Ninotsminda was called Bogdanovka (Russian: Богдановка) - a name going back to the history of the Doukhobor settlement in the region in the 1840s. After the conquest of Kars in 1878, some Doukhobors from Bogdanovka moved to the newly created Kars Oblast. Twenty years later, some...