the majority in four of the governorate's seven districts, including the city of Erivan itself, where they constituted 49% of the population (compared to 48% constituted by Armenians). Azerbaijanis also constituted a majority in what later became the regions of Sisian, Kafan and Meghri in the Armenian SSR (present-day Syunik Province, Armenia, at the time part of the Elisabethpol Governorate). Traditionally, Azerbaijanis in Armenia were almost entirely Shia Muslim, with the exception of the Talin region, as well as small pockets in Shorayal and around Vedi where they mainly adhered to Sunni Islam. Traveller Luigi Villari reported in 1905 that in Erivan the Tatars (later known as Azerbaijanis) were generally wealthier than the Armenians, and owned nearly all of the land. For Azerbaijanis of Armenia, the twentieth century was the period of marginalization, discrimination, mass and often forcible migrations resulting in significant changes in the country's ethnic composition, even though they had managed to stay its largest ethnic minority until the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In 1905–1907, the Erivan Governorate became an arena of clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis believed to have been instigated by the Russian government in order to draw public attention away from the Russian Revolution of 1905. First Republic of Armenia Tensions rose again after both Armenia and Azerbaijan became briefly independent from the Russian Empire in 1918. Both quarrelled over where their common borders lay. Warfare coupled with the influx of Armenian refugees resulted in widespread massacres of Muslims in Armenia causing virtually all of them to flee to Azerbaijan. German historian Jörg Baberowski writes that until March 1918, 100,000 Muslims throughout Armenia, mainly Daralayaz (modern-day Vayots Dzor) and Nor Bayazet (modern-day Gegharkunik), escaped to Ottoman-controlled territory or were killed, and 199 of their villages were destroyed by withdrawing Cossacks and Armenian volunteers. Nearly a third of the 350,000 Muslims of the Erivan Governorate were displaced from their villages in 1918–1919 and living in the outskirts of Yerevan or along the former Russo-Turkish border in emptied Armenian homes. In 1919, the Armenian government declared the right of return of all refugees, however, this was not implemented in emptied Muslim settlements occupied by Western Armenian refugees. Andranik Ozanian and Rouben Ter Minassian were particularly prominent in the destruction of Muslim settlements and in the planned ethnic homogenisation of regions with once mixed population through populating them with Armenian refugees from Turkey, such regions included Erivan and Daralayaz. Ter