Qazax District (; ) is one of the 66 districts of Azerbaijan. It is located in the north-west of the country and belongs to the Gazakh-Tovuz Economic Region. The district borders the district of Aghstafa, and the Tavush Province of Armenia. Its capital and largest city is Gazakh. As of 2020, the district had a population of 98,400. It has two exclaves inside Armenia, which include the villages of Yukhari Askipara, Barkhudarly, Sofulu. Both of the exclaves and parts of mainland Qazax District (the villages of Baghanis Ayrum, Ashaghi Eskipara, Gyzylhajily, and Kheyrimli) were captured by Armenian forces during the First Nagorno-Karabakh war. History The region was conquered by a succession of neighboring powers or invaders, including Sassanid Persians, the Byzantine Empire, the Arabs, the Seljuq Turks, the Georgians, the Mongols, the Timurids, the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu Turkoman tribes, and finally Safavid Iran. It was also ruled by Ottoman Empire between 1578 and 1607 and again 1722 and 1735. By the end of the XV century, the Kazakh Sultanate was established as a sovereign geopolitical entity in the region. Though it was part of the Karabakh principality during the Safavid Empire, Sultan Shamsaddin of Gazakh was given the rank of Khan by the decree of Abbas the Great in 1605. After the Russo-Persian War (1804-1813), the Russian Empire gained control of the area by virtue of the Treaty of Gulistan. Under Russian rule, it was part of Tiflis Governorate before forming the northeastern part of the Kazakh Uyezd of the Elisabethpol Governorate in 1868. A contemporary military historian noted the following ethnographic detail: "Abbas Mirza's route lay through the country of the great tribe of the Casaks, which is extremely strong and thickly wooded." He further notes that: "These have no connection with the Russian Cossacks. They are descended from men of the Kirgis Casaks, left by Genghis Khan. They are frequently called Karapapakh, from wearing black sheep-skin caps." When the South Caucasus came under British occupation, Sir John Oliver Wardrop, British Chief Commissioner in the South Caucasus, decided that assigning the Erivan Governorate and the Kars Oblast to Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) and the Elisabethpol and Baku Governorates to the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) would solve the region's outstanding disputes. However, this proposal was rejected by both Armenians (who did not wish to give up their claims to Gazakh, Zangezur (today Syunik), and Nagorno-Karabakh) and Azerbaijanis