to 17th-century chronicler Arakel of Tabriz, the edict stated that they had three days to leave or face being massacred. Another eyewitness, Augustus Badjetsi, Bishop of Nakhijevan, wrote: About three thousand families were deported from Julfa, and many drowned while attempting to cross the Aras. After the deportation was completed, the town was destroyed by fire to prevent the inhabitants from returning. The deportees were taken to an area near Esfahan in Persia (now Iran), where a new town, New Julfa, was established. New Julfa is now a district of Esfahan and is the modern-day centre of the Iranian Armenian population in Iran. In 1606, the second deportation was made of inhabitants that had escaped the first deportation. In the 17th century, a small settlement was founded amid the ruins of the destroyed town, which, in 1747, became part of the Iranian Nakhchivan Khanate within Qajar Iran. At the start of the 19th century, this settlement moved to a new location three kilometres to the east of the historical town, at the point where the Alinja River flows into the Aras. Following the Russo-Persian War of 1826–28 and the resulting Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828, the village of Julfa became the official border crossing between Persia and Russia as the former was forced to cede its last remaining Caucasian territories, containing state customs services, a garrison and post office. The town became part of the Armenian oblast from 1840 to 1847, and then part of the Erivan Governorate of the Russian Empire between 1847 and 1917. According to the Russian Empire Census in 1897 Julfa was a village with a population of 763, of which 751 were Armenians. Following the Russian Revolution, between 1918 and 1920 Julfa was the subject of a territorial dispute between the Republic of Armenia and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. As a result of the Treaty of Kars, it became part of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic under the Azerbaijan SSR. The Persian Corridor ran through Julfa during World War II, bringing supplies from other Allied nations into the Soviet Union. During the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh from 1988 to 1994, the remaining Armenian population (which had been slowly declining due to emigration during the Soviet era) was either evacuated or was forcibly deported to Armenia. Old Julfa and Julfa cemetery At the beginning of the 20th century, the