Gardabani

Gardabani (გარდაბანი) is a city of 11,650 residents (2021) in the southern Georgian region of Kvemo Kartli and is the administrative centre of the Gardabani Municipality. It is located southeast of capital Tbilisi and from Rustavi in the Kvemo Kartli Plain at an elevation of above sealevel. Until 1947 Gardabani was known as Karayazi (Qarayazı) and the city status was granted in 1969, after a thermal power plant was built for Tbilisi in the 1960s causing rapid growth. Since then more plower plants have been built and the city nowadays supplies almost all thermally generated electricity in the country. Gardabani was an inconspicuous village in the southern Georgian countryside until Russian rule in the 19th century. With the administrative division of the South Caucasus by the Russians, the settlement, at the time with the Azerbaijani name Karayaz(i) (Qarayazı, Караязы, often spelled Karaia in Georgian; also known under the Russian exonym Karatapa, Кара-тапа, ყარატაფა, Qaratəpə), became the namesake and center of Karayaz uchastok (Russian: Караязский участок) within the Tiflis Uyezd (part of Tiflis Governorate). Karayazi was mainly populated by Azerbaijanis, who at the time were referred to as Tatars like other Turkic-speaking ethnic groups. In 1886, 94% of the more than 5,000 residents of Karayazi uchastok were of Azerbaijani descent. Upon completion of the Tiflis - Baku railway line in 1883 a station opened in Karayaz. Karayazi was on the main attack route from Azerbaijan during the Soviet invasion of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in February 1921, when it attempted to pass armored trains along Karayazi to Tiflis. By the end of February the Soviets captured Tiflis and soon incorporated Georgia as the Georgian SSR. In 1938 the Karayazi raion was separated from the Tiflis Okrug, making the village of Karayazi the administrative center of the new raion. In 1947 the name was changed from Karayazi to Gardabani, and in 1969 city rights were granted.