SHEMAKHA  , a

town of Russian Transcaucasia, in the government of Baku, 70 M . W. of the town of Baku, and in 4o° 38' N. and 48° 40' E . It has some 20,000 inhabitants, consisting of Tatars (75%), Armenians and Russians . Shemakha was the capital of the khanate of Shirvan, and was known to the Roman geographer Ptolemy as Kamachia . About the middle of the 16th century it was the seat of an English commercial factory, under the traveller Jenkinson, afterwards envoy extra-ordinary of the khan of Shirvan to Ivan the Terrible of Russia . In 1742 Shemakha was taken and destroyed by Nadir Shah of Persia, who, to punish the inhabitants for their creed (Sunnite Mahommedanism), built a new town under the same name about 16 m. to the W., at the foot of the main chain of the Caucasus . The new Shemakha was at different times a residence of the khan of Shirvan, but it was finally abandoned, and the old town rebuilt . The Russians first entered Shirvan in 1723, but soon retired . In 1795 they captured Shemakha as well as Baku; but the conquest was once more abandoned, and Shirvan was not finally annexed to Russia until 18o5 .