Vachara
Vachara or Vajara is a village that has disappeared from the historical Artani region. The settlement area is now within the boundaries of the village of Alaçam in the Hanak district of Ardahan Province in Turkey.
History
Vachara is recorded as "Vajar" in the Ottoman land-survey register of 1595. The name of the village has also been written as "Vajara" and "Bacara" in various sources.The historical Artani region, where the village of Vachara was located, was one of the regions that formed Georgia in the Middle Ages. Indeed, the Ottomans seized this region and the village from the Georgians in the mid-16th century. According to the Ottoman land-survey register of 1595, Vachara was located in Meşe district of Ardahan-i Büzürg liva within the province of Georgia. Its population consisted of 36 Christian households, whose heads bore Georgian names. Wheat and barley farming and beekeeping were practised in the village, and pigs and sheep were raised. There were two water mills. In the Ottoman cebe register covering the period 1694–1732 in the Childir Eyalet, it had the same administrative status under the name "Vajar". In 1116 AH, the village, with a revenue of 11,500 akçe, was granted to a man named Ebubekir.
Sergi Jikia, the Georgian Turkologist who published the Ottoman land-survey register of 1595, wrote that Vachara, written as Bacara on the Russian map, was located near the villages of Tikan and Kyarkyadan. However, in the 1886 Russian census, although the villages of Tikani and Kyarkyadan are listed in the Ardahan district of the Ardahan sanjak, no village named Vacara is recorded. It can be understood from this record that the village of Vachara had disappeared before this date.