The number of named Armenian churches known to have existed in the Nakhchivan region is over 280. In as early as 1648 French traveller Alexandre de Rhodes reported seeing more than ten thousand Armenian tombstones made of marble in Julfa. The number of ecclesiastical monuments still standing in Nakhchivan in the 1980s is estimated to be between 59 and 100. The author and journalist Sylvain Besson believe them to have all been subsequently destroyed as part of a campaign by the Government of Azerbaijan to erase all traces of Armenian culture on its soil.