With the establishment of the Russian rule in the nineteenth century, these lands became a popular destination for members of various Christian denominations. Catholics were represented by ethnic Poles who started immigrating to Baku and Shamakhi in the mid-19th century, Ukrainians, Georgian Catholics, Armenian Catholics, as well as Western Europeans who stayed in Baku on a temporary or permanent basis. The Catholic population of Shamakhi just before the 1859 earthquake and the city's loss of provincial capital status numbered around 250 persons.