Armenia

Armenia, according to al-Baladhuri, is divided in two ways. In the first: Shimshat, Qaliqala, Khalat, Arjish and Bajanis are the fourth; the district of Basfarjan, Dabil, Siraj Tir and Baghrawand the third; Jarzan the second; and al-Sisjan and Aran the first. It is said in the second way that Shimshat alone is the fourth; that Qaliqala, Khalat, Arjish and Bajanis are the third; that Siraj Tir, Baghrawand, Dabil and Basfarjan are the second; and that al-Sisjan, Aran and Tiflis are the first. ¹

al-Baladhuri reports that Jarzan and Aran were in the hands of the Khazars, and that the rest of Armenia was in the hands of the Romans, governed by the lord of Armaniqas. It was in the hands of the Persians until Islam appeared, and Anushirvan had confirmed the kings of the mountain of al-Qabiq in their kingdoms in return for tribute. ¹

Among its cities is Arjish.

Armenia is the central and most elevated part of Hither Asia, enclosed by two mountain chains, the Pontic chain to the north and the Taurus to the south. It lies between Asia Minor west of the Euphrates, Adharbayjan and the region south-west of the Caspian to the east, the Pontic regions to the north-west, the Caucasus to the north (separated from it by the line of the Rion and the Kura), and the plain of Mesopotamia to the south (the upper Tigris). Gordyene (now Bohtan) and the land of the Hakkari Kurds south of Lake Van form part of its geography, though they were not always under Armenian rule. It stretches roughly from 37 to 49 degrees east and from 37.5 to 41.5 degrees north, with an area estimated at about 300,000 square kilometres. ²

High plains between the mountain ranges lie at 800 to 2,000 metres: Erzurum at 1,880 m, Kars at 1,800 m, Mush at 1,400 m, Erzincan at 1,300 m and Erivan at 890 m. Volcanic cones include Ararat (5,205 m) south of the Araxes, the Sipan Dagh (4,176 m), the Bingol Dagh (3,680 m), the Khoridagh, the Ala Dagh and the Alaghoz (about 4,180 m). The great rivers are the Euphrates, whose northern branch is the Kara Su and southern branch the Murad Su, the Tigris, which rises in the Armenian Taurus, the Araxes, which flows to the Caspian, and the Kura. The Euphrates and the Araxes cut deep into the plateau, so Armenia has few lakes: Lake Van at 1,590 m (called in Arabic the lake of Khilat and Ardjish) and the Sevan, or Gokcay, at 2,000 m, which al-Mustawfi mentioned in 1340. The land is divided into basins separated by high mountains, which helped produce the feudal disunion of the Armenians. The climate is severe: winter lasts about eight months on the plateau, and the summer is short and hot and needs irrigation. The snow-line lies at 3,300 m in the south and rises to 4,000 m in the east. ²

Armenia was probably settled around the seventeenth century BCE by the Hurrians, who were neither Semitic nor Indo-European. In the first half of the second millennium an Indo-European aristocracy organised them, and they later came under the Hittite and then the Assyrian empire. In the ninth century BCE a related people, the Urartians, also called Khaldi, founded the powerful kingdom of Urartu, the biblical Ararat, with Lake Van at its centre. Urartu fought the Assyrians, reached its height in the eighth century, and was destroyed about the middle of the seventh century by the Cimmerian and Scythian wave. A people probably related to the Phrygians then came from the west and conquered Urartu. The Achaemenid Persians called them Armenians, a name whose origin is still unexplained, and the region came to be called Armenia. The Armenians call themselves Haik, after the hero who led them to conquest, and their land Hayastan. ²

The Armenians were never a dominant power in Hither Asia. Their feudal regime, favoured by the mountain geography, bred internal division, and powerful neighbours surrounded them. They were vassals of the Medes and then of the Achaemenids, who governed the land through satraps. Those satraps took advantage of the disorder after Alexander's death and became kings who acknowledged the Seleucids. After the Roman victory over Antiochus III at Magnesia (190 BCE) two kingdoms emerged: Artaxias ruled Greater Armenia, and another dynasty ruled Little Armenia (Sophene and Arzanene). Greater Armenia later fell under the Arsacids. In the first century BCE Tigranes the Great threw off the Parthian yoke, dethroned the king of Sophene, united Armenia and built a large Armenian empire at the expense of the Parthians and Seleucids. Afterwards Armenia was reduced to a buffer between Parthia and Rome, each seeking to install its own king. From 11 CE until the fall of the Arsacids in 224, cadets of the Arsacid family mostly ruled, sometimes backed by Rome and sometimes accepting its protectorate. ²

When the Sasanids replaced the Parthians, Armenia, still ruled by Arsacid kings and Christian, became a new object of rivalry between Rome and Persia, which agreed to share the weak vassal. Around 390 a partition gave Persia the eastern part, about four-fifths of Armenia, under Khusraw III with Dwin (Dabil) as capital. Rome kept the west, where Arshak III ruled at Erzincan. After Arshak, the Romans entrusted the administration to a count. Persarmenia kept its own princes until 428-9 and was then governed by a Persian marzban at Dwin. The Armenian historian Sebeos, the chief native source for the fifth to the middle of the seventh century, says that Persian rule never took firm root, especially because the Sasanids persecuted Armenian Christianity. The Armenian nobles, the nakharars, seized every chance to shake off Persian rule, and in their quarrels they often called on their co-religionists in Byzantine Armenia, which led to frontier skirmishes and sometimes real battles. The Council of Chalcedon (451) widened the breach between Armenia and Byzantium, and the Armenians rejected its decisions at the Council of Dwin in 506. That schism was lasting, and it made relations between the Armenians of Persarmenia and the court of Ctesiphon easier. Under the emperor Maurice (582-602) the Byzantines, taking advantage of Persian troubles, reconquered part of Persarmenia. Khusraw II Parwiz (590-628) resumed war against Byzantium in 604, and it lasted until 629, with the campaigns of Heraclius as its famous episode. Under the Sasanids the intervention of the two great powers, the discord among the great families and the Khazar raids on the north-eastern frontier kept the land in anarchy. At the Muslim invasion Armenia was ravaged and too weak to resist the Arab attack strongly. In that anarchy the Rshtuni family rose around Lake Van, with its base on the island of Aghtamar; its chief Theodore played a great role in the period that followed. ²

The history of the Arab conquest of Armenia still has many uncertainties, because the Arab, Armenian and Greek sources often conflict. Sebeos, who writes as an eyewitness, is the most important source for this period; the priest Leontius adds a valuable complement, and for the years 662-770 is the only notable witness. Among the Arab authors al-Baladhuri is first, since he drew on accounts from the people of Armenia. After the Arabs conquered Syria and defeated Persia, they began repeated raids into Armenia and contested the land with the Byzantines. 'Iyad ibn Ghanm, conqueror of Mesopotamia, made a first campaign into south-western Armenia, reaching Bitlis, between the end of the year 19 and the beginning of 20 AH (639-640); al-Baladhuri, al-Tabari and Yaqut agree on the date but differ on details. A second attack, in 21 AH (642), had four columns, two of them under Habib ibn Maslama and Salman ibn Rabi'a, which penetrated north-eastern Armenia but were driven back and withdrew. A brief raid by Salman ibn Rabi'a from Adharbayjan in 24 AH (645) had no more lasting effect. ³

The Byzantines first answered the Arab raids with an army that ravaged the region of Ararat and penetrated into Georgia, but a sharp defeat inflicted by the prince Theodoros Rshtuni forced them to retreat. Soon afterwards the emperor recognised Theodoros as commander of the Armenian troops. Armenia, spared Arab incursions for some years, again acknowledged Byzantine suzerainty. When the three-year truce between the Arabs and Constans II, successor of Heraclius (who died in 641), ended in 653, war had to resume. To head off an invasion, Theodoros surrendered the land voluntarily to the Arabs and made a treaty with Mu'awiya, very favourable to the Armenians, which required only recognition of Muslim suzerainty. The same year, however, Constans II came with a large army, and most local princes went over to him, so that all Armenia and Georgia returned to his authority without much trouble. Constans wintered at Dwin and left in 654, and an Arab army then took the districts on the northern shore of Lake Van. With Arab help Theodoros drove the Greeks out again, and Mu'awiya recognised him as prince of Armenia, Georgia and Albania. A Byzantine attempt under Maurianos to recover the lost provinces failed completely. In 655 the Arabs extended their rule over the whole of Armenia, and the Greco-Armenian capital Karin (Kalikala) also opened its gates. Two years later, however, they gave up the ill-secured conquest for the time being: when the first civil war between Mu'awiya and 'Ali broke out in 36 AH (657), Mu'awiya needed his army in Armenia, and the country, emptied of troops, fell back under local rule. ³

Sebeos shows that all these events, which the Arab sources merge into Habib's great campaign of 24-25 AH (644-646), happened only after the three-year truce ended, and the Chronography of Theophanes also rests on this date. The Arab historians say nothing of the Byzantine domination that followed the first invasion under 'Umar, nor of the events of the period before Mu'awiya's accession. That Theodoros submitted voluntarily to Mu'awiya, attested by Sebeos and by Theophanes, would make no sense if the Arabs had held full authority since the first invasion. Ghazarian, who compared the Arab and Armenian sources closely, judged Sebeos's contemporary account more trustworthy than the Arab tradition, and Müller follows him; Thopdschian held that the Armenian and Arab accounts agree on the dates and facts of the first great invasion. J. Laurent counted six Arab invasions between 640 and 651. H. Manandian, who subjected the traditional data to close criticism, found only three before 650: the first in 640, through the Taron region, with the capture of Dwin on 6 October 640; a second in 642-3, through Adharbayjan into Persarmenia; and a third in 650, from Adharbayjan, marked by the taking of Artsape in the Kogovit district north-east of Lake Van on 8 August 650. ³

After the Arabs carried Theodoros Rshtuni off to Damascus in 655, where he died in 656, they placed Hamazasp Mamikonian, of a rival family whose fiefs stretched from Taron to Dwin, at the head of Armenia. Mamikonian turned to Byzantium and was named by Constans II as commander of the country in 657-8, but Byzantine rule did not last. After Mu'awiya came to power in 41 AH (661) he wrote to the people of Armenia, asking them to recognise Arab sovereignty again and pay tribute, and the Armenian princes did not dare refuse. According to the Armenian sources the great families, the Mamikonians and the Bagratuni (Bagratids), governed the land under the first Umayyads down to 'Abd al-Malik. The Arab historians list the governors since Habib's conquest; al-Ya'qubi, al-Baladhuri and al-Tabari cover the period from 'Uthman to the 'Abbasid al-Muntasir, and Ghazarian, Laurent and Vasmer give later lists. ³

The first century of Arab rule was, in spite of destructive wars, a time of national and literary flourishing in Armenia. But Muslim government, especially under the 'Abbasids, when Arab governors pressed hard on Armenia, never took firm root, and revolts were frequent. The greatest and most dangerous rising came under al-Mutawakkil. He sent his most able general, the Turk Bugha the Elder, with a strong army, which after bloody battles in 237-8 AH (851-2) overcame the rebels, and the whole nobility was taken into captivity. Al-Mutawakkil abandoned the harsh policy only when he needed his troops against the Byzantines and wanted to prevent a new rising they might stir up. He freed the captive nakharar, and in 247 AH (861-2) he recognised the Bagratid Ashot (Ashot I) as chief prince of Armenia, a man who had already rendered the Arab cause important services. During Ashot's twenty-five years as prince of princes he won the affection of his subjects and of the local lords, so that at their request the caliph al-Mu'tamid gave him the title of king in 273 AH (886-7). The emperor gave him the same distinction and concluded an alliance with him. Ashot's relations with the caliph were never troubled: he paid tribute regularly but ran his lands in his own way, and the native princes also gained almost independent status under him. ³

After Ashot died in 890 his eldest son Smbat I (Sambat) reigned, a man of heroic character but unable to withstand his outside enemies, the Shaybanids of Diyar Bakr and the Sajids of Adharbayjan. He failed against the Shaybanids, but in 286 AH (899) the caliph al-Mu'tadid ended their domination and freed the Armenian provinces from them. Afshin, the Sajid, still threatened Armenia from the west. Smbat's situation became harder under Yusuf, brother and successor of Afshin (d. 288 AH, 901), who saw that he must win the Ardzruni family, the most powerful princely house after the Bagratids since Ashot I. Around 909 he gave the royal crown to Gagik of Ardzruni, lord of Vaspurakan, a distinction that the caliph al-Muktadir renewed in 304 AH (916) and 306 AH (919). From 910 Yusuf ravaged Armenia on his campaigns. ³

Yusuf, in the course of his expeditions, besieged Smbat at length in the fortress of Kapoit, where the princes had all abandoned him. In 913 (Adontz gives 911) the king of Armenia surrendered to his adversary, who kept him a year in prison and then had him put to death. Some Arab emirates in the south, in the region of the Apahunik and Lake Van, were independent but isolated from the Caliphate, so Armenian history is not simply the history of the Bagratids. Throughout the reign of Ashot II and much of the reign of his successor Abas (929-953) the war between Byzantium and the Arabs continued without a break, often fought out in Armenia itself. The Greeks operated in northern and southern Armenia against the Armeno-Arab emirates of Lake Van, which, according to Byzantine sources, were forced to submit to the emperor Romanus Lecapenus (919-944). The last Sajid amirs of Adharbayjan hardly kept any influence in Armenia. The Hamdanids of Diyar Bakr, constantly at war with Byzantium, for a time exacted recognition of their sovereignty from all Armenia, according to Ibn Zafir and Ibn al-Azraq, and established a firmer rule over the Arab emirates by Lake Van. These emirates later recognised the suzerainty of Badh, founder of the Marwanid dynasty of Diyar Bakr, and of his successors. After the Hamdanids the Musafirids of Adharbayjan exacted recognition and tribute from the Armenian princes, and became masters of Dwin (about 955-956). ⁴

Ashot III (952-977) moved the official capital of the Bagratid kingdom to the small fortress of Ani, which he and his successor Smbat II turned into a splendid city, a pearl of the East. In his reign the territory of Kars was raised to a kingdom for a Bagratid prince, and in 968 Byzantium annexed the region of Taron, the fief of another Bagratid branch. Smbat II (977-989) and his brother Gagik I (990-1020) ruled with energy and success, but their family policy led them into almost constant strife with the neighbouring Christian principalities. They also fought the Muslim amirs, who in turn took Dwin and were sometimes invited in by Armenians themselves. In 987-988 Smbat had to recognise the Rawwadid princes of Adharbayjan and pay the tribute owed to the Musafirids. Gagik allied himself against the Rawwadid Mamlan with Davit of Taik, master of much of Iberia (Georgia), who about 993 seized Malazgerd from the Marwanid prince of Diyar Bakr. Mamlan was defeated twice, the second time decisively at Tsumb near Ardjish in 998, and took refuge there. ⁴

Basil II (976-1026) meant to take all the Armenian principalities. In 990 he obtained from Davit of Taik the promise that his lands would pass to him after his death, and after Davit died in 1001 he annexed Taik and Malazgerd. After Gagik I died, the Bagratid kingdom was thrown into turmoil by the rivalry of his sons, Johannes-Smbat and the younger Ashot IV, by the interference of the kings of Georgia and Vaspurakan, and by the first Saljuq incursions. Basil used these troubles, partly through the princes and partly by mediation, to extend his authority over Armenia. The last Ardzruni, Senekerim, handed Vaspurakan to Byzantium in 1021, fearing a Turkish attack, and received in exchange Sebasteia (Sivas) and other lands in Cappadocia (Caesarea, Tzamandos). The Muslim amirates of Lake Van (Akhlat, Ardjish, Berkri) were annexed between 1023 and 1034. King Johannes of Ani, intimidated and seeing his lands surrounded by Byzantium, proclaimed the emperor his heir and kept Ani only for his lifetime. When Ashot IV died in 1040, Johannes followed in 1041, and the emperor Michael IV resolved to incorporate Armenia entirely. His army was defeated, and Gagik II, son of Ashot IV and then only seventeen, was proclaimed king by the Armenian nobles in 1042. Under Constantine Monomachos, the emperor decided to annex Ani; to weaken Gagik he set against him the amir of Dwin, Abu 'l-Aswar of the Shaddadids of Ganja. Caught between two fires, Gagik went to Constantinople and in 1045 ceded Ani, receiving lands in Cappadocia in the themes of Charsianon and Lykandos. Thereafter most of Armenia was governed directly by Byzantium, and the discontent caused by its centralising policy and the favours shown to the Chalcedonian clergy partly explains the success of the Saljuqs. The Bagratid kingdom of Kars was annexed by Byzantium only in 1064, after the Saljuq invasion; its last king, Gagik-Abas, handed it to Constantine X Ducas and was compensated with estates in Cappadocia. ⁴

Many Armenians settled in Byzantine territory when their kings did, and Armenians had long been found outside Armenia. They supplied Byzantium with soldiers, generals and even emperors. Armenians under Melias (Mleh) colonised Lykandos, Tzamandos, Larissa and Symposion in the early tenth century, when Byzantium reoccupied the Cappadocian lands laid waste by Arab raids, and they defended those lands with distinction in the Arab-Byzantine wars. Some Armenians served the Caliphs in Muslim lands and converted to Islam, such as the famous amir 'Ali al-Armani, who died in 863 shortly after being named governor of Armenia and Adharbayjan; others served the Tulunids of Egypt. The most important immigration was into Byzantine territory: in the second half of the tenth century Armenians resettled the lands of Cilicia and northern Syria that Byzantium had retaken. Mukaddasi says the Amanus was peopled with Armenians in his time, and Asoghik records Armenian bishops at Antioch and Tarsus under Khachik I (972-992). In the eleventh century Armenians played a large part in Cappadocia, Commagene, northern Syria and even Mesopotamia (Edessa); many Armenian officers governed towns for Byzantium and, taking advantage of the first Saljuq invasions, founded Armenian principalities. Armenians also served the Fatimids of Egypt. The Armenian Badr al-Jamali, who began as a slave, rose to command the Egyptian troops in Syria and then became wazir in Cairo (1073-1094), and he brought in Armenians who took service in the army and administration, some of whom also became wazirs; one, Bahram, stayed a Christian. These Armenians founded monasteries and churches in Egypt and an Armenian catholicosate there. ⁴

While these events took place, the Turkomans, soon led by the Saljuq dynasty, conquered Muslim Iran as far as the Armenian and Byzantine borders. The Turkish thrust was probably not the cause of the first loss of Armenian lands to Byzantium, but it was a tragic threat to the Armenians in the middle of the eleventh century. After a period of Turkoman ravages, the battle of Malazgird (1071) ended Byzantine supremacy in the region, and the Turkomans settled in Armenia, Cappadocia and most of Asia Minor. Armenian lands on the borders of Adharbayjan were absorbed into the Saljuq empire, while those in the centre and west took shape as separate principalities. One of these was Akhlat, founded by a Saljuq officer and vassal, Sukman al-Kutbi, who took the ambitious title Shah-i Arman. Another was Ani, which the Saljuqs assigned to a ⁴

The Armenian lands passed to a patchwork of Turkish and Kurdish states. In Arran the Shaddadids, a former Kurdish dynasty, held power; the Saltukids, Turkoman states, ruled at Erzerum and the Mangudjakids at Erzincan; the Danishmendids of Cappadocia and the Saljuqs of Anatolia and the Taurus contested Malatya; and Diyar Bakr was eventually absorbed by others. At the start of the seventh/thirteenth century the Ayyubids of Egypt and Syria annexed most of Diyar Bakr and the principality of Akhlat. Later, after the Khwarazmians temporarily invaded Armenia and Asia Minor, Erzincan, Erzerum and Akhlat were incorporated into the united Saljuq state of Asia Minor, as the Danishmendid lands had been earlier. In Arran and Ani, Armenians again became subjects of a Christian state, though of a different church, through the expansion of Georgia at the expense of the Atabegs of Adharbayjan and the Shaddadids. ⁵

Byzantine policy after Malazgird turned towards the Taurus and the Cilician plain. For a time all the territories from the Cilician Taurus to Malatya, including Edessa and Antioch, were reunited under a former Armeno-Byzantine general, Philaretes. His descendants kept their position at Edessa and Malatya, under Turkish suzerainty, when the Crusaders arrived. The Armenian populations on the Syro-Euphrates border were absorbed into the free states of Antioch and Edessa. In Cilicia a national dynasty, the Rupenians, gradually won its freedom; its rise was confirmed in 1198 by the recognition of the royal title of Leo the Great, and it drew so many Armenians that the region was rightly called Little Armenia. The struggle with neighbours and hostile factions led Prince Mleh, from 1170 to 1174, to become a Muslim for a time to gain the protection of Nur al-Din. In the thirteenth century, under the new Hethumian dynasty, the kingdom fought hard battles against the Saljuqs of Asia Minor, to whom it had to pay a vague allegiance at intervals. ⁵

Once the first devastation was over and stable states were formed, the lot of Armenians under Muslim rule was no worse than under earlier Muslim regimes. The Armenian historians all praise the generosity of Malikshah. The principalities of Asia Minor kept their church organisation, monasteries, some cultural life and large Armenian towns such as Erzincan and Erzerum. The dramatic events had special causes: about 1180 the Armenians of Djabal Sassun were massacred in the disorders among the almost autonomous Turkomans and Kurds, and part of the Christian population of Edessa was massacred when Zangi recaptured the city from the Franks in 1144 and Nur al-Din in 1146. Essentially the Armenians suffered from their Muslim masters for political rather than religious reasons. In the west they generally acted as accomplices of the Franks, which caused frequent disputes in the Armenian Church between the Armenians of the Muslim states of Great Armenia, who wanted to avoid their masters' ill will, and those of Cilicia, who leaned towards the Latin world. The Armenians' attitude to the Mongol invasion in turn shaped the reactions of the Muslim powers towards them. ⁵

The Mongol empire changed the conditions of life for the religious communities of the Near East. In the Muslim states they conquered, the Mongols usually relied on the religious minorities, the Christians in particular. Hethum I acted as the Mongols' forerunner on the shores of the Mediterranean, against the Muslims of Syria and Asia Minor, and this provoked Muslim anger, so that when the Mamluks of Egypt attacked the Mongols the Cilician kingdom was one of their main targets. The break-up of the Mongol empire in the eighth/fourteenth century left the Armenians defenceless, and the Cilician capital Sis fell in 1375. The seat of the Catholicos moved back to Etchmiadzin, near the Araxes, in the ninth/fifteenth century. In Great Armenia the position did not last: about 1300 the Mongols became Muslims, and although they stayed tolerant, special protection ended. Mongol rule had also increased the nomadic, mainly Turkoman, element, which harmed the peasants, mostly Armenians. Later Great Armenia shared the savage assault of Timur. A stable principality under the Turkoman Ak-Koyunlu dynasty did not restore the community's old strength, and many Armenians emigrated, this time mainly to the regions north of the Black Sea. Wars between the Ottomans and the Safawids were still fought on Armenian soil, and part of the Armenians of Adharbayjan were later deported to Isfahan and elsewhere. Semi-autonomous seigniories survived with varying fortunes in the mountains of Karabagh, north of Adharbayjan, until the eighteenth century. ⁵

The Ottomans conquered western Armenia under Bayezid I in the last decade of the fourteenth century, and eastern Armenia in the following two centuries under Mehmed II and Selim I. They eventually held all of Great and Little Armenia (divided roughly by the upper Euphrates) except the Khanate of Erivan, which contained the patriarchal seat of Echmiadzin and relics of the ancient kings of Armenia. That region on the middle Araxes, long disputed by Turks and Persians, was ceded to Russia by the treaty of Turkmenchay (1 February 1828), and Russia created from it the Soviet Federal Republic of Armenia. Mount Ararat, on the south of this region, is where expeditions periodically claim to find the remains of Noah's Ark. The province of Kars, ceded to Russia in 1878, was recovered by Turkey. In Ottoman administrative usage, especially in the reform programmes promised to the European powers, the term wilayat-i sitte, "the six provinces", meant the Armenian-populated provinces: Van, Bitlis (alternating with Mush), Erzurum, Harput, Sivas and Diyarbakir. That convention ignored the sanjak of Marash, part of the former wilayat of Aleppo, and the former wilayat of Adana (Cilicia or Little Armenia). ⁵

Turkish domination did not assimilate the Armenians, who were kept distinct by their religion, although many Armenians, especially men and Catholics, adopted Turkish as a second or even first language. Before 1453 three katholikoi headed the community: Echmiadzin, restored to this monastery in 1441; Sis (now Kozan) in Cilicia, which had been seat since 1292 and did not recognise Echmiadzin; and Aghtamar, on the small island in Lake Van, since 1113. The Armenian bishop of Jerusalem also bore the title and insignia of a patriarch. After the conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed II summoned the Armenian bishop of Bursa, Joachim, to Istanbul and made him patriarch, with the same prerogatives as the Greek Orthodox patriarch. In this way the Armenian millet, or nation, was formed, with councils of clergy and laity assisting the patriarch, who was chosen from the prelates called markhassa. The patriarch of Constantinople resided in the Kum Kapu quarter. ⁶

Armenians gained an important place in Turkish economic life, especially as bankers (sarraf, money-changers), as merchants and cloth merchants, and as caravan leaders who linked Istanbul with Poland (Lemberg), Nuremberg, Bruges and Antwerp. As craftsmen they worked as architects, house-painters, makers of silk and gunpowder, and printers; an Armenian press was working in Istanbul in 1679. Like the Jews, they were exempt from military service until the Young Turk revolution. ⁶

The religious schism, which produced a Uniate Catholic community, was the root of much internal persecution; Protestant propaganda played a smaller part. Roman propaganda had reached the Armenians sporadically since the twelfth century. It was renewed by the council of Florence (1438-1445) and in 1587 by Pope Sixtus V among the Armenians of Syria, but its great driving force was Mechitar (born at Sivas in 1675, died in Venice in 1749). Converted to Catholicism by the Jesuits, he founded an order that bore his name. Venice ceded the small island of Saint Lazarus, near the Lido, to the Mechitarists in 1717, and their monastery was installed in an old leper hospital there. After Mechitar's death a schism sent some clergy to Trieste and then to Vienna (1810), and a branch at Padua moved to Paris. The Mechitarists had libraries of oriental manuscripts and printing presses, and published historical and philological works that gave Turkish its place. ⁶

Catholic missionary zeal, which won ground among the richest and most educated Armenians, provoked strong reaction from the Gregorian patriarchs, who were backed by the Ottoman government, which regarded the Catholic movement with suspicion as a "Frankish plot". Some Armenian Catholics were martyred for refusing to abjure, such as Der Gomidas or Don Cosme and two of his followers in 1707. Catholics suffered further persecutions in 1759 and under the reforming Sultan Mahmud II, in 1815 and 1828. They found allies among French ambassadors and the Jesuits. The French ambassador M. de Ferriol secured from the Porte the banishment of the Gregorian patriarch Avedis, who was hostile to the Catholics; the Catholic leader was then seized and imprisoned in the Bastille, and died in Paris in 1711. The Jesuits secured the closure of the Armenian press at the same period. In 1830 General Guilleminot, another French ambassador, won for the Catholics a separate ecclesiastical organisation, and Mgr Hassun, patriarchal vicar at Constantinople, received the title of Catholic-Armenian patriarch of Cilicia for the whole Ottoman empire. ⁶

The entry says the Armenian revolts had no source in utilitarian interest. The Armenians were, one observer wrote, the nation under the Porte with most interests in common with the Turks. In official texts they were called the loyal millet, in contrast with the Greeks and Macedonians. The entry lists the causes of Armenian discontent as follows: the abuses and brigandage of Kurdish and Circassian immigrants; the negligence, exactions and extortion of Ottoman officials; Russian incitement, especially from 1912; a strong love of independence among a people proud of its antiquity, with some districts that remained virtually independent, such as the mountaineers of Zeytun (now Suleymanli), Hacin (now Saimbeyli) and Sasun; and the activities of revolutionary committees, sometimes very bold, such as the armed attack by twenty-four Armenians and the siege of the Ottoman Bank at Galata on 26 August 1896. The extremist revolutionaries were called the Tashnaktsutiun; a more moderate committee, the Hinchak, had been founded in Paris in 1867 by Avedis Nazarbek, an Armenian from the Caucasus. ⁶

All these factors served as the reason or pretext for a violent campaign of repression, in the form of mass deportations and massacres. The entry says that, with the complicity or at the urging of the authorities, a long and contagious outburst of religious and racial hatred swept a people it describes as naturally kindly. The Armenian ordeal in Turkey began with the Erzurum affair (25 February 1890), passed through several crises, notably in 1895-1896 and in 1909 at Adana, and reached its height in the First World War, in 1915, in the systematic suppression of the Armenians organised by the government of the Young Turks. ⁶

After the collapse in 1917 of the Bolshevised Russian front, which in Turkey passed west of Trebizond and Erzincan, the Armenian corps formed by the government of Transcaucasia had to hold back the Turkish counter-thrust. It was defeated and driven out of Turkish territory; Turkey made the treaty of Batum with the Armenian Republic on 4 June 1918. In 1920 Mustafa Kemal Pasha, to end the undeclared war, put General Kazim Karabekir Pasha, commanding the 15th army corps, in charge of the north-eastern front. Troops of the United Armenian Republic, of Tashnak allegiance, were again defeated, and the treaty of Alexandropol (Gumru, now Leninakan), of 2 December 1920, confirmed the gains of the Turks. ⁶

Armenia was not always a separate province: it was often united with Adharbayjan or with al-Jazira under one government. The governor (amil or wali), usually appointed by the caliph, resided at Dwin, south of Erivan near the Araxes, which had been a Persian marzban's seat before the Muslim conquest. His chief task was to protect the land against enemies outside and within, with an army garrisoned not in Armenia but in Adharbayjan, where Maragha and Ardabil were the headquarters. He had above all to see that taxes were paid on time. The Arabs did not otherwise run the internal administration, which was left to local lords (the Armenian ishkhan and nakharar, the Greek archon, and the Arabic batrik and patrikios). These lords kept their estates after the conquest and enjoyed a degree of independence, but from the Abbasid period on they had to furnish troops in war without indemnity. ⁷

Armenia was lightly taxed among the Caliphate's provinces. In place of the various taxes, the mukataa system, a fixed sum paid by the Armenian princes, was applied from the early ninth century. Ibn Khaldun's list, which relates to the Caliphate's greatest prosperity, gives Armenia 13 million dirhams as revenue for 158-170 AH (775-786), besides payments in kind such as carpets and mules; Kudama gives an average of only 9 million dirhams for 204-237 AH (819-852). The Umayyads and Abbasids kept the tax treaties scrupulously, and only Yusuf ibn Abi'l-Saj broke them. Arab coinage was introduced, and coins were struck in Armenia under the Umayyads. Yaqut counts at least 18,000 places, great and small, in Armenia, 1,000 of them on the Araxes alone according to Ibn al-Faqih. ⁷

The chief medieval towns of Armenia proper included Dabil (Dwin), which served as the seat of Muslim government throughout the Caliphate and had a large population then, though it later dwindled to an insignificant village; Kalikala, later Arzan al-Rum (Erzurum); Arzinjan (Erzincan); Malazgird (Manzikert); Bitlis; Khilat; Ardjish; Nashawa (Nakhichevan); Ani; and Kars. The native Armenians formed the main population of the Caliphal period, but there were strong Arab colonies at Dabil, Kalikala, Bardha'a in Arran and Tiflis in Djurzan, which were the main bases of Arab power. Arab tribes settled more widely, notably south-west in the Alznik region (Arzan in the Arzanene). The old district of Badjunays (Armenian Apahunik), with Malazgird as its capital, was held by a branch of the Kays, who also held places on the northern shore of Lake Van. The rise of the Bagratid dominion, the entry says, was like a thorn in the flesh of these Muslim powers and hindered the consolidation of their own rule. ⁷

After the Russo-Persian and Russo-Turkish wars of the nineteenth century, Turkey, Russia and Persia shared the Armenian territory, and until the war of 1914-1918 there was a Persian, a Russian and a Turkish Armenia. Persian Armenia, the smallest, covered about 15,000 sq km and formed part of the province of Adharbayjan; its chief town was Khoy, and Maku and Marand also belonged to it. The Armenians of Julfa were moved to Isfahan by Shah Abbas I in 1605. Russian Armenia covered about 103,000 sq km in the south and south-west of Transcaucasia, and comprised the whole governments of Erivan (27,777 sq km), Kars (18,749 sq km) and Batum (6,976 sq km), with parts of Elizavetpol and Tiflis. Its towns included Batum, Akhalkhalaki, Kars, Ardahan on its hill, Erivan, Echmiadzin, eighteen km west of Erivan, Nakhichevan, Alexandropol (Gumri), Elizavetpol (Ganja), Shusha in Karabagh and the frontier town of Ordubad. Turkish Armenia, by far the largest, about 186,500 sq km, had been in Turkish hands for five centuries and included the wilayets of Bitlis, Erzurum, Mamuret al-Aziz (Kharput), Van and part of Diyarbakir. Its chief towns were Erzurum, Van, Erzincan, Bitlis, Kharput and Mush. ⁷

The war of 1914 changed this picture. In 1917, after the Russian troops withdrew from the Caucasian front, the regime formed in Armenia, part of the provisional government of Transcaucasia (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan), tried to defend the front against the Turks, but could not stop them retaking Erzincan and Erzurum in February-March 1918 and then Kars on 25 April. The peace of Brest-Litovsk gave the Turks Turkish Armenia together with Kars and Ardahan, Russian since 1878. After the dissolution of the Transcaucasian government and the proclamation of an independent Armenian republic on 28 May 1918, the treaty of Batum (4 June 1918) reduced it to Erivan and the region of Lake Sevan, while the Turks and Azerbaijanis shared the rest of Russian Armenia. The collapse of the Turks on other fronts led to the armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918). In early 1919 Armenian forces reoccupied Alexandropol and Kars, and came into conflict with Georgia over Akhalkhalaki and with Azerbaijan over Karabagh. The Allies recognised the Armenian Republic de facto in January 1920 and de jure by the treaty of Sevres (10 August 1920). President Wilson's arbitration, which would have given the republic Van, Bitlis, Erzincan and Mush, remained a dead letter, because the Turkish government of Mustafa Kemal had resumed the war. ⁷

After the Turks entered Kars and then Alexandropol, the Armenian Republic was forced on 2 December 1920 to accept Turkish peace terms. Turkey kept Kars and Ardahan, annexed the district of Igdir south-west of Erivan, and demanded that Nakhichevan become an autonomous Tatar state. On the same day the Armenian Republic, where a pro-Soviet revolutionary committee had been formed some time earlier, became the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. The Russo-Turkish treaties of 1921 confirmed the cession of Kars and Ardahan, but Turkey left Batum to Georgia. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia covered Erivan and the Lake Sevan region; Karabagh and Nakhichevan were attached to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan, Karabagh as an autonomous region and Nakhichevan as an autonomous republic; Akhalkhalaki, Akhaltsikhe and, as the autonomous Soviet republic of Adjaria, Batum, belonged to Georgia. The main towns of the Armenian republic were Leninakan (formerly Alexandropol), Kirovakan (the old Elizavetpol) and Alaverdi. ⁸

Turkish Armenia could no longer bear that name, since the deportations and massacres of 1915-1918 had left it without Armenians, and it was enlarged by Kars, Ardahan and Igdir. ⁸

Turkish and Turkoman tribal migration, and later the advance of the Kurds in the south, transformed the population so much from the middle of the mediaeval period that Armenians made up no more than a quarter of the inhabitants of their ancient homeland. Statistics for about 1896 given by Selenoy and Seidlitz show 897,000 Armenians (27 per cent) among the 3,470,000 people of the Transcaucasian provinces they enumerated, and 760,000 Armenians (more than a third) in the purely Armenian districts of 2,000,000. Transcaucasia as a whole had 960,000 Armenians in 4,782,000 people (20 per cent), and Armenians were more numerous in towns than in the countryside, with 48 per cent in Tiflis. The five wilayets of Turkish Armenia had 2,642,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,828,000 were Muslims, 633,000 Armenians and 179,000 Greeks; in the sanjak of Mush and in part of Van, however, Armenians were the majority. Persian Armenia had 42,000 Armenians in 1891. The entry notes that the Armenian share of Turkish Armenia was falling as a result of massacre and emigration. ⁸

In 1914 the Armenians of the world numbered about 4,100,000 by one estimate: 2,100,000 in the Ottoman empire, 1,700,000 in the Russian, 100,000 in Persia and 200,000 elsewhere. In 1926 they numbered 2,225,000, two-thirds of them in the Soviet Union (1,568,000, of whom 744,000 lived in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia, 85 per cent of its population). The 1939 census gave the Soviet Union 2,152,000 Armenians, 1,100,000 of them in Soviet Armenia (out of 1,281,599 people), a growth of 37 per cent between 1926 and 1939. The Armenian population of Syria and Lebanon rose from about 5,000 in 1914 to about 80,000 in Lebanon and over 100,000 in Syria by 1939; after the sanjak of Alexandretta was reunited with Turkey in 1939, 25,000 Armenians left it. A Soviet appeal of 1945 invited about 200,000 Armenians in Syria to return, and 60,000 to 100,000 Armenians from Syria, Lebanon, Persia and Egypt did so. The entry also notes that the Armenian question had become a formal matter: Armenian groups in Brazil, the United States and elsewhere had put demands to the United Nations for the restoration of Turkish Armenia within the frontiers fixed by President Wilson, and the question remained an obstacle to relations between the Soviet Union and Turkey. ⁸

In the mediaeval period Armenia was a land of transit between Pontus and Mesopotamia and a frontier zone between Byzantium and the Muslim empire, and it had an important economic role. Merchants and caravans crossing it helped a native industry to grow, favoured by the country's natural wealth. Its commercial value also lay in the many transit routes that cut across it, which the Arab geographers described. The Arabs valued these routes more for their military use than for trade, and they joined the main routes at Dabil, the bulwark of Arab power, whose maintenance and security was a duty of the Muslim governor. Erzurum, the meeting point of all the great routes, was of high strategic importance and, in the words of the entry, the key to Asia Minor. Armenia had contact with Byzantium through Trebizond, the main entrepot for Byzantine goods, especially precious materials; the great fairs held there several times a year drew merchants from the whole Muslim world. ⁸

Dabil and Kalikala (Erzurum) were the Armenian merchants' main trading points. In Persia, Rayy was their most important market, and they had direct dealings with Baghdad. Armenia was counted among the most fertile provinces of the Caliphate, and its grain was exported in quantity, for instance to Baghdad. Its lakes and rivers were full of fish; Lake Van supplied large quantities of a herring (firrikh) that was salted and sent even to India from medieval times, and salted fish from the region is still prized today across Armenia, Adharbayjan, the Caucasus and Asia Minor. ⁹

Armenia is rich above all in minerals, including copper, silver, lead, iron, arsenic, alum, mercury and sulphur, and gold. Very little is known about how the Arabs worked them; Ibn al-Faqih is the only Arab author to give information on the natural products of Armenia. The Armenian writer Leontius says that silver mines were found at the end of the eighth century; these are probably the mines still worked at Gumushkhane, halfway between Trebizond and Erzurum. There were also important mines at Bayburt and Arghana, and the old copper mine of Kedabeg, near Elizavetpol, was much developed before 1914. Copper foundries operated at Alaverdi, Zangezur and Erivan in the twentieth century. The salt mines were once the richest in Armenia, and their products went to Syria and Egypt; the salt beds mentioned by medieval authors were probably north-east of Lake Van, and there was a large salt deposit at Kulp, south of the Upper Araxes. Erivan had become an industrial town with machinery workshops and factories. ⁹

Armenia was most renowned in the medieval period for weaving, dyeing and embroidery. Dabil was the centre of this activity, producing fine woollen cloths, carpets, and heavy silks decorated with flowers and many colours, which were also sold abroad. The kirmiz, a purple-yielding insect, was used for dyeing. Armenian carpets were long considered of the finest workmanship. Artaxata (Ardashat) was so famous for its dye-works that al-Baladhuri calls it "the town of the kermes" (karyat al-kirmiz). The entry refers readers to the further studies of Thopdschian on the commerce and industry of mediaeval Armenia, and to works on Armenian carpets and textiles. ⁹