Most of the world is unknowledgeable as to the history and the nationality of the Armenians, I hope to bring some enlightenment and interest to those who have no idea of who we are and the richness of our history and culture.
Ancient Armenia has existed since the time of Noah, the direct descendants of Noah's son Japheth. It was Noah's great-great-great-grandson Haig who is the Father of all Armenians and whose name we proudly claim as our national identity through many centuries. In Armenian we are called Hye after Haig or Hayastantsee meaning the people of Hayastan, and Armenia is Hayastan meaning the land or home of the Hye or Hai (Haig). We will look at the lineage of the Armenian peoples in another post.
We are known as the indigenous people of the land of Ararat (the mountain where Noah's ark came to rest upon). Our national identity gave rise to powerful Armenian kingdoms and the creation of the Armenian alphabet, which spurred the development of literature, arts, music, philosophy, medicine and science. It is very important to note that Armenia was the very first nation in the history of human kind to adopt Christianity as a state religion in the year 301 A.D. because our identity is also very much bound by our belief in Christianity, our history however far precedes that date.
The Arab conquest of Armenia was a part of the Muslim conquest after the death of Muhammed in 632 CE. Persian Armenia had fallen to the Byzantine Empire shortly before, in 629 CE, and was conquered in the Rashidun Caliphate by 645 CE.
After Muhammad's death in 632, his successors started a military campaign in order to increase the territory of the new Caliphate. During the Muslim conquests, the Arabs conquered most of the Middle East.
On January 6, 642 the Arabs stormed and took the city of Dvin, slaughtered 12,000 of its inhabitants and carried 35,000 into slavery. Prince Theodorus of the Rshtuni family confronted the Arabs, and came out victorious by liberating the enslaved Armenians.
Bishop Sebeos recorded the history of the Arab conquest. In his History of Heraclius, he wrote:
"Who can tell the horrors of the invasion of the Ishmaelite (Arab), who set both the land and the sea ablaze? [...] The blessed Daniel foresaw and foretold like misfortunes. [...] In the following year (643), the Ishmaelite army crossed to Atrpatakan (Azerbaijan) and was divided into three corps. One moved towards Ararat; another into the territory of Sephakan Gound, the third into the land of Alans. Those who invaded the domain of the Sephakan Gound spread over it, destroying, plundering and taking prisoners. Thence they marched together to Erevan, where they attacked the fortress, but were unable to capture it."
Theodorus Rshtuni and other Armenian lords accepted Arab rule over Armenia. The commander of the city of Dvin, Smbat, confronted by the fact that he could no longer hold out against the Islamic army, submitted to Caliph Omar, consenting to pay him tribute.
In 644, Omar was assassinated by a Persian slave and was replaced by Caliph Uthman. The Caliph ordered the massacre of 1,775 Armenian hostages then in his hands, and was about to march against the Armenian rebels when he was assassinated in 656.
Armenia remained under Arab rule for approximately 200 years, formally starting in 645 CE.
During Islamic rule, Arabs from other parts of the Caliphate settled in Armenia. By the 9th century, there was a well-established class of Arab emirs, more or less equivalent to the Armenian lords (nakharars).
At the end of this period, in 885, the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia was established.
The 13-14th centuries was a period of great turbulence in the history of the Armenian people. Over roughly 170 years (from ca. 1220 to ca. 1403) Armenia was subjected to no less than 15 invasions of Turco-Mongol peoples. The Armenian societies conquered and controlled by the various nomadic invaders from Central Asia had already experienced conquest and domination by nomadic and sedentarizing Turkic peoples two centuries earlier. The experience of invasion by nomads from Central Asia, consequently, was not new to the Armenian historical experience. But there were differences among the invading groups, and differences within any one invading group.*
Armenians managed to hold tightly to their ancestral homeland for centuries, it was not until the 16th century that Armenia was finally conquered, and it was not until the First World War that Armenia was divided.
The conquest of Armenia by the Ottoman Turks was a natural expansion of the empire and the continuation of the conquest of Constantinople. During the second half of the 15th century and the 16th century the Turks conquered Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Egypt, and Hungary in Europe. In the East, following the conquest of Constantinople Sultan Mehmet II conquered the Greek city of Trebizond in 1461. One by one, he vanquished the small Seljuk states which had been remained after the dissolution of their empire in Asia Minor, and incorporated them into the Ottoman Empire.
At the Armenian border, Sultan Mehmet II encountered the Turkmen who controlled Persia and Armenia and consequently posed a threat to Asia Minor. He defeated the Turkmen army at Terjan, by the Euphrates River. The battle was bloody, probably the harshest which Sultan Mehmet II had yet experienced. The Ottomans won the battle mainly due to their larger number of canons. Thereby the Turkmen threat against Asia Minor was eradicated. By the time of his death, Sultan Mehmet II had expanded the Ottoman Empire as far as the present day Erzinjan.
Only Armenia and Persia remained in Turkmen possession. Persia, however, with the emergence of the Sefevid Ismail Shah, pulled its forces together, defeated the Turkmen and liberated itself from foreign rule, expelling the Turks in 1472 not only from Persia, but also from Armenia.
This Persian rule over Armenia was short-lived. At the start of the 16th century, the successors to Sultan Mehmet II resumed the task of expanding the Ottoman Empire eastward. Sultan Selim I attacked Persia, defeated Ismail Shah and, after the great war of 1514-1516, conquered the majority of Armenia
Sultan Selim I, "the Cruel", ruled between 1512 and 1520 and was the prominent conqueror of the Middle East who expanded the Ottoman Empire furthest in this part of the world. At his accession to the Ottoman throne, the empire in the east stretched only to Erzinjan and Adana extending his tyranic rule eastward to Ararat and southward to Assouan, and incorporating the major parts of Armenia, Syria and Egypt into his empire. It was his successor Sultan Suleiman II (1520 - 1566) who is credited with conquering Baghdad and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Ottoman sultans inherited the Byzantine and Persian Empires,which for centuries had ruled the world.
The Turkish conquest of Armenia will be discussed in another posting.
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