All About Armenia
Tsaghkunyats mountain range The Teghenyats Monastery is located in a forested fold of the Tsaghkunyats mountain range. It’s set between two streams, with a distant view of Mt. Ararat. The monument has sheep and horse-shaped tombstones, an impressive half-intact gavit (narthex) next to the ruined sanctuary (12th century) and parts of a monumental dining room (13th c.). …
Population genetics is the study of genetic variation within populations and involves the examination and modeling of changes in the frequencies of genes and alleles in populations over space and time. Population Genetics & The Armenian Population Using the most current tool in the arsenal of those investigating history, Armen Martirosian discusses the methodology and …
My grandfather survived the Armenian Genocide. His name was Khachik Gevorgi Khachatryan and he was born in 1910 in the village of Norshen, located in the Artske-Aljavaz district of the province of Van. His mother, Gyozal Muradi Lputyan (circa 1882-1957) and sister Mariam (Far’è) Gevorgi Khachatryan (1907-1992) also survived. They later told my grandmother Shushik, …
The international Conference on “International Religious Freedom and Peace” was held at the Ceremony Hall of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin organized on the initiative of His Holiness Garegin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, the Preaching Center of the Mother See and the Office for Spiritual-Cultural Heritage of Artsakh. The members …
Christian architecture in Armenia is a form of architecture very unique to the nation. It’s original, unlike some of the surviving monuments of the pre-Christian era, which had Assyrio-Babylonian, Hellenic or Roman influences. Some historians of art believe that Christian Armenian architecture was the prototype of modern Gothic Architecture that flourished in Europe during the high and …
One of the most impressive monasteries under the Armenians during the 11th and 12th centuries is the White Monastery (Deir el-Abiad) near Sohag, situated about 500km south of Cairo and northwest from Aswan. Originally built in 4th century as a Coptic Church by St. Shenute’s uncle, it was also a place of exile for Bahram …
Badr al-Din Lu’lu’, a former military slave (Mamluk) was an Armenian who lived in the 12th and 13th century AD and ruled from Mosul (Iraq) for half a century. He was the first Mamluk to transcend servitude and become sultan in his own right. As a Mamluk he served the Zengid dynasty (an Islamic dynasty …
The Temple of Garni (Armenian: Գառնիի հեթանոսական տաճար, Gařnii het’anosakan tačar) is a reconstructed classical Hellenistic temple near Garni, Armenia. It is the only “Greco-Roman colonnaded building” in Armenia and the entire former Soviet Union. It is the best-known structure and symbol of pre-Christian Armenia. Probably built by King Tiridates I in the first century …
During the reign of King Artashes I (reigned 190/189 BC – 160/159 BC) also referred to as King Artaxias I, a nation called the Alans united with all the people of the mountain country took possession half of Georgia, then they set out to invade the Kingdom of Greater Armenia. To defend his kingdom Artashes …
A fascinating lecture, given by Professor George Bournoutian at the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research Center regarding the rise of Tigran The Great and his rivalry with the Roman Empire. Tigranes II, more commonly known as Tigranes the Great (140 – 55 BC) was King of Armenia under whom the country became, for …
Basil I was emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 867 to 886 CE and he founded the “Macedonian” dynasty which lasted for over 200 years. Basil was an Armenian from a humble background who had risen to become the second most powerful man in the realm. When he outrageously killed his benefactor and emperor, Michael III, he became number …
Turkey has never accepted the term genocide, even though historians have demolished its denial of responsibility for up to 1.5 million deaths What’s the story? On 24 April, Armenians in Yerevan and around the world will mark the centenary of the genocide of 1915. That is the date when Ottoman authorities began arresting the leaders …
Artashat (aka Artaxata) was the capital of Ancient Armenia from 176 BCE and remained so for over 300 years of the kingdom’s history. Located just south of Armenia’s modern capital Yerevan, according to the ancient historian Plutarch, the city‘s original fortifications were planned by the Carthaginian general Hannibal. The city would need all the defences it could muster as it was …
The killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the last years of the Ottoman Empire remains an explosive issue today From the 1820s, the Ottoman Empire went into a slow but terminal decline. A series of nationalist revolts by its Christian subjects in Europe, such as the Greeks and the Serbians, culminated in the …
We all know the great Armenian painters like Ivan (Hovhannes Aivazian) Aivazovsky, Martiros Saryan and Arshile Gorky. But there are many amazing artists of the past and present who tend to be looked over. So every now and then I’ll write an article to bring these forgotten artists to the forefront and hopefully the public can appreciate their …
The term Genocide didn’t exist until 1943, when Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined it — pairing the Greek “genos,” meaning race or family, with the Latin “-cidere,” for killing. Raphael Lemkin, as a teenager, paid close attention to the massacre of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and spent his life campaigning …
This is not an Armenian coin, rather a Roman provincial coin honoring Otacilia Severa. She was the wife of Roman emperor Philip “the Arab”. The reason I am posting this, however, is that it was minted in a very important and strategically significant city called Zeugma in ancient Commagene, which was a fringe kingdom partly …
In 15 AD, after the Parthian Vonones I was deposed from his brief Armenian kingship and fled to Syria, the Armenian nobles and a sizeable military force in full pomp had ceremoniously convened at the foot of mount Niphates in support of Artabanus II of Parthia. He installed his son Orodes as governor of Armenia, …