Kemah (Kurdish: Kemax) is a town and district of Erzincan Province in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey.
In ancient times, the town was known as Ani-Kamakh and was the cult center of the Armenian goddess Anahit (Ani). It may be what the Hittites referred to as Kummaha (if that was not just a variant of Kummuh).
The necropolis of Armenia’s Arsacid Dynasty was located in Kemah, including the tomb of Tiridates III who was instrumental in the conversion of the Armenian people to Christianity.
The Kemah Gorge was the scene of massacres during the Armenian genocide. In one instance, 25,000 Armenians were killed in one day by throwing the victims off a steep gorge and into the Euphrates river.
In the 19th century, Armenian Catholic geographer Rev. Ghukas Injijian wrote that the Muslim population in Kemah was of Armenian origin but had converted to Islam during the devastation caused by the Persian-Ottoman wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Adem Avcıkıran, Raymond Kevorkian
Taken from: Mano Chil
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