ARMENIA
A Martyr Nation

A Historical Sketch of the Armenian People from Traditional Times to the Present Tragic Days

BY
M. C. GABRIELIAN
Author of
“The Armenians, or the People of Ararat,” “The Armenian Question and the Massacres of the Christians”

New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

DEDICATED
TO
The Memory of the Martyrs
OF
1915 AND 1916

INTRODUCTION

The history of Armenia is a history at once ancient, romantic, tragic and instructive. One of the peoples early mentioned in the Old Testament, the Armenians have maintained themselves for thousands of years, in a region close to the birthplace of mankind and associated historically with the greatest of the cataclysms which have afflicted the world, the Noahic Deluge. That God, in His providence, should have preserved them as a people through so many centuries and amidst such changeful circumstances of peace and war, joy and sorrow, suggests that the Nation has yet before it an important mission in connection with the destinies of Western Asia. The present great World Conflict has brought the Armenians through the persecutions and martyrdoms which they have endured from the cruel and heartless Turkish Government, very close to the hearts of Americans. They appeal to our people on the basis of race, for they are substantially Indo-Europeans; on the basis of faith, for they were the first of Christian Nations; and on the basis of Humanity, for their indescribable sufferings have evoked the sympathies of the world.

The author of the History of Armenia, as exhibited in this volume, the Reverend M. C. Gabrielian, M.D., is a native of Armenia, was first trained in the American Mission at Marsovan, Asia Minor, came to the United States in 1881, and completed his theological studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N. J., in 1888. He then took up a course of study at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and received in 1892 the degree of Doctor of Medicine. It gives me great pleasure to write this brief foreword to the History, congratulating the author upon the excellence of his work.

(Signed) William Henry Roberts.

Philadelphia, Pa.

PREFACE

Book-writing is neither a profession nor a passion with me. But a former attempt, on a small scale, was so favorably received by the public, that I conceived the thought that a brief history of the Armenians, the first Christian Nation in the world, who have, for centuries, swelled the noble army of martyrs, would fill a gap that much needed filling.

Although born an Armenian, I am also an American by adoption and, having a deep conviction and a desire to “do my bit,” I thought I could probably better serve the cause of justice and humanity by devoting considerable space in setting forth in order the Turkish Government’s atrocities, both during the reign of Abdul Hamid and under the rule of the Young Turks, since that unhappy government became a tool in the hands of the intolerable German power. The rulers of Turkey, the Young Turks, have learned of late from their Prussian masters, both by precept and example, a barbaric tyranny which utterly surpasses that of their Mongol predecessors.

In order to make this volume of permanent value, I have endeavored to consult all available and authentic sources of information, both ancient and modern.

I prayerfully hope that this book will be the last to speak of the deplorable condition of the Armenian people; that the next writer will be able to describe the happy and prosperous state of the country and its people. For surely God in His good providence, has raised the mighty Nations in defence of the oppressed small ones to secure for them inalienable rights, protection, justice and liberty.

M. C. G.

Philadelphia, Pa.

CHAPTER	PAGE
[I. Armenia]	[17]
Mohammedan Intolerance—Location and Boundary of AncientArmenia—Divisions—Earliest Name—Mountains—Volcanic Actionand Earthquakes—Mt. Ararat—The Garden of Eden—Beauty ofScenery—Rivers—Lakes—Altitude and Climate—Fertility—Flowers,Birds and Animals—Mines and Mineral Springs—Ancient and ModernCities—Suffering under Turkish Rule—England’s Responsibility—Hopefor a Bright Future.
[II. The Armenians]	[37]
Ancestry Traced to Scriptural Progenitor—TraditionalOrigin of Name—The First Battle for Liberty—EarlyKings—Testimony from Cuneiform Inscriptions—Relation toContemporaneous Nations—Babylonia—Assyria—The Medo-PersianEmpire—Macedonia—Parthia—Names and Derivations—Tigranesthe Great—Roman Ascendancy—Armenians Continued Struggle forIndependence—The First Christian Prince.
[III. The Religion of the Ancient Armenians]	[59]
Primitive Religion a Pure Monotheism in PatriarchalForm—Abraham—Melchizadek—The Bible Not a UniversalHistory—Human Tendency Toward Retrogression—Divine Aid Necessaryfor True Progress—Influence of Surrounding Nations—AssyrianIdolatry—The Pantheism of Babylon—Semitic TheologicalConceptions—Zoroastrianism—The Magi—Armenia Affected by GrecianPolytheism but not by Roman Deification of Her Emperors.
[IV. The Conversion of the Armenians]	[65]
The Religious Condition of the World at the Time of Christ’sBirth—Christianity Carried to Armenia by Three of theApostles—An Early Tradition of the Armenian Church—The King’sDecree that “Henceforth the Religion of Christ is the Religionof Armenia”—St. Gregory, “The Illuminator,” Ordained Bishopof Armenia—Idol Temples Pulled Down—Christian Training andLiteratures—Translation of Old and New Testaments—Persian Oppressionand Armenian Loyalty and Bravery—A Desperate Struggle—Addressof the Armenian Commander-in-Chief—The Army of the HolyLeague—A Desertion—Confusion and Discouragement—A Hymn of HighResolve—Persian Conquest and Oppression—Armenian Faithfulness toPrinciple—Terms of Peace Leading to an Edict of Toleration—A Periodof Tranquillity.
[V. Conflicting Forces]	[80]
Changes Among the Nations—Division of RomanEmpire—Constantinople—Political and Religious Facts—UnfortunateMisunderstanding between Greek and Armenian Christians—PersianAttitude—Persecution and Division—Rise and Spread ofMohammedanism—35,000 Armenian Captives—Saracen Policy ofCruelty—Armenia Humiliated, but not Crushed—Again Strong IndependentKingdom—A Period of Progress—Mongolian Tartar Tribes—A KingTreacherously Dethroned—Turkish Cruelty—Armenians in Cappadociaand Cilicia—Reuben the First of Cilicia—The First Crusade—Attemptto Bring Armenian Church Under Control of Pope of Rome—GenghisKhan—Capture of Jerusalem from Crusaders—Capture of Constantinopleby Crusaders—Ignominious Treatment of Christians—Christian ArmeniaEntirely Surrounded by Foes of Christianity—The Country RenderedDesert—An Opportunity for Victory through United Forces of Grecianand Armenian Christianity Lost—Resultant Suffering.
[VI. The Armenian Church]	[102]
Apostolic in Origin—National in Extent—Her Defense againstZoroastrianism—Oppressed by Mohammedans—Formalism in GreekChurch—Roman Attempt at Subordination—The Election andOrdination of Armenian Bishops—Doctors of Theology—Customsof Armenian Church—Points of Difference between Armenian andRoman Churches—Church Councils and Their Decrees—Statement ofArmenian Belief—Tribute to the Bible—Superiority of ArmenianTranslation—Greek Invasion—Saracen Desecration—Loyalty of ArmenianChristians under Persecution.
[VII. The Period of Subjection]	[117]
The Armenians in Cilicia—Mongolian Invaders—Condition ofWestern Asia—Rise and Growth of Ottoman Power—The StandingArmy—Compulsory Service of Conquered Christians—A Tax of EveryFifth Child—A Military Caste—Extent of Turkish Empire—ArmenianExiles—A New Calamity—Treachery and Cruelty—“The Lordof Asia”—Crossing the Bosphorus—The Turkish Capture ofConstantinople—All Europe Filled with Consternation—Luther’s HymnContaining Prayer for Deliverance—Divisions and Famine—God’sPurpose in Sparing Armenia—Bitterness between Turkish andPersian Mohammedans—Deportation of 25,000 Families—ComparativeRest for Eighty Years—Hope for Emancipation—Russia OffersProtection—Faithless to Promises—Russian Armies in Armenia.
[VIII. A General Survey]	[133]
Armenians Compared to Jews, because of Persecution—Numberof Armenians in Different Countries—Description of ArmenianVillage Life—Agricultural Methods and Implements—PatriarchalLife—Shepherds—Absence of Means of Transportation—VariousTrades and Callings—Churches and Schools—“The Anglo-Saxons ofthe East”—Popular Prejudices against the Armenians—ArmenianBoats—Armenian Commerce—Accumulation of Wealth—Jealousy ofTurks—An Inscription from a Tomb—Armenian Constitution of1860—The General Assembly—The Ecclesiastical Council—Revocationof Constitution in Turkish Armenia (Aug. 12, 1916)—The Armenians inWestern Persia—Russia and the Armenians—The Armenians of the AryanRace—Testimony of the Language—Armenian Literature—Catholic andProtestant Missionaries and Impetus to Education—Armenians in Schoolsand Colleges of the World—An Armenian Poem.
[IX. The Reformed Church]	[153]
Condition of Church which Needed Reformation—Roman CatholicMissionaries—Catholic Armenian Church—Effect upon Armeniaof the European Reformation—Work of the British and RussianBible Societies—American Missionaries—“An OrientalMelancthon”—Translation of New Testament into Armeno-Turkish—Needof Wise Leadership—Roman and Greek Opposition—Attitude of AmericanBoard of Foreign Missions—A Turkish Pledge Unkept—A SeparateOrganization—New Churches—Progress of the Reformation—PreachingTours—Family Worship—A Seminary for Women—Anathemas upon the“Heretics”—The Crimean War—An Edict of Equality Rendered Null andVoid—Continued Persecution—Growth of Evangelical Churches andDoctrine—Statistics of the Work for 1914.
[X. Causes of Progress, and Hindrances]	[169]
I. The Bible. Armenian Reverence for the Word ofGod—Translations—Co-operation between Bible Societies andMissionaries—Personal Experiences—A Refusal Turned to a Blessingin Disguise—“The Two Edged Sword”—Banishment by Turks, forCarrying a Scripture Test in Armenian. II. Education:Ancient Centers of Learning—Turkish Destruction—Activity ofArmenian Press in Seventeenth Century—Work of the Enemies ofProtestantism—Revival of Learning in 1835—The Seminary at Bebek—TheEnglish Language Proscribed—Discussion and Opposition—ArmeniansGoing Abroad for College Training—Personal Mention of Men WhoHad Excelled—The Advantages of General Culture—List of NativeColleges and Seminaries—Standing at Beginning of War. III.Christian Literature: Translation of Bible Followed by thatof Other Books—The Mission Press—A Means of Helping Students.IV. Medical Work: Limited Knowledge of Early NativePhysicians—Meaning of Christ’s Commission—Mission Hospital Work atBeginning of War—Letter from Dr. Barton. Hindrances: Povertyof Protestant Communities—The Mohammedan Government.
[XI. The Armenian Question]	[186]
The Question Not a New One—Resistance of Zoroastrianism—OfMohammedanism—Of Pagan-Mohammedanism—Turkish Misrule—“Tears ofArmenia”—Cause of the Russo-Turkish War—“The Infidels Must beKilled”—Testimony of an Eye-witness—The Treaty of San Stefano(1878)—Promises of Reform—Anglo-Turkish Convention of Cypress—TheTreaty of Berlin—England’s Contract with Turkey—Disturbanceamong Kurds—The Abandonment of the Cause of Justice—Arms Deniedthe Armenians, but Granted All Others—The Turkish “Court ofMockery”—Correspondence of the London Daily News—Revisionof the Treaty of Berlin—England’s Responsibility—Statement of theArmenian Question—Turkish Disregard for Pledged Treaty—Indifferenceof Other Nations—An Instance of Cruelty—Simply One of Many—“ARevolutionary Poem.”
[XII. The Gospel and the Koran]	[204]
Growing Indications of Turkish Misrule—Underlying Causes—Teachingsof Christ and of Mohammed Contrasted—The Attitudes of Each TowardWomen—Toward Holiness—Toward Forms and Ceremonies—The Revivalof Mohammedanism Means the Suppression of All Other Religions—TheSword of the Prophet—Choice of Islam, Slavery or Death—A MohammedanPrayer—Impossible for a Mohammedan to Keep Promises—War on AllInfidels, Commanded—Subjugation of a Jewish Colony—Division of theSpoils.
[XIII. Massacre of the Christians]	[212]
Faithfulness, at What Cost?—The Greek Revolution—In the Islandof Chios—An Explorer’s Description of an Assault—Massacrein Syria in 1860—Scenes in Damascus—Letter from AmericanConsul-General—Correspondence in London Times—Testimony ofAmerican Missionaries—A Noted Change of Sentiment—Sultan AbdulHamid—A False Accusation—Condoning Injustice—An Armenian RevolutionImpossible and Absurd—Kurdish Chiefs Armed for Suppression—AMedical Missionary’s Letter—Who Posted the Placards?—Two CollegeProfessors Unjustly Imprisoned—Moslem Mobs in Possession ofCæsarea—Official Reports of Turkish Outrages—Rev. Father EndeavorClark’s Experiences—So-called “Agitators”—Result of Trial—WhyTheir Anchors Could Not be Lifted—Enquiry in the English House ofCommons—Memorial Sent by the Society of Friends to the Secretary ofState for Foreign Affairs—Reply to Memorial A Difference of Opinion.
[XIV. The Massacre at Sassoun]	[235]
Location and People of Sassoun—Vexatious Conditions—Self-defenseMiscalled Insurrection—A Cruel Order—Harrowing Details ofMassacre—An “Agitator’s” Appeal to the Sultan and Reward forService Rendered—England’s Position—Armenian Mothers—TurkishAttempt to Conceal Facts—Denial of Truthfulness of Report ofBritish Vice-Consul—Mohammedanism and Barbarism—Sultan’s Refusalto Receive President Cleveland’s Appointed Representation of the U.S.—The Sultan’s Commission and Its Work—How the Result was Receivedby Other Nations—A Humiliating Failure—Address of Hon. W. E.Gladstone—Rupture between Turkish and European Commissioners—Reportof European Delegates—A Just Request Refused.
[XV. The Massacres of 1895-6]	[250]
A Scheme of Reform Presented by the British, French, and RussianGovernments—The Sultan’s Promise—Unfulfilled—Abdul Hamid II—TheTruth about Armenia—Biased Statements of the German Press—Turkey’sUncertainty as to the Action of the Powers, an Encouragement toHer Misrule—Refusal to Receive an Armenian Petition—Letter froman American Resident of Constantinople—Statistical Table of theMassacres of 1895-6—Summary—A War of Desolation—Pretense of“Suppressing a Revolution”—“Horrible Details of Butchery”—ChurchesInvaded and Burned—Indignities to Women and Girls—Manyof Them Commit Suicide—A Daughter’s Sacrifice—Germany’sFriendship—Quotation from a German Paper—Dr. Lapsius’ Reply—MoreStatistics—Compulsory Conversions to Mohammedanism—IndividualInstances of Faithfulness—Faithfulness to Christ Reported asObstinacy—At Cæsarea—Report of the British Vice-Consul—Workof Miss Corinna Shattuck—Other Missionaries Give PersonalExperiences—Atrocities of Soldiers and Officers—England’s ProfessedInability to Act—The Massacre at Constantinople—Plans Known toTurkish Government and Made Occasion of Outbreak—PersecutionFollowing Worse in Its Effects than Massacre Itself—“Conductof European Powers”—Result of a Disagreement—Germany SeekingExpansion—Emperor’s Tribute to Mohammedanism.
[XVI. The Revolution and Massacres at Adana, 1908-9]	[282]
The Enemies of the Sultan—Demand for the Restoration of theConstitution—Abdul Hamid’s Insincere Acquiescence—Joy of thePeople—Instigation to Mutiny—The Night of April 13, 1909—Characterof the Sultan’s Success—The Young Turks Take Possession of thePalace of the Sultan—Abdul Hamid Sent into Exile—Mohammedan Massacreof Christians—Disease and Starvation Follow in Wake of Murder—Letterfrom Wife of British Consul of Adana—Kessab—Testimony of Presidentof St. Paul’s Institute at Tarsus—Turkish Determination to Annihilatethe Armenians—“The Armenian Question” a One Sided One—UnderMohammedan Rule Reform Impossible.
[XVII. The Reign of the Young Turk]	[290]
Mohammed V.—Divisions of Empire for AdministrativePurposes—Troublesome Times for the Young Turks—SurroundingPeoples—The Bosnians and Servians—Austro-Hungarians—The Bulgarian’sDeclaration of Independence—Turco-Italian War—The First BalkanWar and Its Results—Second Balkan War—Reverses of the YoungTurks—Plan to Use Armenians to Instigate a Revolt—Offers of RewardRefused—Modified Demands on the Armenians—Still Refused—A PeacefulEndeavor.
[XVIII. The Massacres of 1915-16]	[298]
Why the Young Turks Declared War—Reasons for the Beginning ofthe Massacres—A Draft of Armenians with the Army—Disarmed andMade to Work on the Roads—Turkish Proclamation of “A Holy War”—AHoly War Explained—Proclamation Favorably Received by MohammedansEverywhere—Suffering Syrian Christians—“A Price on Every ChristianHead”—Consequences—Letter from a Medical Missionary—Heart-rendingScenes—A Catholic Priest Who Refuses to Confess Mohammed as God’sProphet and His Fate—Report of Dr. Vanneman—Urumia—NativeChristian Preachers Crucified—Inhabitants of Van Resist—TimelyArrival of Russian Forces—Succor only Temporary—Turks and KurdsReturn—“Suppressing Armenian Rebellion”—Turkish Treachery—Scenesalong the Road—Christians Held in Prison and then Slain—AtrocitiesMiscalled “Justifiable and Necessary Measures”—WholesaleDrownings—“Turkey for the Turks”—Testimony of Dr. Herbert AdamsGibbons—The Turks not Satisfied with Less than the CompleteExtermination of all Who Oppose Mohammedanism.
[XIX. The Deportations of 1915-16]	[316]
Deportation and Its Consequences: Orders fromConstantinople—German Influence—No Exceptions to beMade—Reasons for Scheme of Transportation—A Procession of DoomedVictims—Unparalleled Savagery—Character of Armenian People—TurksEncourage Armenian Organizations which, Later, They Brand as“Revolutionary”—“The Blackest Page in Modern History”—Five HundredMen Imprisoned in an Armenian Church—Awaiting Orders to March intoExile—Allowed to Take but Few Possessions—Searching Out ArmenianNames—The Procession as Seen from a College Compound—A HopelessJourney of a Thousand Miles—Forced to Abandon Food and Beddingon the Road—Uncertainty of the Fate of Loved Ones—The Minds ofSome Become Unbalanced—Boys and Girls Sold to Mohammedans to beReared in that Faith—Two Girls Sold for Eighty Cents—A LoyalPriest of Ninety—Women and Girls Carried off to an Unknown Fate—Atthe Euphrates River—A Faithful Teacher Accompanies Her SchoolGirls on Their Way to Exile—Extracts from Her Letters—“GettingAccustomed to Being Robbed”—Exiles from Tocat—Men Tied Togetherfor Execution Overtaking Those Who Had Fallen by the Way from FormerDeportations—Not Allowed to Go Further—No Later Word from HerCompanions—Dual Orders Issued from Constantinople: One to be MadePublic, the Other to Deal with Armenians.
[XX. Camps of Refuge, 1915-17]	[332]
Physical Suffering Compared with the Deeper Anguish of Mind andHeart—Why the Young Turks Continued Their Barbarity—An AmericanMissionary’s Experience—Martyrdom of First Christian Century Comparedwith Scenes in 1915—An American Woman’s Appeal Unheeded—Absurdityof Turkish Excuse—Inefficiency of Armenian Defense—CilicianArmenians Disarmed by Misrepresentation—Evacuated Homes Given toMohammedan Refugees—More than 20,000 Armenians Forced to Emigratefrom One Province—An Almost Miraculous Escape—“Christiansin Distress. Rescue!”—The Third Stage of the Turk’s Plan ofExtermination: “Agricultural Colonies”—Most Undesirable SitesChosen—A Thousand Families with only Fifty Grown Men—UnwholesomeClimatic Influences—Scenes in the Refugee Camps—American EmbassyRefused Permission to Carry Help—The Sufferings of ShelterlessExiles—The Unburied Dead—Epidemic of Typhoid Fever—Exhausted ExilesDriven Forward at Point of Soldiers’ Bayonets—What a MissionarySaw—Distributing Bread to the Hungry—Children Sold to PreventStarvation—580 Buried in One Day—A Town in the Desert—InstantDeath Preferred to Long Suffering—A Protest from GermanMissionaries—Heart-rending Scenes—Massacres Still Going On—LateNews—Present Conditions—Accessories to Turks’ Crime—U.S.A. Enteringinto the Conflict. Encouraging Signs—God rules.
[Map]	[352]

A CRY FROM ARMENIA

By Ellen M. Mitchell

(The New Armenia)

Through all this golden sunshine there peals a mournful cry,
Help, help us, or we perish—help, help us, or we die!
Our babes are begging wildly for one small crust of bread,
They faint, they die with hunger—is there a God o’erhead?
Oh, haste with friendly succor, we are starving while we wait,
To thousands sinking graveward your help may come too late;
Our gaunt forms totter feebly; our lips grow wan and white,
Oh, God, how hard it is to starve beneath a sky so bright!
Your hearths are crowned with plenty, your homes with blessings rife;
The scattered crumbs that strew your floor might save a human life;
Oh, can you hear, unmoved and calm, of all our bitter need,
Nor feel your quivering heart-strings with throbs of pity bleed?
Dear brethren, would ye follow Christ, our starving children save,
Keep back the shuddering feet that tread the margin of the grave;
Send on your bounty quickly, with timely comfort haste,
For human lives are ebbing out each moment that you waste.

I
ARMENIA

Within the last few years Armenia has been attracting the attention of the civilized and Christian world. Those parts of Armenia, which were in the Turkish and Persian empires, have been turned by the devotees of the Mohammedan faith into altars upon which human sacrifices have been offered. Yea, not only the Turkish and Persian Armenia but also the whole of Asia Minor, and in fact every city, town, and village in the Turkish Empire where Armenians were found, the high priests and low priests of Islam were intensely engaged in the slaughter of the Christians as sacrifices acceptable to Allah. It is a lamentable fact that according to the teaching of Mohammed the severer the Mohammedan is to his unbelieving or non-Mohammedan neighbor the greater will be his reward, and the better his position in paradise.

It may not, therefore, be amiss if we say a few words about the original and ancestral home of the Armenians, whence they have been at times driven and scattered throughout the Mohammedan dominions and have become the victims of cruelty and massacre for ages.

Armenia lies directly north of Mesopotamia. It is bounded on the north by the Caucasian Mountains, on the south by the Mesopotamian plains, on the east it extends to the Caspian Sea and Media and on the west to the Black Sea and Asia Minor.[1]

Its boundaries varied at different times. According to the native historians, the country reached its greatest extent under the reigns of the Kings Aram and Tigranes II. The former is mentioned by the Assyrian kings, the latter was well-known in the first century B.C. “It (Armenia) varied in extent at different epochs, but it may be regarded as lying between lat. 36° 50´ and 41° 41´ N., and lon. 36° 20´ and 48° 40´ E.” It must have been between six and seven hundred miles from east to west and from two hundred and fifty to three hundred miles from north to south.

The country of Armenia was divided into two main divisions, namely, Armenia Major and Armenia Minor, or the Greater and Less Armenia. Greater Armenia which comprised the larger part of the country extended from the eastern boundary to the Euphrates river, and Armenia Minor extended from the Euphrates to Asia Minor. This ancient river thus made a dividing line between the two main divisions of the country. Armenia Major was again divided into fifteen provinces.

Armenia is a highland from 4000 to 7000 feet above the level of the sea. Its surface is undulated with beautiful dells and hills, with fertile valleys and forest covered mountains, with richly productive and extensive plains and pasture lands, and lofty snow capped mountains with glittering snowy peaks, piercing the clear blue sky.

The highest mountain of western Asia is situated at the center of Armenia. It is the Mount Masis of the natives, and Mount Ararat of the Europeans, and is of unsurpassed beauty, magnificence and grandeur. No traveler has ever yet seen it and not spoken of it with admiration. “The impression made by Ararat upon the mind of every one who has any sensibility of the stupendous works of the Creator, is wonderful and overpowering, and many a traveler of genius and taste has employed both the power of the pen and of the pencil in attempting to portray this impression, but the consciousness that no description, no representation can reach the sublimity of the object thus attempted to be depicted, must prove to the candid mind that whether we address the ear or eye, it is difficult to avoid the poetic in expression and exaggeration in form, and confine ourselves strictly within the bound of consistency and truth.

“Nothing can be more beautiful than its shape, more awful than its height. All the surrounding mountains sink into insignificance when compared to it. It is perfect in all its parts; no hard rugged features, no unnatural prominence; everything is in harmony, and all combined to render it one of the sublimest objects in nature.

“The fabric of Ararat composes an elliptic figure with an axis from northwest to southeast. The base plan measures about twenty-eight miles in length, and about twenty-three miles in width. The fabric is built up by two mountains. Greater Ararat (16,916 feet above the sea) and Little Ararat (12,840 feet above the sea). Their bases are contiguous at a level of 8800 feet, and their summits are seven miles apart. Both are due to eruptive volcanic action; but no eruption of Ararat is known to have occurred during the historical period, and the summit of the greater mountain presents all the appearance of a very ancient and much worndown volcano with a central chimney or vent, long since filled in.”[2]

From this central plateau, the highest mountain in Armenia, the land slopes down in all directions. On the south it inclines toward the Lake of Van and the plains of Mush; on the east toward the lower valley of Araxes, on the north to the middle valley of Araxes, and on the northeast and east toward the plains of Kars and Erzerum. “Along the line of the fortieth degree of latitude a succession of plains extend across the tableland, varying in their depression below the higher levels, watered by the Araxes and by the upper course of the western Euphrates, and each giving access to the other by natural passages. The first is the valley of the Araxes, with its narrower continuation westwards through the district between Kagyzman and Khorasan; the second is the plain of Pasin; the third the plain of Erzerum. Yet while the plains of Pasin and Erzerum are situated respectively at an altitude of fifty-five hundred feet and fifty-seven hundred and fifty feet, the valley of the Araxes in the neighborhood of Erivan is only twenty-eight hundred feet above the sea. Both on the north and south of this considerable depression, even the plainer levels of the tableland attain the imposing altitude of seven thousand feet, while its surface has been uplifted by volcanic action into long and irregular convexities of mountain and hill and hummock.”[3]

Instances of earthquake are not uncommon but fortunately not very frequent. In the early part of the eleventh century of the Christian era, King John was frightened by an earthquake and an eclipse of the moon as forebodings of coming calamity upon his kingdom and capital Ani. It is believed by some that the isolation of the rock of Van itself might have been due to some violent earthquake in the remote past causing its present separation, from the heights adjacent on the east. “Several visitations (earthquake) of considerable severity have probably occurred during the historical period, thus we learn that in the year 1648 of the Christian era, one-half of the wall of the fortified city, as well as churches, mosques, and private houses were shattered by successive shocks, and fell to the ground.”[4]

In the beginning of the year of our Lord, 1840, there stood the ancient village of Aicori (vineyards), happy and apparently sheltered in the shadow of the Armenian giant. Not far from the village at the foot of Mount Ararat were situated the old Monastery of St. James and its numerous buildings. But on the twentieth of June, a terrible earthquake shook the mighty mountain from its foundations. The avalanche, of rocks, earth, ice and snow from the mountain sides, rushed swiftly down upon the village and the monastery, the houses and buildings already tottering, crushed them and buried the inhabitants alive—about one thousand in number. The cities Nakhejevan and Erivan did not escape the calamity. In both of these cities also hundreds of houses were thrown down and thousands of lives were lost.

The following despatch will show that not only the sword and incendiary fire of the Turk has been pursuing the poor Armenian but even the elements of nature seem to militate against his mundane existence. May the good Lord save him from suffering in the hereafter!

Paris, May 17, 1891.—“The Dix-Neuvième Siècle states that commercial advices have been received at Marseilles from Trebizond to the effect that a new volcano has appeared in Armenia at the summit of Mount Minrod, in the district of Van, vomiting forth flames and lava. The villages at the base of the mountain have been destroyed, and many persons are said to have been killed or injured....”

The earliest name of Armenia appears to be Ararat; by that name it was known to the ancient Hebrews, Babylonians and Assyrians. We are told, in connection with the Deluge, that when the waters of the flood subsided “the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat.” “The geography of Genesis starts from the north. It was on the mountains of Ararat or Armenia that the ark rested, and it was accordingly with this region of the world that our primitive chart begins.”[5]

It was generally—we might say universally—believed by all Christians, almost of all ages, before the days of the higher critics, that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) was written by Moses. It is not improbable that when he composed or compiled the book of Genesis he was in possession of oral traditions and traditional documents, handed down to his time from these sources. It is one of these older written accounts which states that the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. Another old tradition handed down and preserved in writing is that of another Moses. Moses of Khorene, the Armenian Herodotus, who states that this central part of Armenia was formerly called Ararat. The author of the Book of Genesis is accurate and precise in his knowledge of the fact that Ararat is the name of the country upon whose mountains the tempest-tossed vessel of the Patriarch rested. Whether his knowledge was due to Divine inspiration, or to a historical fact preserved and handed down to his time (it may be both), we cannot tell. But the accuracy of the statement, which stood the criticisms of centuries, and especially this age of criticism, had a rightful claim to acceptance by all.

Ararat is also mentioned in three other books of the Old Testament, namely, II Kings 19:37, Isaiah 37:36, and Jeremiah 51:27. The first two passages are identical in import and speak of the escape of Adrammelech and Sharezer “into the land of Ararat” after having committed the crime of patricide. In the third passage, Jeremiah summons the forces of Armenia to join the Medes to overthrow Babylon in these words: “Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her (Babylon), call together against her the Kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashchenaz.... Prepare against her the nations with the Kings of the Medes.”

The following is from an inscription of Assur-Natsir-Pal the King of Assyria, and the date of his reign is assigned by Prof. Sayce from B.C. 883 to 858. “The cities of Khatu, Khotaru, Nistun, Irbidi ... the cities of Qurkhi which in sight of the mountains, of M’su, Arua and Arardhi, mighty mountains, are situated, I captured.” Professor Sayce remarks that “Arardhi seems to be the earliest form of Urardhu (of later Assyrian inscriptions), the Biblical Ararat.”[6]

The passages from the Bible and the Assyrian inscriptions show beyond doubt that Ararat was the earliest name of Armenia, and it was not the name of a mountain; and that the ark of Noah rested upon “the mountains of” Ararat or Armenia.

The great rivers of western Asia take their origin from the highlands of Armenia. The river Acampsis of the ancients, identified by some with the Pison of the Bible, has its source southwest of Erzerum, it receives several other streams and with beautiful windings, flows into the Black Sea. About the Araxes, according to some the Gihon of the Bible, I find an interesting statement in an Armenian history: “Aramais (King of Armenia) built a city of hewn stone on a small eminence in the plain of Aragay, and near the bank of a river before mentioned, which had received the name of Gihon. The new city which afterwards became the capital of his kingdom, he called Armavir, after his name, and the name of the river he changed to Arax after his son Arast.” The river Araxes is fed and swollen by many streams, rivulets and brooks, which run from the sides of numerous glens, through picturesque ravines, and mingle with it. Its tortuous course irrigates the lands adjacent carrying great fertility, and finally joins the famous river Kur (Cyrus) and pours itself into the bosom of the Caspian Sea.

The other two great rivers of Armenia Major are the Euphrates and Tigris, whose identity with those mentioned in connection with the Garden of Eden is beyond doubt. Both of these rivers also take their origin in the highlands of Armenia. The Euphrates, whose springs are not very far from Mount Ararat (Masis of the Armenians) takes a westward course along the Taurus mountain chain on the northern side of the mountain, runs north of Kharput, then turns westward, and about forty miles west of Kharput unites with the western branch of the Euphrates; near Malateah the river turns towards the southeast and nearly approaches the sources of the Tigris. From this point onward with a southeasterly course, these rivers flow and finally they unite and pour into the Persian Gulf. The students of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian history and civilization need not to be told what fertility these rivers carried along their course through the Mesopotamian plain, and how, with numerous canals and channels, they irrigated the land of these great empires, and became the means of commercial intercourse with the neighboring nations.

Armenia’s claim to the possession of the Garden of Eden within her bosom ought not to be disputed. Indeed no other country has attempted to contend for this honor. Her natural beauty, salubrious climate, her exuberant fertility, the fragrance of her flowers, the variety of her singing birds, above all her mountainous bosom and overflowing rivers through which mighty waters run down on her mountain sides and fill the great channels, which fertilize the subjacent countries and replenish the two adjacent seas and distant ocean in the south; all these justify her claim, and render it almost a historical fact, that Armenia was the cradle of infant humanity. “Ancient traditions place the province of Eden in this highest portion of Armenia, anciently called Ararat; and it appears to furnish all the conditions of the Mosaic narrative.[7] A distinguished writer, well-known in this country, who had the pleasure of looking from the top of Ararat over the countries around, makes the following remark: “Below and around including in this single view, seemed to lie the whole cradle of the human race, from Mesopotamia in the south to the great wall of Caucasus that covered the northern horizon, Mount Kaf, the boundary for so many ages of the civilized world. If it was indeed here that men set foot again on the unpeopled earth, one could imagine how the great dispersion went as the races spread themselves from these sacred heights along the courses of the great rivers down to the Black and Caspian Seas, and over the Assyrian plain to the shores of the Southern Ocean, whence they were wafted away to other continents and isles. No more imposing center of the earth could be imagined.”[8]

If variety makes beauty, Armenia furnishes such a variety, making her one of the most beautiful countries in the world; not only has she those gigantic mountains with their snow crowned heads, looking down upon the clouds that envelop their skirts while they mock at the air and the winds, not only has she hundreds of murmuring streams and rippling brooks, gliding along the sides of thousands of hills, which swell those kingly rivers and cause them to overflow their banks; but she has also some beautiful lakes like jewels set in their respective caskets. The Sevan, which lies between the Araxes and the Kur (Cyrus), occupies the center of a fertile plain in the northern part of Armenia and is called “Sweet Lake,” in contradistinction to the others which are salt water lakes. The Lake Sevan is about thirty miles northeast of Erivan, and is in the Russian provinces of Armenia. The Lake Urmi, or Urumia, lies in the southern and southeastern part of the country, and is now in the Persian province of Armenia. These lakes and some others are surrounded by magnificent views, but Lake of Van, surpassing them in size, in importance and splendor, will attract us to linger with her a little longer.

The area of Lake Van is about fourteen hundred square miles, its surface is over five thousand feet above the level of the sea. It is embosomed in the center of a rich and verdant plain, and this in turn is encircled by an exceedingly beautiful, romantic, undulating mountain chain which culminates, on the north, in the sublime monarch of the mountains of western Asia, “The Armenian giant Mount Ararat.”

The beauty of Lake Van and its surroundings always did, and will more intensely enchant the poets and artists—who are more fortunate and enjoy the beauty of nature more than the rest of us. The following is the description of a distinguished explorer: “A range of low hills now separated us from the plain and lake of Van. We soon reached their crest and a landscape of surpassing beauty was before us. At our feet intensely blue and sparkling in the rays of the sun, was the inland sea, with the sublime peak of the Subbon Dagh (mountain) mirrored in its transparent water. The city (of Van), with its castle crowned rock and its embattled walls and towers, lay embowered in orchards and gardens. To our right, a rugged snow-capped mountain opened midway into an amphitheater in which, amid lofty trees, stood the Armenian convent of Seven Churches. To the west of the lake was the Nimrod Dagh and the highlands nourishing the sources of the great rivers of Mesopotamia. The hills forming the foreground of our picture were carpeted with the brightest flowers, over which wandered the flocks, while the gaily dressed shepherds gathered around as we halted to contemplate the enchanting scene.”[9]

Many a scene like the above has enchanted the foreign traveler and inspired the native authors and poets, and caused the wandering, expatriated sons and daughters of Armenia to remember her former glory and splendor, now marred by the vicissitudes of the ages (especially under the iron heel of the Turkish tyranny), and in indescribable misery to weep, like the ancient Hebrew prophet “Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people.” (Lam. 3:48.)

It will be easily understood that the climate of Armenia cannot be mild in winter on account of the altitude of the country, which is from four thousand to seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. In general it is very healthful, but in winter the cold is severe and lasts from the middle of October until the beginning of May. In the valleys the weather is mild and very pleasant. The summer is short but warm, especially in certain valleys, which are far away from the reach of the sea breeze, too much enclosed by high mountains and too deep for mountain air. “And while the climate of the city (Alexandropol) on the Arpa may compare with St. Lawrence in North America, that of Erivan resembles Palermo or Barcelona.”[10] The length of the winter should not mislead the reader for neither is it uniformly long, nor is the degree of cold the same all over the country.

The reader’s expectation of such a variety of climate, combined with a naturally fertile soil, of a rich production both in quality and in quantity is perfectly justifiable. Barley, cotton, tobacco, grapes and wheat are almost unexcelled in quality; although these are cultivated with very rude instruments and in very primitive ways. Almost all the fruits and vegetables raised in gardens, in this country, are in the list of the products of Armenia.

It is due to the natural fertility of the country, when we remember the fact that the land is not only very old, and, therefore, more or less, would necessarily decline in its productivity, but the method of cultivation itself is also very old, started, probably by Adam, Noah and their immediate descendants, compelled by the necessities of life.

In spite of ancient traditions, which locate the Garden of Eden in Armenia, no explorer as yet has been able to discover it. Some signs and symptoms, however, seem still to linger in that unhappy land, even the curse of the flaming sword included.[11] The flowers of Armenia are some of these signs, though they grow wild and uncultivated, yet they are of rare beauty, fragrance and hue, and hardly are they known to the Europeans and Americans. They should surely give a paradisical aspect to the place and furnish the conditions of Eden.

The writer well remembers, while the snow had hardly melted away from the ground, going out into the fields with a missionary of his native city, who was eagerly digging up some of these flowers to send to his friends in England. “Some slight remains of Paradise are left even to our days, in the form of most lovely flowers, which I gathered on the very hill from whence the three rivers take their departure to their distant seas. Though one of them has a Latin scientific name, no plant of it has ever been in Europe, and by no manner of contrivance could we succeed in carrying one away. This most beautiful production was called in Latin Ravanea, or Philipea Coscinea, a parasite on absinthe or wormwood. This is the most beautiful flower conceivable, it is in the form of a lily, about nine to twelve inches long, including the stalk, the flower, the stalk and all the parts of it, resembles crimson velvet; it has no leaves, it is found on the side of the mountains near Erzerum, often in company with Morans Orientalis, a remarkable kind of thistle, with flowers all up the stalk, looking and smelling like the honeysuckle. An iris, of a most beautiful flaming yellow, is found among the rocks and it, as well as all the more beautiful flowers, blooms in the spring soon after the melting of the snow.”[12]

We must not omit the mention of the singing birds of Armenia, for surely they must have performed a noble service by their melodious music in that great assembly of all creation, gathered to witness the nuptials of our innocent parents in their sinless state. Some of the descendants of Adam and Eve, who are still living in Armenia, have no other singers than the posterity of those, who sang for the first happy pair, while in the state of their innocency. The birds in general are numerous, belonging to various tribes “which” says the author, above quoted, “in thousands and millions would reward the toil of the sportsman and naturalist on the plains and mountains of the highlands of Armenia.”

Nothing was more delightful and amusing to the writer when a child, than to watch the armies of birds flying towards the north in the spring, or south in the autumn, in a grand array, led by a general as it were, until they were lost from sight in the clear and bright Oriental sky; and even now, it would give him no little delight were it possible, to retire into one of those quiet cottages in the vineyards or orchards of the east and listen to the most melodious anthems of those songsters, who were then, it seems to him now, vying with one another to make their praises more acceptable to their Creator than do many of our noted singers in the magnificent churches and cathedrals of to-day.

The animals of Armenia—beside the human—are in general about the same as are found in the United States, though perhaps the domestic animals of Armenia, like cows, oxen, horses, mules and donkeys, sheep and goats, are a little smaller in size than are found in America. In olden times, the Armenian horses were as famous as are the Arabian horses now. “The rich pastures of Media and Armenia furnished excellent horses for the Medo-Persian Army.” (See Ezek. 27:14.)

There are some valuable mines in Armenia. Traces of old gold mines are found midway between Trebizond and Erzerum. Some even think that the locality of “Ophir,” from whence King Solomon fetched gold to decorate the temple at Jerusalem, was in this region. It may be interesting to some to repeat that the ancient river Acampsis, identified by some with the Pison of the Bible, “which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold,” does really run through this part of the country.[13]

There are rich silver and copper mines in the vicinity of Karpert (Harput), the copper mines alone yield 2,250,000 pounds annually. There are mines of sulphur, sulphurate of lead, antimony and silver. The mines of coal and iron are found in abundance, but not in full use, those that are operated are very poorly done. There is a little town situated on one of the tributaries of western Euphrates, called Divrig, where the writer spent some time in the two-fold capacity of a teacher and preacher for the reformed Armenian Church, and he well remembers how the people used easily to avail themselves of the native masses of iron, with primitive skill, converting them into rude implements for farming or other purposes.

There are mineral springs, hot and cold, at various places, with their peculiar curative powers; they have become “Bethesdas” of the invalids, and are frequented like the places of pilgrimage, by those who suffer any ailment which may be amenable to treatment and who are able to repair to such restorative resorts. Rock salt and salt springs also abound in Armenia. They are especially inexhaustible in the vicinity of Moosh. A salt stream, whose springs are through and from the salt rocks, which would bring a good income in the hands of a wise government, unprofitably flows into, and mingles, with the waters of the Euphrates.

Some of the ancient and modern cities of Armenia still in existence are the following: Van, Amid—now Diarhekie—Palu, Malatia, Kars, Erzerum, Etchmeadsin, Erivan, Sivas, Karpert (Harput), Manazgherd, Bitles and Moosh. The following is a list of some of the ancient cities in ruins: Armanir, Ardashad, Valarshabad, Dicranagherd and Ani.

The largest part of Armenia until the present year (1916) was under the Turkish rule. Since the spring of this year, the Russians have been occupying the country, and the fate of Armenia is still uncertain, but the hope and the prayer of all good people is that Armenia will be free from the yoke of the bloody Turk, whose reign in western Asia and in eastern Europe has been a curse to humanity in general and to the Armenians in particular.

The English traveler Sandys, who visited the Turkish empire nearly three centuries ago (about 1638) “has described with truth and eloquence the unhappy condition of the regions subject to the destructive despotism,” in the following words:

“These countries, once so glorious and famous for their happy estate, are now, through vice and ingratitude become the most deplorable spectacles of extreme misery. The wild beasts of mankind have broken in upon them, and rooted out all civility, and the pride of a stern, and barbarous tyrant, possessing the thrones of ancient dominions, who aims only at the height of greatness and sensuality hath reduced so great and goodly a part of the world to that lamentable distress and servitude under which it now faints and groans. Those rich lands at this present time remain waste and overgrown with bushes and receptacles of wild beasts, of thieves and murderers; large territories dispeopled or thinly inhabited; goodly cities made desolate, sumptuous buildings become ruins, glorious temples either subverted or prostituted to impiety; true religion discountenanced and opposed; all nobility extinguished; no light of learning permitted, no virtue cherished; violence and rapine exulting over all, and leaving no security, save an abject mind and unlooked on poverty.”

What would Mr. Sandys—this good Englishman—say if he were alive now and had seen what happened within the last hundred years; how these “wild beasts of mankind” again and again broke in upon the defenceless Christians, and the barbarous tyrants ordered their wholesale massacres; and how England protected and prolonged the lives of these wild beasts and barbarous tyrants over a hundred years; and how goodly cities have been made desolate and the ancient dominions have been turned into a veritable hell by the sword and the fire by these despots; and how England is now paying dearly for her past sins against humanity and Christianity for defending such a lowering faith, whose votaries defied Jesus to come and save His followers from the burning churches, after they had set fire to them to consume the helpless Christian men, women, and children who had fled thither for refuge from the sword? He would have said like others of his mold—England lacked men of Cromwell’s type.

The friends of Armenia still hope that she may have yet a bright future before her, when peace and tranquillity is restored; that she may yield, or contribute many valuable discoveries and manuscripts from the old monasteries and ruined churches and furnish a fuller knowledge of the history of the early Christian churches in the east; and that they may swell the band of missionaries of the cross and render good to her foes for the evil she has received for centuries.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Pliny agrees with the Armenian historians in bringing the eastern boundary to the Caspian Sea, and Herodotus makes Armenia to border on Cappadocia and Cilicia.

[2] Lynch, “Armenia, Travels and Studies”; Vol. I. pp. 197-8. London, 1901.

[3] Lynch, “Armenia,” Vol. I, p. 146.

[4] Lynch, “Armenia,” Vol. II, p. 76.

[5] Sayce, “The Races of the Old Testament,” p. 44.

[6] Sayce, “Records of the Past,” Vol. II, p. 140.

[7] Van Lennep, “Bible Lands,” p. 21.

[8] Bryce, “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” p. 298.

[9] Layard, “Nineveh and Babylon,” pp. 333-4.

[10] Lynch, “Armenia,” Vol. I, p. 445.

[11] Bryce, “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” p. 312.

[12] Curzon, “Armenia,” p. 117.

[13] Genesis 2:11.

II
THE ARMENIANS

It is generally accepted, even by the higher critics, that the present Armenians are descended from Togarmah of the Scriptures (Genesis 10:3). The traditions of the Armenians also happily agree with this. It was common in the olden times for the Armenian writers to call the people “the house of Togarmah,” as did also the prophet Ezekiel (27:14).

There is a happy agreement among the commentators on the subject of “Togarmah” or “the house of Togarmah,” all seeming to accept these words as representing the Armenians. Here we may adduce the statements of a few distinguished writers on this subject. “The third son of Gomer is Togarmah; the people descending from him is called the house of Togarmah—(Ezekiel 27:14)—where they are named after Javan, Tubel, and Meshech, as bringing horses and mules to the mart of Tyre; and 38:6, where it appears after Gomer as a component of the army of Gog. The Armenians regarded Thorgom (Togarmah), the father of Haick, as their ancestor; and even granting that the form of the name Thorgom was occasioned by Thorgama of the LXX (Septuagint version), still the Armenian tradition is confirmed by Tilgarimmu being in the cuneiform inscription the name of a fortified town in the subsequent district of Melitem (Malatiah), on the southwestern boundary of Armenia.”[14] “TOGARMAH.” “The people thus designated are mentioned twice by Ezekiel: in the former passage as trading in the fairs of Tyre with horses and mules, in the latter as about to come with Gomer out of the north quarter against Palestine. Neither passage does much toward fixing a locality, but both agree with the hypothesis which has the support alike of etymology and of national tradition, that the people intended are the ancient inhabitants of Armenia. Grimm’s view that Togarmah is composed of two elements: Taka, which is in Sanskrit ‘tribe’ or ‘race,’ and Armah (Armenia), may well be accepted. The Armenian tradition which derived the Haikian race from Thorgon (m), as it can scarcely be a coincidence, must be regarded as having considerable value. Now, the existing Armenians, the legitimate descendants of those who occupied the country in the time of Ezekiel, speak a language which modern ethnologists pronounce to be decidedly Indo-European; and thus, so far the modern science confirms the Scriptural account.”[15]

This Armenian tradition which the great scholars say “must be regarded as having considerable value,” runs somewhat like the following: About 2300 B.C., Haig, the son of Togarmah, like the rest of the descendants of Noah, was in pursuit of a new home for himself and for his posterity, and had descended with the multitude into the country of Shinar. Here the people, for fear of another destructive flood, attempted to build a high tower, “the tower of Babel.” Haig and his sons distinguished themselves by wisdom and virtue in the erection of this tower; but Belus ambitious for supremacy, yea, even requiring homage to his image, became too repulsive to the virtuous Haig and his sons. Haig, therefore, left the plains of Shinar with his large family and turned back to the home of his nativity, the land of Ararat, in the vicinity of the Lake of Van.

Belus, on hearing that Haig had withdrawn from his authority, pursued him with a large force. Haig, on hearing of the purpose of Belus’ pursuit, mustered all the male members of his family who were able to fight, and all those who were willing to cast their lot with him and willingly put themselves under his authority, and he armed them as best he was able and set out to meet the enemy. He charged his little army to attack that part of the enemy’s force where Belus commanded in person. “For,” said he, “if we succeed in discomfiting that part the victory is ours; should we, however, be unsuccessful in our attempt let us never survive the misery and disgrace of a defeat, but rather perish, sword in hand, defending the best and dearest right of reasonable creatures—our liberty.” Then did the brave leader move on with his little force and encountered the invaders. After a bloody conflict Belus fell by an arrow discharged at him by Haig. The army of Belus, soon after this, was dispersed. Thus the first battle for liberty the progenitor of the Armenians fought and won for himself and his posterity. The Armenians, therefore, call themselves after this hero Haigs and the country Haiasdan.

Haig, following the manner of the patriarchs, built many towns and villages and after a long and useful life, died in peace.

Haig was succeeded by his son Armenag—some think Armenia is named after this prince. The son of Armenag, whose name was Aramais, succeeded him. The son and successor of Aramais was Amasia, who, soon after the decease of his father took the lead of the government. According to our tradition it was this king who gave the name Masis, after himself, to that magnificent and huge mountain, now called Mount Ararat. After the death of his father Harmah ascended the throne.

Aram, about 1300 B.C.,[16] the son and successor of Harmah, towers among the kings of the first period of the Armenian history; he was, like King David, a great warrior and conqueror. He chased out the Babylonian and Median invaders, penetrated into the heart of Cappadocia, and the countries which he thus subjected to the west of the Euphrates composed the Armenia Minor.

After the long and glorious reign of Aram the country slowly came into a subordinate condition to the Assyrian empire and though the kings of the Haikian dynasty continued to rule over Armenia, they were according to our traditional history much overshadowed when the southern empire was at the zenith of her glory.

The famous inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I, the king of Assyria (1110-1090 B.C.) throws some light on the condition of Armenia, and some of those districts which never knew subjection: “The lands of Laraus and Ammous, which from the days immemorial had not known subjection, like the flood of a deluge I overwhelmed. With their armies on the mountains of Aruma, I fought, and a destruction of them I made.... At the mountain of Aruma, a difficult district which for the passage of my chariots was not suited, I left the chariots, I took the lead of my soldiers.”

It is apparent from the discoveries of the cuneiform inscriptions, both in Armenia and in Assyria, and their decipherment by the modern scholars, that our ancient historians, who depended largely on traditions, were misled or mistaken with regard to the Assyrian supremacy over Armenia at this period—1100-626 B.C. Instead of Assyrian supremacy, a new dynasty had sprung up in the regions of Lake Van, north, west, and south of the lake, and become a worthy antagonist of the Assyrians. They had probably pushed the Haikian dynasty further north and northwest for a few centuries.

The following is a brief account of this period and dynasty: It may be interesting and also important to state that the kings of this dynasty are known to the Assyrian monarchs as the kings of Urartu (Ararat) or Nairi, and in the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions, they are so named. Neither do they call themselves the kings of Urartu, but they designate themselves as the Kings of Nairi and Biainia.

They call themselves also the children of Khaldis, after their supreme God. Of late the modern writers call them Chaldians or Khaldians, but they are pleased to call themselves the children of Khaldis, and never Khaldians. They seem to have a sort of theocratic reign.

Following is a list of the kings of this dynasty; Arame—He has no inscriptions; he is known only through those of the Assyrian kings, in which he is styled the king of Urartu (Ararat). He was attacked in his capital, Arzaskum, by Shalmaneser II in 860 and again in 856 B.C.

1. Sarduris I—Son of Lutipris, was attacked by the general of Shalmaneser II in about 833 B.C. Called King of Urartu in the Assyrian inscriptions.

2. Ispuinis—Son of Sarduris, 825-812 B.C., mentioned in his own inscriptions, styled himself King of Nairi of Soura (Northern Syria), inhabiting the city of Dhuspas.

3. Menuas—Son of Ispuinis, “may be regarded as the founder of the original garden city of Van.” He calls himself the great King of Biania, inhabiting the city of Dhuspas (Van).

4. Argistis—his son—Numerous inscriptions of his are found as far north as Alexandropol—He described his conquests of the Assyrians southeast of Lake Urumia. Lynch thinks “He was the founder of the City of Armanir in the valley of the Araxes.”

5. Sarduris II—Son of Argistis—His numerous inscriptions are scattered over a large area of the country as far as Malatia. He probably reigned from 754-727 B.C. He is called the King of Urardhu in the Assyrian inscriptions.

6. Rusas—his son. He has at least two important inscriptions. He came in contact with Sargon, the King of Assyria (722-705 B.C.)

7. Argistis II—Son of Rusas. The mention of this ruler in a Vannic text was discovered by Messrs. Beliek and Lehman in an inscription on a shield in the temple at Tobrak Kala, near Van; now in the British Museum.

8. Rusas II—The son of the above. He is mentioned on the shield above mentioned, and also in two new inscriptions found by Dr. Belek, in which it is told that he conquered the Hittites and Moschians. He was a contemporary of Esarhaddon of Assyria (681-668 B.C.).

9. Erimenas—He is mentioned in an inscription on the shield as the father of Rusas III.

10. Rusas III—He rebuilt the temple of Khaldis (god) on the Tobrak Kala. An inscription of this king has been found at Armauir.

11. Sarduris III—He is known through the Assyrian inscriptions as having sent an embassy an embassy to Ashur-Bani-Pal for a treaty of peace, about 644 B.C.[17]

The succession of the kings of this dynasty has been recently corrected by inscriptions discovered by Drs. Belek and Lehmann. They put (1) Lutipris, (2) Sarduris I, (3) Arame, (4) Sarduris II.... They suppose a Sarduris II, the son of Arame, as the antagonist of Shalmaneser II, and suggest that Sarduris I was a contemporary of Ashur-Naser-Pal II (885-860 B.C.).

“The original capital of the land was named Arzashkun, and was situated in the valley of Araxes. The first kings mentioned in the inscription are Lutipris and Sarduris I, who were contemporary with Ashur-Naser-Pal (885-860 B.C.). In the account of the sweeping operations from end to end of the northern regions, which marked the beginning and end of that great warrior’s reign, no mention is made of Sarduris, but it is more than probable that he felt the weight of Ashur-Naser-Pal’s arm. Shalmaneser II is the first Assyrian king who states that he came into actual hostile contact with Urartu, whose king was Arame. In 860, 857, and 845 Shalmaneser ravaged Arame’s country and finally destroyed Arzashkun. Later, when Sarduris II had succeeded Arame, the Assyrian turtan (general) Ashurdayan attacked (in 833 and 829 B.C.). Ten years later again the turtan of Shamshi-Adod led an expedition against Ishpuinis, the successor of Sarduris II. These successive attacks seem to have strengthened rather than weakened the hardy mountain state, while the Assyrians gained no real advantage from them. In alliance, apparently, with Urartu, stood the Mannai, an Iranian folk of Median stock, and Protomedes, to whom the name Madai properly belonged (it now first appears in history), in the country east of Lake Urmia.... Meanwhile Menuas, the son of Sarduris II, had extended the dominion of Urartu to the western shores of Lake Urmia. Argistis I, his son, conquered the whole of Kurdistan and Armenia as far west as Meled or Meleten (Malatia). The proximity of the territory of Urartu to the center of the Assyrian power now became directly dangerous to the empire.”[18]

It is more than probable that our esteemed reader’s patience has been taxed beyond measure by reading a history furnished by the Assyrian and Armenian inscriptions, but then hardy states, the kingdoms of Ararat have rendered a noble service to mankind by checking the Assyrian kings from doing more mischief in other parts of western Asia. Not infrequently these kings had to quit in the midst of their campaign in Syria, Palestine or in Asia Minor and run back to stop the avalanche coming down from the “Mountains of Aruma” to sweep the Assyrians down. With all their boasting, the Assyrian kings never conquered the kingdoms of Ararat.

“The great undertaking of the 4th year of the King’s reign was a campaign into the lands of Nairi. By this, the annals of Tiglathpileser I clearly mean the lands about the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, lying north, west and south of Lake Van.... One only of these twenty-three kings—Pierri, the king of Dayami (near Maleshgert)—refused to surrender as the others did but resisted to the last. He was therefore carried in chains to Assyria.... This episode in the king’s conquests is concluded with the claim that the whole of the lands of Nairi were subdued, but later history shows clearly that further conquest was necessary.”[19]

Tiglathpileser IV, the king of Assyria, made several attempts (in 739, 736, 735 B.C.) to reduce the kingdoms of Ararat, but he completely failed to conquer them. The authority above quoted concludes the history of their campaigns in these words: “After some ineffectual fighting about the Capital (Van) Tiglathpileser raised the siege and departed. He had not succeeded in adding the kingdom of Urartu to Assyria.”[20]

According to Dr. Belek, the last work of the last king, Sarduris IV, of Ararat is written in the records of Ashurbanipal of Assyria (668-626 B.C.). Sarduris sent messengers, with presents and words of friendliness to the Assyrian king. Assyria had abandoned its attempts to wreck the kingdom of Ararat and the two powers now were friends. Some of the modern kings would have saved untold misery and millions of lives had they done likewise.

It is very probable that Aram of the Armenian historians, Aruma of Tiglath-Pileser I (1090 B.C.) and Arame of Shalmaneser II (860 B.C.) are the same name. Tiglath-Pileser may have used it as a certain district, for his expression would justify this supposition: “On the mountains of Aruma I fought.” And again: “At the mountain of Aruma, a difficult district....”[21] No name of a king is mentioned at this date. But in the time of Shalmaneser’s invasion into Armenia (860 B.C.), we are distinctly told: “The inscription of Kurkh (twenty miles from Diarhekir) informs us that Shalmaneser had already, in the year of his accession, come in conflict with Arrame (or Arame, as the name is there written). After leaving the city of Khupuscia, in the land of Nahri, he had attacked Sugunia, a stronghold of Arame, ‘King of Urardlians,’ and there marched to the Sea of the land of Nahri; or Lake Van, where a figure of himself and a cuneiform inscription were engraved on the rack.”[22]

A probable hypothesis is that Aram of the Armenian historians, by his conquests and wise administration, had formed a dynasty, that the early Assyrians knew his country and some of his successors by his name, that Arame of the time of Shalmaneser may have been the last of that dynasty and on account of his reverses with the Assyrian King, his reign came to an end. The following quotation from Professor Sayce seems to confirm this view: “A more serious difficulty exists in the fact that Sarduris I calls himself the son of Lutipris, whereas the king of Uradhu, against whom Shalmaneser had to contend in 857 and 845 B.C., was Arame, and already, in 833 B.C., only twelve years later, his antagonist was Sarduris. It is, however, quite possible that the reign of Lutipris had been a short one of less than twelve years. But I am more inclined to conjecture that Sarduris I was the leader of a new dynasty, the ill successes of Arame in his wars with Assyrians forming the occasion for his overthrow.” This conjecture also explains why the kings of this dynasty do not call themselves the kings of Ararat, and have no reference to Arame, while much Assyrianism exists in their culture.

In regard to the origin of Ararat, or Arardhi, it is certainly not a Semitic word, neither is it an Accadian, were it so, we would have been told. Moses of Khorene thought it was called Ara-ard, in reference to a defeat of Ara, the king of Armenia, in a bloody conflict with the Babylonians about eighteen centuries before our era. Another Armenian historian makes Arardhi to derive its name from King Ara, in honor of the king, it being composed of Ara and Ardh, “field” or “plain,” on account of his wise administration and the improvements which he made in the land.[23]

Brockhous’ definition and derivation of Arardhi is the most satisfactory of all, namely, Ar, in Sanskrit the root of “Aryan” or “nobles,” and ardh, in ancient Armenian the “plains” or “field,” thus Arardhi or Ararat meaning “the plains of nobles” or “Aryans.”[24]

The antiquity of the name of Ararat is not disputed. It first comes to our notice in the book of Genesis, as we have seen in connection with the resting of the ark “upon the mountains of Ararat.” The book of Genesis is considered by the best critics to be the oldest book, or at least, having the oldest documents that compose the book in the Scriptures, and its authorship is assigned to Moses, who lived in the fifteenth century before the Christian era. Ararat was known as the name of Armenia even several centuries before the time of Moses. “An ancient bilingual tablet (W. A. I., II 48, 13) makes Urdhu the equivalent of tilla, the latter, as Sir H. Rawlinson long ago pointed out, being probably a semitic loan-word, and meaning “the highlands.” Tilla, the equivalent of Urdhu, usually signifies that land of Accad or northern Babylonia, but since it is not glossed in this passage, and stands, moreover, between Akharu or Palestine, and Kutu Kurdistan, it would seem that it is here employed to denote Armenia. Urardhu, therefore, contracted into Urdhu, would have been the designation of the highlands of Armenia among the Babylonians as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth century B.C.”[25]

We know that the Assyrians sprang out of the ancient Babylonian people; they were of the same blood and race. Assyria was colonized from Babylonia.[26] Thus, their early acquaintance with the highlands of Armenia, by the name of Urardhu, accounts for their calling the Kings of Armenia the kings of Urardhu or Ararat.

There has been a great deal of discussion among the scholars as to whether these Vaunic kings and people belong to the Aryan race or not, and whether their language belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. The question may be considered still a debatable one, though the consensus of opinion of the modern writers is in the negative. Yet a man like the late Dr. Hincks, who was the first to begin the decipherment of the Vaunic inscriptions, has recorded his opinion in the following words: “I flatter myself, that those who read this paper will admit that I have made a beginning, and gone a considerable way in the decipherment and interpretation of a set of inscriptions, which, however slight may be their value in a historical point of view, are invaluable to the philologer, as being beyond all comparison the oldest specimens of the Asiatic branch of the Indo-Germanic family; nay, for aught we know to the contrary, they are more ancient than any Greek which has come down to us.”[27]

The name Armenia was differently spelled by the ancients. In the old Persian it is written Armina, and in the Armondian, Kharminya. It first appears in the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius Hystospis (522-486 B.C.), which supplanted the earlier name Arardu, or Ararat. According to the Armenian historians it is called after King Armenag, but according to others its origin is unknown. “It may be connected with the Vaunic word armeini-lio ‘a stele’ (monument), or with Arman, an Aramaean district south of Lake Van.”[28]

It must have been during the reign of Rusas II, the King of Ararat, that the sons of Sennacherib, Adrammelech and Shareser, after their assassination of their father, escaped into the land of Ararat or Armenia (see Isaiah 37:37-38). For we know that Rusas II was contemporary of Esar-haddon, Sennacherib’s son, who succeeded him (681-668 B.C.). The Armenian history makes Sgaiordi the king who welcomed the Assyrian princes in to his realm: probably it is a mistake.

Ashurbanipal was the last king of Assyria who had anything to do with the Kings of Ararat. As we have seen he made the treaty of peace with Sarduris III or IV, but his long reign (from 668-626 B.C.) was a period of gradual waning of the power of the vast empire. Babylon, hitherto a tributary of Assyria, became independent under Nabopolassar about 625 B.C., and by the aid of the King of Ararat and their ally, Nabopalassar succeeded in overthrowing the Assyrian empire, and about 607 B.C. Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, fell before Nabopolassar and his allies. The supremacy of the East was thus transferred to Babylon.

According to our history, Prince Baruir was an ally of Nabopalassar. It is not said that he was an ally when the latter established the independence of Babylon (though he might have been), but he was an ally when Nabopalassar finished the work of overthrowing the Assyrian empire. Thirty-seven years before the latter event Sarduris was the King of Ararat. There is a great probability that Baruir of the Armenian history and Sarduris of the cuneiform inscription are either the same person, or Baruir is a successor of Sarduris, by the same name; and that the name Baruir is a misspelled form of Sarduris.[29] Again, the son and successor of Baruir (or Sarduris V) is called H’rasha or H’racha. It is surely more than probable that this is the name of Rusas of the inscriptions. I would not insist that he is Rusas III, who lived before Sarduis IV, but if Baruir is identical with Sarduris IV, or he is his successor, then is H’rasha his son and successor Rusas IV. He was a contemporary and an ally of Nebuchadnezzar, who succeeded his father Nabopolassar about 606 B.C.

H’racha, as the ally of Nebuchadnezzar, marched at the head of his forces with the Babylonian monarch against Syria and Palestine. On his return, he brought with him a small colony from Judea, mostly nobles,[30] among whom was a prince by the name of Shambat, whose posterity in the middle ages furnished the kings of Pagradit dynasty in Armenia.

Among the successors of H’racha, as the rulers of Armenia, Tigranes I is spoken of, by our historians, as really royal; wise in his administration of the affairs of the State and just in his dealings with the high and low. In the revolt of the Persians, and consequent defeat of Astyages (the Median King) and the Medes; which resulted in the accession of Cyrus to the throne of the united Medo-Persian empire; Tigranes must have rendered some valuable service to the son of Cambyses. This may account for the great friendship that existed between these two worthy champions of human liberty.[31] And according to the summons of Prophet Jeremiah (51:27-28), the forces of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz joined the Medo-Persian army and accomplished the overthrow of the wicked empire of Babylonia (538 B.C.).

The descendants of Tigranes I maintained some sort of a tributary rule over the northeastern part of the country, but the major part of the country was ruled by the governors appointed by the Medo-Persian kings. Yet little as this tributary state was, judging by the references found in the Behistan inscriptions, revolts were not infrequent. The following is from Darius Hystaspis’ inscriptions (521-486 B.C.).

“... Afterwards I sent Dadarshesh the Armenian, he is my servant, I said to him, ‘go and crush that rebellious army, which revolts against.’ Dadarshesh went to subdue Armenia. The rebels fought against him, Ormazd came to my help. My army destroyed many of the enemy’s army.”

King Vahi was the last of the descendants of Tigranes I, who at the head of his army was fighting with the Persian forces against the Macedonian invaders under Alexander the Great. King Vahi valiantly fought against the Grecian armies in defense of the rights of his people and country, and in the terrible conflict he fell (330 B.C.). From this time on the Macedonian rulers controlled all of Armenia, except a small district between the rivers Araxes and Kur in the remote northeastern mountain fastnesses. After the defeat of Antiochus the Great by the Romans, Armenia recovered her independence; it, however, did not last very long.

On the east and southeast of the Caspian Sea, a mountainous district is marked on the ancient maps of the east—Parthia. It is generally believed by the learned that the people who occupied this country and were called Parthians, were of Scythian origin, and that the word Parthian in the Scythian language means exile. They were nomadic in their habits, but noted horsemen and well skilled in handling the bow and arrow. They were patient in bearing the yoke under the Assyrian, Median, and Persian governments. After the conquests of Alexander the Great they shared the fate of their more enlightened and powerful neighbors; but even the Parthians could not stand any longer the miserable rule of the successors of the Macedonian king. They revolted against Antiochus II, in 256, and during the reign of Seleucus II, under the leadership of Arsaces, they established their complete independence (238 B.C.), and began to extend their dominions into the east, and west, and north and south. Within less than a century, the Arsacide dynasty extended the boundaries of the Parthian empire from the Indus to the Euphrates and from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf.

Arsaces VI, or the Great, appointed his brother Valarsaces king over Armenia (149 B.C.), and these two countries, governed by one reigning family, were in full sympathy and accord with each other and for a long time in a firm alliance, becoming worthy antagonists of the Romans, who were pushing eastward over the territories once subdued by Alexander the Great.

Among the successors of Valarsaces of the Arsacide dynasty of Armenia, Tigranes II, or the Great, immortalized himself, not only in the history of Armenia, but also in universal history. He had a long and glorious reign (98-36 B.C.). His name was the glory of his people, as it was also a terror to his foes. He extended his dominions from the Caucasian mountains to the Mesopotamian plains and from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean.

“Tigranes (II) had hitherto been continually increasing in strength. By the defeat of Artunes, king of Sopheni or Armenia Minor, he had made himself master of Armenia in its widest extent; by his wars with Parthia herself, he had acquired Gordyene, or Northern Mesopotamia, and Adiabeni or the entire rich tract east of the middle Tigris (including Assyria proper and Arbelitis), as far, at any rate, as the course of the lower Zab; by means which are not stated, he had brought under subjection the king of the important country of Media Atropatene, independent since the time of Alexander. Invited into Syria, about B.C. 83, by the wretched inhabitants, wearied with perpetual civil wars between the princes of the house of Seleucidae, he had found no difficulty in establishing himself as a king over Cilicia, Syria and most of Phœnicia. About B.C. 80, he had determined on building himself a new capital in the province of Gordieni, a capital of vast size, provided with all the luxuries required by an Oriental court, and fortified with a wall which recalled the glories of the ancient cities of Assyria.”[32]

This magnificent capital was called after him—Tigranaghert[33] (built by Tigranes).

Long before this time the Romans had been following the track of the Macedonian conqueror to snatch the fragments of his broken Eastern empire from his successors. But Tigranes the Great was like a great wall before their fast advance. Now he was dead. Still worse, there was not, as before, that firm alliance between the Parthians and Armenians, which had been the foundation of their stability. Had the Parthian and Armenian monarchs recognized the fact that Rome was a common enemy to both, and kept their alliance firm and unshaken by the intrigues and enticements of the Roman generals, and had encountered the common foe with their united forces, the Roman power would never have been able to make her appearance, or maintain it, in western Asia. However, whether with bravery or treachery (we rather think with a combination of the two), the Romans pushed their way into that country.

Antony, the Roman general, in his expedition into Parthia entered into alliance with Artavasdes, the son and successor of Tigranes II, and he was allowed to attack Media through Armenia. Media was dependent on Parthia, at this time (35 B.C.). Ill success compelled him to retreat into Armenia and winter there. Meanwhile, the king of Media, having been provoked by the Parthians, and with the hope of a possible recovery of his country’s independence by the Roman aid, entered into an alliance with the Roman general. Antony, then desiring to reduce Armenia to a vassal state, by enticing Artavasdes to enter into his power, while the Roman legions were stationed at the most important posts in the country which had afforded them such a hospitable shelter during the severe winter, “he (Antony) professed the most friendly feeling towards Artavasdes, even promising an alliance between their families, that prince (Artavasdes), after some hesitation, at length entered into his presence. He was immediately seized and put in chains, and carried off Artavasdes and a rich bounty into Egypt.”[34]

Artavasdes was kept in prison for about two years and afterwards beheaded (30 B.C.). According to some his son recovered the country by the aid of the Parthians and was avenged for the wrong done to his father, by massacring all the perfidious Romans found in the country. Armenia, after this, was for a long time in a perpetual turmoil, between the Romans on one side and the Parthians on the other. Almost a hundred years after the death of Ardashes II (21 B.C.-85 A.D.), the condition of the country was most deplorable. The internal dissensions among the nobility of the inhabitants, and the contentions of the Romans and Parthians externally, resulting in the clash of arms often between these two powers. Intrigues and assassinations among the princes and notables, fill the country with horror and the people with misery.

A fragment of the great empire of Tigranes II, the northwestern part of Mesopotamia was made a principality, the soldiers and the nobility made Artavasdes’ cousin, Arsham, king, under the protectorate of Rome (33-3 B.C.). The king made Edessa his capital. His son and successor was called Abgarus by the Assyrians. He was contemporary with Christ and was the first Christian Prince (3 B.C.-35 A.D.). In the north Ardashes (III) seems to have a stormy time for a while, but he had a long and useful reign (85-131 A.D.). His three sons successively succeeded him (131-193).

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Delitzsch, “Commentary on Genesis,” Vol. I, p. 310.

[15] Rawlinson, “The Origin of Nations,” p. 183.

[16] The dates of this traditional period are uncertain.

[17] Lynch, “Armenia,” Vol. II, pp. 71-76.

[18] Hall, “The Ancient History of the Near East,” pp. 458-9.

[19] Rogers, “History of Babylonia and Assyria,” Vol. II, pp. 171-2.

[20] Rogers, “History of Babylonia and Assyria,” Vol. II, pp. 284-5.

[21] See p. 41.

[22] Sayce, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XIV, p. 393.

[23] Chamich, “History of Armenia,” p. 22.

[24] Brockhous, “Lexico II,” p. 60.

[25] Sayce, “Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van,” Journal R.A.S., Vol. XIV, p. 392.

[26] Rogers, “History of Babylonia and Assyria,” Vol. I, pp. 455-6

[27] Hincks, Journal Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. IX, p. 422.

[28] Hastings’ “Dictionary of the Bible,” under the article Ararat.

[29] From Sarduris, by dropping d and by the exchange of B for S, we have Baruris or Baruros, vice versa.

[30] See II Kings, 24:11-16. This is the first captivity, about 597 B.C.

[31] This friendship between Cyrus and Tigranes furnished Xenophon with a fertile subject to expand his romantic genius. “And you, Tigranes,” said he (Cyrus), “at what rate would you purchase the regaining of your wife?” Now he happened to be but lately married and had a very great love for his wife. “Cyrus,” said he (Tigranes), “to save her from servitude, I would ransom her at the expense of my life.”

“Cyropædia,” Book III, Chapter I.

[32] Rawlinson, “The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy,” pp. 140-1.

[33] According to Strabo, 12 Greek cities were depopulated to furnish Tigrancerta with inhabitants (XI, 14 Sect. 15). According to Appean 300,000 Cappadocians were translated thither (Methrice, page 216 C). Plutarch speaks of the population as having been drawn from Cilicin, Cappadocia, Gordyene, Assyria and Adeabeni (Lucu, 11 26).

[34] Rawlinson, “The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy,” XIII, p. 206.

III
THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT ARMENIANS

“And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord.” Gen. 9:20. “Our earth owes the seeds of all higher culture to religious traditions, whether literary or oral.”—Herdee.

The Bible, modern scholarship and Armenian traditions agree that the ark of Noah rested “upon the mountains of Ararat,” or Armenia. We learn from the Bible, that Noah came out of the ark and all those that were with him, and he builded an altar unto the Lord “and offered burnt offerings on the Altar.” This fact justifies Armenia’s claim to be the first country where a true and pure divine worship was again practised after the Deluge. The tradition of the Armenians coincides with the truth revealed in the Bible and with the results of modern scholarship, that the primitive religion of mankind was a pure and simple monotheism, in form patriarchal. Prof. Max Müller of Oxford, England, says “Religion is not a new invention. It is, if not as old as the world, at least as old as the world we know. As soon almost as we know anything of the thoughts and feelings of man, we find him in possession of religion, or rather possessed by religion.”

The Bible furnishes sufficient facts to assert that this pure monotheism in its patriarchal form was perpetuated among the immediate descendants of Noah, and later especially in the line of Abraham. Many centuries after the building of the first altar unto the Lord we find Abraham called by Jehovah out of his country and from his people to become the head of a nation through whom the knowledge of the only one true God should be perpetrated. God’s call of Abraham was not for the purpose of making a true worshiper of him, but that through him the true worship of Jehovah might be perpetuated. The Lord said “I will make of thee a great nation.”

Another example of the true worshiper of God in the time of Abraham was Melchizedek (King of righteousness), King of Salem (peace), “who was the high priest of the most high God.”[35] Melchizedek was not only a monotheist, but also the priest of a monotheistic faith. He reigned over his people on whose behalf he officiated as the high priest of the most high God. Now, therefore, it ought to be admitted that not only solitary individuals, like Abraham and Melchizidek, but the people of the latter also were true worshipers of God.

The Bible is not a universal history of mankind. Were it so, well might we have expected it to mention other nations and their early religious beliefs; though what little it incidentally states in regard to them is marvelously accurate. The Armenian tradition that their primitive religion was monotheism, therefore, is neither incredible nor inconceivable, but on the contrary, it is most probable and is supported by the analogy of the Bible record.

The investigations of modern scholarship maintain the idea and render it almost a moral demonstration that the primitive religions of the ancient nations were of a monotheistic type or if not a pure monotheism, at least not very far from it. Prof. Max Müller, in his lectures on the “Origin and Growth of Religion,” says: “The Ancient Aryans felt from the beginning, aye, it may be more in the beginning than afterwards, the presence of a Beyond[36] of an Infinite, of a Divine, or whatever else we may call it now; and they tried to grasp and comprehend it, as we all do, by giving to it name after name.” It is conceded by the scholars that the ancient Armenians were closely connected with the ancient Aryans (See Chap. II), indeed that they were Aryans, and their legitimate descendants now speak a language which modern ethnologists decidedly pronounce to belong to Aryan or Indo-Germanic origin. Although we do not know when the separation of the Aryans took place, we can safely say that the above statement of Prof. Max Müller is also perfectly applicable to the ancient Armenians; yet we are not able to say how long such a purity of faith prevailed in Armenia.

The human mind is capable of progress, but when it is left to itself is sure to retrograde and degenerate. This is verified in the case of almost all nations and in the history of all the religions of the world. “That religion is liable to corruption is surely seen again and again. In one sense the history of most religions might be called a slow corruption of their primitive purity.” Divine aid, especially in religion, is therefore absolutely necessary for a true progress. Armenia left to herself fell into a gross form of idolatry. Her fall must have been hastened, if not caused, by her idolatrous neighbors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. For the idolatry which we find in the early history of the country is decidedly like that of Assyro-Babylonian. It is not the same religion adopted and practised by the inhabitants, but it is modeled after the Assyrian.

Anterior to the cuneiform inscriptions of Armenia the people must have had an idolatry similar to the Sabeism (Sabianism) of Babylonia, which was afterwards modeled to the Assyrian style, with its distinctive character. One of the inscriptions furnishes a long list of the gods and the regulations for sacrifices daily to be offered to them. There are, however, three other gods, which stood apart by themselves at the head of the Pantheon. These are Khaldis, Tusbas (the air god) and Adinis (the sun god). But Khaldis is the supreme god and the father of other gods; and in addition to these every tribe, and city and fortress seem to have its respective god. Some other gods are Avis or Auis (the water god), Agas (the earth god), Dhuspuas (the god of Tosp, the City of Van), Selardis (the moon god), Sardis (the year god). The Armenians, in this period, do not seem to have any goddess. Saris is found only mentioned once in the inscriptions and is translated “queen,” yet it is supposed to have been borrowed from the Assyrian Istar. Whether all the other gods are the children of the supreme god Khaldis, or are subordinate to him and separate from his numerous offsprings, it is not quite clear; the latter, however, is most likely the case, because the Kaldians (the children of Khaldis) and other gods have their separate offerings assigned to them according to their importance.

With the rise of the Medo-Persian empire a new religion rises from obscurity to prominence in western Asia. This is the religion of Zoroaster. It is generally believed that Zoroaster was a real person and the founder of this religion, which is called after his name, Zoroastrianism. There is, however, great uncertainty about the period of his existence; some would make him contemporary with David or Solomon. It is probable that he lived in a much later time than these Israelitish kings.

The religion of Zoroaster is dualistic. It teaches that there are two uncreated beings. Ormazd, the supreme good, and Ahriman, the evil; that Ormazd created the earth, the heavens, and man, and that man is created free; Ahriman is the evil and evil-doer, and in constant war with Ormazd; this world is their battlefield. There are inferior (good and bad) spirits which are called genii, who are the instruments of Ormazd (the good spirits) and Ahriman (the bad spirits). Fire alone was the personification of the son of Ormazd, and therefore an object of veneration.[37]

The Magi were the priests of Zoroastrianism, with a high priest of this order who was called in the Armenian language Mogbed (the head or the leader of Magi). No doubt this was the religion of the Armenians for nearly eight centuries (550 B.C. to 275 or 280 A.D.), possibly with some modifications and additions from the Grecian polytheism after the conquest of Alexander the Great. The Roman deifications of her emperors did not effect Armenia.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Genesis, 14:18.

[36] The following three Armenian words will show what they believed before the Christian religion was introduced into the country:

(a) Asd-u-adz means God, and is made up of asd and adz—“here” and “He brought,” namely—God is the one who brought us here.

(b) Mart=man, is composed Mi=no or not, art=now or the present-meaning not for the present. The man is made for the future or hereafter.

[37] A sample of the polytheistic Babylonian’s prayer:

“May the god whom I know not be appeased!
May the goddess whom I know not be appeased!
May both the god I know and the god I know not be appeased!”

IV.
THE CONVERSION OF THE ARMENIANS

Hardly will it be necessary to turn the attention of the reader to the condition of the world, especially in western Asia, at the time of Christ’s Advent. Sabeism or Sabianism of Ancient Babylonia had not quite expired yet, though her votaries, in despair, were getting ready to give her a magnificent burial. In vain had the Assyrians tried to resuscitate her (fancying that the number of gods was not sufficient to keep Sabeism alive), by raising some imaginary powers into the dignity of deities. The Persians thought Zoroastrianism a plausible hypothesis to account for the constant conflict of the good and evil in the world by assuming Ormazd the supreme good god and Ahriman the evil being, but they were conscious of its insufficiency and following the example of the Assyrians and Babylonians, they adopted other gods and a goddess, too. Yet these additions, instead of improving the faith of Zoroaster corrupted it with the impurities of immorality. The Grecian invasion of western Asia was the means of introducing there a gross polytheism which increased the darkness of the moral and religious condition of the East. The noble religion of the patriarchs and the prophets had fallen into a ritualistic literalism in the hands of the Pharisees; and in the hand of skeptical Saducees it had become an object of incredulity. In one word, the world was lying in wickedness, enveloped in the darkest clouds of idolatry, superstitions and sin.

Then it was that the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in His wings and chased away the darkness which had enveloped the whole world. Christ’s fame had already spread far and nigh and reached the ear of the Armenian Prince of Edessa, and it had revived in his heart hopes of recovery from an incurable disease. Therefore sent he for Christ, according to the tradition of the entire Christian Church. Soon after the ascension of Christ three of His apostles, Thaddeus, Bartholomew and Jude, successively and successfully preached the gospel in Armenia. Some even affirm that not only the seed of the gospel was planted there by these apostles, and they watered it by their blood—having suffered martyrdom there—but by the apostolic preaching of Gregory the Illuminator, the churches which they organized survived all manner of persecution till the final conquest of Christianity over Armenia.

The following is from the pen of H. B. Tristram, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S., canon of Durham, England, writing on the subject: “There were certain Greeks.”[38] “It is a very early tradition, and the pretended letter of Abgarus, and the reply of Jesus, are recorded by Eusebius, and were accepted in his time. He professes to have obtained them from the archives of Edessa. The Armenians identify the messengers with their nationality and claim that Abgarus was King of Armenia. But, though all historical critics agree in pronouncing the letters apocryphal, there is less reason for rejecting the tradition that Thaddæus, soon after the dispersion of the disciples from Jerusalem, carried the gospel into Armenia. We know that when Gregory the Illuminator, who was born A.D. 257, proclaimed the message throughout Armenia, he found Christians everywhere, and a church which though sorely persecuted and oppressed, had existed from apostolic times. He was, in fact, rather the restorer than the founder of the Armenian church, which became the Church of the whole nation half a century before the cross was emblazoned on the standard of Rome. The Armenians may justly claim to be the oldest Christian nation in the world.”

Though Christianity was first introduced into Armenia by the Apostles, who laid the foundation of the ennobling, regenerating, purifying religion of Christ so early as in the middle of the first century of the Christian era, yet the completion of that work and the demolition of heathenism were reserved for St. Gregory.

Prince Anak, Gregory’s father, was of the royal family of Arsacidae of Parthia, whose reign was overthrown by Artaxerxes, the founder of the Sassanian dynasty of Persia. But the Armenian branch of Arsacidae was still in full vigor in the person of Chosroves I, the King of Armenia, who had tried to restore the seized scepter of power to the deprived royal family of Parthia from the revolter, Artaxerxes, the Persian. The latter could not be secure on his throne, so long as Chosroves was the ruler of Armenia. So he attempted to reduce Armenia. But, failing to do this, by force of arms, he resorted to treachery. Anak, who was related to Chosroves, was induced by Artaxerxes, with promises of large reward, to play the part of an assassin. It was so arranged that Anak would be driven out of Persia as a person dangerous to the safety of the newly established sovereignty there because he was a member of the Arsacide dynasty. “Anak, with his wife, his children, his brother, and a train of attendants, pretended to take refuge in Armenia from the threatened vengeance of his sovereign, who caused his troops to pursue him, as a rebel and deserter, to the very borders of Armenia.”[39] Anak was received by Chosroves, who listened to his story with great credulity and sympathy. With the first opportunity, Anak committed the crime of assassination of the king, but the latter lived long enough to request the complete destruction of the assassin and his family. Anak had no time to effect his escape and being seized, he and his brother received the due punishment of their crime. His son, Gregory, however, who was only an infant, was saved by the faithfulness of his nurse, who took the child and escaped into the city of Cæsarea, Cappadocia, where he was brought up in a Christian family, with a thorough Christian education.

On the other hand, Artaxerxes attained his object without paying for it, and, hearing of the condition of affairs in Armenia, he immediately hastened thither with his army and took the people by surprise. He doomed the royal family of Arsacidae to death, so as not to leave any to rival him for the throne. However, Tiridates, the son of Chosroves, escaped into the Roman province of Armenia, and thence to Rome, where he received a military training. His sister was hid in the stronghold of Ani.

Tiridates found favor with the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who, with a great force, sent him to Armenia to retake his father’s throne from the Persians. He was welcomed by his people, who joined his army and drove out of the country their common enemy (A.D. 286). It appears that Gregory had sought Tiridates and found him in Rome and entered his services, his sole “purpose being to win over to eternal life, through the gospel of Christ, the son of him who had been slain by his father, and thus to make amends for his father’s crime.” Though Gregory suffered many a torture and torment and a long period of imprisonment, yet this noble Christian hero and apostle was determined “to win (the king) over to eternal life, through the gospel of Christ.”

The king, finally, was converted and baptized by St. Gregory. Tiridates himself became a worthy champion of the truth, and the first honored king who proclaimed throughout his dominions that henceforth the religion of Christ is the religion of Armenia. The Armenians were nationally converted to Christianity, from the king down to the servant; we must not forget, however, that there were some especially among the nobility, who with a heathenish tenacity held on to the Zoroastrian faith, but this was for mercenary purposes rather than a real appreciation of Zoroastrianism. For Christianity had made a great advance in the country. Moreover, the apostle of Armenia, by his evangelistic spirit and labors, had laid a firm foundation for the religion of Christ in the land of Ararat (A.D. 289). He was, by the request of the king, sent to Cæsarea, Cappadocia, to be ordained bishop over Armenia (A.D. 302).[40]

The temples of the idols in every important city and town were pulled down and Christian churches in their stead were built. The most splendid of all these churches was Etchmiadsin, “the descent of the only begotten,” which was afterwards clustered about with other buildings and became a monastery and to this day the seat of St. Gregory’s successors to his prelatic chair.

In those days, and during a century afterwards, Christian training was carried on by the catechisers, for very few had access to the Syriac or Greek literature, and the Armenian literature also was written in either of these characters; the characters of the Armenian alphabet were not yet wholly discovered or completed. So the reader will bear in mind that the advantages of imparting or disseminating a thorough Christian knowledge, if not lacking wholly, were very inadequate. After a long and useful life St. Gregory entered into the joy of the Lord and Master (A.D. 332).

Ten years after the death of this noble apostle of Armenia, the valiant defender of that divine faith also ended his useful career (342), after seeing the prosperous condition of the Church, which they loved and for which they toiled. Both were succeeded by their sons. The power of Armenia, however, was not equal to the conflicting forces on either side, though the descendants of Tiridates held the scepter of Armenia nearly a century longer, it was in a very enervated state. Nevertheless the Church of Christ made a decided advance within this period. The Armenian alphabetic characters[41] were recovered and completed by the distinguished scholar and prelate Mesrob, who, with St. Isaac, the patriarch, or bishop, translated the Scriptures into the Armenian language, the Old Testament from the Septuagint version and the New Testament from the original Greek.[42] After the conversion of the Armenians to Christianity not a few of the youths of Armenia flocked into the schools of Athens, Alexandria, and Constantinople, to sate their avidity for learning, who, afterwards, rendered great service to the nation, both by their writings, and many valuable translations from the Greek. Some of these originals have been lost and the world now has them in Armenian only.

The rise of the Sassanian dynasty in Persia was a source of more or less perpetual misery and bloodshed in Armenia. The Persians had two reasons for their cruel attitude toward Armenia. The first was the continued existence of the Arsacide reign in Armenia; the second was Armenia’s conversion to Christianity, while Zoroastrianism was revived in Persia by the Sassanian Kings. Christianity was the permanent occasion for which Armenia has suffered and is still suffering indescribable miseries and innumerable cruelties. The Persians imagined that as long as the Armenians were Christians they were in alliance with the Greeks, while in reality the Greeks were no more in sympathy with them than the Persians were.

Yasgerd II, the King of Persia (A.D. 450), decreed thus: “All peoples and tongues throughout my dominions must abandon their heresies and worship the Sun, bring to him their offerings, and call him God; they shall feed the holy fire, and fulfill all the ordinances of Magi.” Accordingly, Mihrnerseh, the grand vizier of the Persian court, wrote a long letter to the Armenians, polemic in character, persuasive in style, and menacing in tone. The Synod of the Armenian bishops was convened at once and it was unanimously decided to defend their religion at any cost. The synod also agreed upon answering the letter of the grand vizier in which they both refuted the charges brought against Christianity, undauntedly defended their faith, showing the absurdity of Zoroastrianism, and concluded the epistle with these words: “From this belief no one can move us, neither angels nor men, neither fire nor sword, nor water, nor any other horrid torture, however they be called. All our goods and our possessions are before thee, dispose of them as thou wilt, and if thou only leave us to our belief, we will here below choose no other lord in Thy place, and in heaven have no other God but Jesus Christ, for there is no other God save only him. But shouldst Thou require something beyond this great testimony, behold our resolution; our bodies are in Thy hands—do with them according to Thy pleasure; tortures are thine, and patience ours; Thou hast the sword, we the neck; we are nothing better than our forefathers, who, for the sake of their faith, resigned their goods, possessions and life. Do Thou, therefore, inquire of us nothing further concerning these things, for our belief originates not with men, we are not taught like children, but we are indissolubly bound to God, from whom nothing can detach us, neither now, nor hereafter, nor for ever, and ever.”

As soon as this letter arrived at the royal court of Persia, King Yasgerd read it; he was enraged and summoned the Armenian princes immediately to repair to his majesty’s presence. There in the presence of the king they manifested a great resolution in their faith, for which they were ignominiously treated and confined in prison. Having been threatened while in their confinement they devised a scheme; they thought it is better to apparently comply with the demands of the king, but inwardly to remain true to their convictions. God, who is able to bring good out of evil, indeed did so in this case. When it was made known to the king that the Armenian princes were willing to accept his terms, at once they were liberated and returned with distinctions to their homes. And a large army with over seven hundred magi were exultantly marching on to Armenia to raze to the ground every Christian Church and school and disciple the people into the mysterious absurdities of Zoroastrianism.

No sooner had the news of the apostacy of the princes reached Armenia than the bishops, priests, and the laity condemned the weakness and the folly of the princes. When the princes returned to Armenia they found no one ready or willing to listen to any explanation, but everywhere and everybody was ready and willing to defend his religion at the cost of his life. A large multitude, made up of clergy and laity, among whom were many women, gathered for immediate action, for the enemy was marching on. Some of the princes could not endure the contempt of the people nor the unrelenting remorse of their consciences, so they were ready to expiate their folly at any cost.

Prince Vartan, the Mamigonian, was unanimously appointed the commander-in-chief of the Armenian forces, and the multitude—66,000 volunteers—was formed into three divisions and each division was entrusted to a prince, Vartan, Nershebuh and Vasag. All knew that the struggle and the strife was a desperate one. But brave Vartan and the rest were not dismayed, though they knew that they alone could not conquer the immense army of the enemy already in the country, with a small and inexperienced force of his own, yet there was no other choice; they were not fighting for victory, but for their convictions and for their chosen religion, the religion of Christ.

The address of Vartan, the commander-in-chief, is most beautiful and touching: “I have been,” said he, “in many battles, and you also with me; we have sometimes bravely vanquished the foe; sometimes they vanquished us, but on all these occasions we thought only of worldly distinction, and we fought merely at the command of a mortal king. Behold, we have all many wounds and scars upon our persons, and great must have been our bravery to have won these great marks of honor. But useless and empty I deem these exploits whereby we have received these honorable marks, for they pass away. If, however, you have done such valiant deeds in obedience to a mortal ruler, how much more will you do them for our immortal King, who is Lord of life and death, who judges every one according to his works.

“Now, therefore, I entreat you, my brave companions, and more so as you—albeit in bravery, worth, and inherited honors greater than I—have of your own free will and out of your love elected me your leader and chief; I entreat that my words may be favorably received by the high and the low. Fear not the numbers of the heathen; withdraw not necks from the terrific sword of a mortal man in order that the Lord may give the victory into our hands, that we may annihilate their power and lift on high the standard of truth.”

On the morning of the day (2d of June, 451, old style) of the battle the little army of the Holy League received the Eucharist (holy communion) and marched on with these words: “May our death be like to the death of the just, and may the shedding of our blood resemble the bloodshedding of the prophets! May God look in mercy on our voluntary self-offering, and may He not deliver the Church into the hands of the heathen!”

With amazing bravery and valor must they have fought. But alas; there was treachery and treason among the little army of the Holy League. Vasag, who was in command of the third division of the Armenian forces, deserted the holy cause with his force, and still worse, he sided with the enemy and decided the battle against the Armenians. The fall of the noble commander Vartan and some others also disheartened the rest. Had Vasag not acted the part of Judas, had he not betrayed his Master and Master’s cause the Armenians would have achieved a signal victory in the annals of Church history, and also might have regained their political independence. The fall of the leaders left the people in confusion, the enemy then fell upon them, seized many and indiscriminately slaughtered them. Many of the bishops and priests were captured, some were martyred on the spot, others were carried to Persia and there executed. The patriarch Joseph, in whose character and life shine forth piety, courage, and devotion, was one of those carried to Persia.

This was one of the many contests which the Armenians had with the fire-worshiping Persian. The Armenians were defeated, the Persians had the battlefield, but the real victory, the moral and religious victory, was won by the Armenians.

Indeed did the sons and daughters of Armenia prefer a Christian’s grave to the heathen’s home.

“Her head was crowned with flowers,
Her feet were bathed with spray,
Hers were the land of Eden,
The cradle of our race.
“But then upon her borders,
Shouted the Persian horde:
‘Fall down and worship fire,
Or perish by the sword.’
“Then up sprang Armenia
And raised her voice on high,
And back to haughty Persia
Rang loud the warlike cry:
“‘I will not be a heathen,
I will not be a slave,
If I cannot have a Christian’s home,
I’ll find a Christian’s grave.’”

From this time on the Armenians have never shrunk from defending their religion and rights against any odds. If they have no way to defend these rights as has been the case recently, they still would rather suffer torture and death than purchase life and freedom at the cost of principle and right.

The Persians, after their conquest of Armenia, destroyed many of the churches and schools, persecuted the Christians with indescribable tortures and cruelties, and forced them to become like themselves, fire-worshipers. The Armenians, in return, most cordially hated both the religion of Zoroaster and its defenders and teachers, and were anxious for an opportunity to drive out these usurpers and unwelcomed teachers of a philosophized religion, spun out of Zoroaster’s or somebody else’s imagination. Christianity and Zoroastrianism had many a battle in the land of Ararat, until the latter, in total despair, was willing to submit to the former, on some amicable terms to be suggested by a brave son of Armenia, a worthy member of the house of Mamigonians. This valiant champion of Christianity was Vahan Mamigonian, whose father and uncle, Prince Vartan, led the Holy League in battle and with the heroism and courage of the martyrs defended their rights and religion and had sealed their testimony to the truth of Christianity by their blood in that battle.

The long-looked for opportunity had come; the northern provinces rebelled against the Persians; the latter, therefore, attempted to subdue them. The Armenians availed themselves of this ample occasion, armed themselves, and urged Vahan to take the lead of the army to clear out the country of the troops of the enemy left there. The attempt was made. The Persian forces stubbornly resisted the Armenians, but several reverses had convinced them that further resistance was useless and when a new governor, Nikhor, was appointed by Balas, the King of Persia (A.D. 485), he, instead of attacking Vahan, who held almost the entire country, wished to come to an arrangement agreeable to the Armenians. Prince Vahan, therefore, proposed the following terms:

“1. The existing fire-altars should be destroyed, and no others should be erected in Armenia.

“2. The Armenians should be allowed the free and full exercise of Christian religion, and no Armenian should be in future tempted or bribed to declare themselves disciples of Zoroaster.

“3. If converts were nevertheless made from Christianity to Zoroastrianism, places (of honor) should not be given to them.

“4. The Persian King should in person and not by deputy administer the affairs of Armenia.”[43]

These terms proposed by Prince Vahan were favorably received by Nikhor, and an edict of toleration was issued and proclaimed that every one be at liberty to adhere to his own religion, and that no one should be driven to apostatize. Afterwards Vahan himself was appointed by the king, governor of Armenia, and the church thus enjoyed a period of tranquillity from the persecutions.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] John 12:20, 21.

[39] Rawlinson, “The Seventh Oriental Monarchy,” p. 51.

[40] “The Armenian King became a convert before their [emperor’s] revival (of persecution) under Diocletian (284-305 A.D.); and Christianity was adopted as the religion of the State in Armenia some thirty years prior to its triumph in the West by the decisive action of the Melvian Bridge (312), and over 100 years before the edicts of Theodosius the First against the practice of paganism.” Lynch, “Armenia,” Vol. I, p. 293.

[41] The translation of Scriptures was completed A.D. 436. “A statement found in Philostratus (about 200 A.D.) would point to the existence of an Armenian alphabet at the beginning of our era.” Appleton’s, “The Universal Cyclopedia,” Vol. I, p. 321.

[42] The final translation and revision of the Scriptures was completed in A.D. 436.

[43] Rawlinson, “The Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy,” pp. 334-4.

V
THE CONFLICTING FORCES

Some great changes were slowly taking place in the East as well as in the West. These changes were to give a different aspect to the history of future nations. As we have seen the Parthian Empire had been overthrown; Persia proper regained her independence. The Parthian branch of the Assacide dynasty in Armenia also came to an end after a reign of almost six centuries (150 B.C.-432 A.D.). On the other hand the Roman Empire was too large to be under one emperor; the leading people of the empire were divided into two, the Greeks and the Latins. The division of the empire into the eastern and western was not only natural, but also desirable. The Greek city Byzantium was rebuilt and honorably made the capital of the Eastern empire, and called Constantinople[44] after the name of Emperor Constantine the Great (about A.D. 328). This metropolis of the Eastern Empire soon became a worthy rival of Rome, both in civil and ecclesiastical matters.

The above brief survey of these conflicting forces—and others which will be mentioned in their order—show that they were naturally of two kinds, namely, political and religious. Though we may make such a division, and even admit, that politics can be divorced from religion, yet we must confess that this has not been done in the East to this present time. It may be, therefore, stated that Christianity, as a religion, was, and is, one of the most powerful of the conflicting forces in the East. It is true that its Founder is called the Prince of Peace, and He was and is, and ever shall be, yet the very principles of His religion uncompromisingly militate against the domestic, social and political evils. The baser natures—many of them, even among the so-called Christians—therefore, run to the sword to settle their disputes.

The enforcement of the religion of Christ upon the millions by Constantine or other emperors did not change their hearts. It is to our credit to confess, that though the Armenians nationally accepted Christianity, and no doubt it had taken a firm root in the hearts of the most of the people, yet there were many Vasags that had clung to their idols, and had not failed to give much trouble to the truly patriotic followers of Christ. It was due to this lack of true Christianity that increased troubles arose between the Greek and Armenian Christians.

The Greeks feared and hated the Armenians, for the latter were in alliance with the Persians when they invaded Greece; and later the conquests of the distinguished monarchs of Armenia, like Tigranes the Great and others, over the Greeks, recorded by their own historians in a more exaggerated manner than by the Armenians themselves,[45] would most naturally make them to foster such a deep rooted malice in their hearts and cause them to wish for opportunities to avenge themselves. We do not fail to find them doing so whenever an opportunity was offered them.

Hardly would Armenia sound pleasantly to the ear of the Persian any longer. Armenia had lived in peace with Persia for centuries. The reason of these comparatively peaceful relations between these two countries was two-fold; both the Armenians and Persians were Aryans and co-religionists. But Armenia, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, had apostatized from her former religion, Zoroastrianism, and forsaken her devotion to Magism. The revival of Zoroastrian faith and its enforcement upon the inhabitants of the country in Persia was insisted upon by the founder of the Sassanian dynasty. In his charge to his son and successor before his departure from this life Artaxerxes dilated on the subject of religion, maintaining and enforcing it upon the Iran or non-Iran to become worshipers of the Zoroastrian faith as a necessary basis for the stability of the empire. His successors were found very faithful and zealous in their endeavors to execute their master’s orders. In Armenia, however, the fire-temples and the temples of the leading deities were swept out of existence, and Christian churches and schools were established all over the country. Zoroastrianism had received such a blow from the hand of King Jesus that it had fallen in pieces, like Dagon of Ashdod, before the ark of the Lord in the days of old, and now seven hundred Magi and an immense army of the Persians could not gather its fragments or keep the fires unquenched on its altars in Armenia.

The establishment of a Christian empire, in the West by the Greeks, would most naturally force upon the Persians the idea that these two nations now united by a common faith will be their formidable enemies. But how naturally do the heathen think, and how unnaturally do the so-called Christians act, is shown by the succeeding events of the conflicting forces in Western Asia. It was perfectly natural for the Persians to think, that a common religion or faith should produce a harmonious relation between, and a united action of, these two nations. Accordingly did the Persians look upon the Armenians with the profoundest suspicion and dealt towards them with relentless cruelty.

We have made passing reference to one other disturbing cause, namely, some of the nobility in Armenia, unfortunately not being in full sympathy with the faith of the majority, did ignobly act by uniting with the Persian hordes (whether with a mercenary object in view or with a blind zeal for the restoration of the abolished Zoroastrianism), thus aggravating the misery of their own people and causing much bloodshed in the country. Such persons are found in all ages and among all nations, but fortunately have not been many.

It will be impossible, in a small work like this to enumerate all the agencies, the internal (and not less infernal), and the external and occasional causes which precipitated the country into indescribable misery. However, we have endeavored to review some of these facts, which, the reader bearing in mind, will have the key to unlock the mystery of the Armenian troubles and miseries.

After the political existence of Armenia was brought to an end, the country was divided between the Eastern Empire and Persia, the former having the western part of the country, and the eastern part being occupied by the latter. The usurpers of Armenia tried to govern their respective possessions by various methods, but they succeeded better when they had native rulers, or princes had their contingent forces under them. Whenever their respective sovereigns called upon them to assist in their wars, they responded with readiness. There was, however, this trouble in either province: the ever-ready endeavor on the one hand to bring the independent Armenian church under the influence of the Greek Church; and in the Persian province of Armenia, under some fanatic rulers, who attempted to apostatize them from their chosen faith; otherwise the Armenians seemed to have enjoyed a tolerable freedom. This form of government lasted until new actors and more conflicting forces began to appear on the stage.

A new and a more formidable force than Zoroastrianism made its appearance in the form of a religion in the East. Western Asia seems to have been made for a theater and almost all the great actors in the annals of the dramatic history of the world enacted their roles there. Towards the close of the sixth century the sunny and sandy plains of Arabia became the home of a male child who was to be a hero, a warrior, a law-giver, and the founder of a new religion which shaped the destiny of millions of human beings and flooded many a country with the blood of its inhabitants. “Mohammed, half imposter, half enthusiast, enunciated a doctrine, and by decrees worked out a religion, which proved capable of uniting in one the scattered tribes of the Arabian desert, while at the same time it inspired them with a confidence, a contempt for death, and a fanatic valor, that rendered them irresistible by the surrounding nations.”[46] This self-made and self-called apostle of Arabia, Mohammed, had the greatest difficulty in finding few adherents in his native city, Mecca,[47] he found the opposition to his claims too great and his life in danger and fled to Medina, where he received a welcome. At the head of his adherents he commenced to attack unawares wayfaring merchants on their way from the northern countries; of course, seeing that these merchants are of his former opponents. The plunder and the booty taken from the robbed or conquered were freely distributed among his followers. This surely was a great inducement to the pillage-loving and war-delighting Arabs to swell the army of Mohammed. His followers have been doing the same ever since, unless restrained by a superior force. Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia, one after the other, within a comparatively short time, fell under the sway of the followers of Mohammed.

Bagdad was made the capital of the successors, or Caliphs of Mohammed, from whence the hordes of Arabs or Saracens—so were they called by the western writers—spread death and destruction east, west, and north. The first Saracenic invasion into Armenia took place during the caliphate of Omar (A.D. 640), under the generalship of Abdurahman, who marched through Assyria and entered Armenia unopposed. Diran Mamiganian with some difficulty mustered a small force hardly as large as one-third of that of the enemy, but he made a noble defense of his country against the new enemy of the home and religion. Alas! in the little army of Diran there was another like Vasag, a man by the name Sahurr, who hastened the defeat and the annihilation of noble Diran’s little force; the fire and the sword of the enemy soon swept the country. Abdurahman returned to Bagdad with 35,000 Armenian captives.

The Saracenic policy was quite different from that of the Persians. The latter were not so intensely cruel, and were anxious to unify the two peoples by the enforcement of their religion upon the Armenians. But the Saracens were the very prototype of the Turks in cruelty and in oppression. They kept on their regular incursions and inroads into the country at short intervals, and spread death and destruction, and carried many away as captives or hostages; these captives and hostages were often forced to become Mohammedans, or they were massacred. A picture drawn by the wildest imagination will fall far below the suffering of the people and the atrocities of the followers of Mohammed. The Armenians were often willing to let everything else go if they were left with their preferred faith, the religion of Christ. Even then they were not left alone. They often, compelled to do so, took arms to defend their religion and rights and perished, sword in hand. Thus it was and is since the introduction of Christianity into Armenia: “The history of Armenia presents but a melancholy picture to the friend of humanity. Rapacious neighbors, the enemies of Christianity, found a theater for their unheard-of cruelties and oppressions in that beauteous land, the inhabitants of which were equally exposed to the outrages of Paganism and Islam.”

The condition of the provinces of Armenia governed by the Greeks was hardly better. The Saracens were pushing their way northward and westward. The Greeks were becoming unbearable on account of their prejudices and persecutions occasioned by such comparatively trifling differences from the Greek Church, in the rituals and ceremonies of the Armenian Church. The state of things, indeed, was in a most deplorable condition.

The Armenians were subdued and ruled over with a rod of iron, by the Saracens, but they were by no means completely conquered or crushed. The love for independence and self government was still rife in them. They made several attempts at different times to revolt. Their attempts failed and they paid dearly for them. But towards the middle of the ninth century the reign of the Caliphs of Bagdad was weakened by dissensions. A prince of the Pagradit family had proved himself very prudent as a governor of Armenia, so much so that he had received from the Caliph the title of “Prince of Princes,” in 859, and in 885 he was crowned as King of Armenia. Ashdod I the King of Armenia was the first of the Pagradit (Pagradeonian) dynasty.

The Pagradit family was old, influential and rich, according to our Herodotus, Moses of Khoren, King H’rache brought a small colony of the Hebrews from Judea when he returned with the armies of Nebuchadnezzar in B.C. 597,[48] and a prince by the name Shampat was the head of this Pagradit family. This dynasty lasted only from 885-1045, and had a stormy time, yet it shows what a grand and glorious period it must have been. Hundreds of churches in the city of Ani and its suburbs, magnificent castles, palaces, forts and numerous defenses of the city and throughout the country, though to-day in ruins, eloquently declare the glory of the Pagradit dynasty of Armenia in the middle ages.

There is something marvelous in the annals of the Armenian history. Though they are surrounded by hostile and uncivilized nations and with such internal and infernal dissensions and contentions, yet the spirit of bravery, courage and unconquerable love of liberty, as it were, sprang up from the very ashes and the dust of the burnt and ruined cities and towns; yea, even from the carcass-covered and blood-drenched soil of Armenia. Thus it was that during this dynasty a marvelous civilization flourished amid the savage and barbarous nations, and this dynasty would have maintained its independence to the present had the rulers found any sympathy or toleration in the western Christian nations.

It was in the period of this dynasty that the Mongolian Tatar tribes, who were scattered over the plains and table-lands of central and northern Asia, began to move westward in search of plunder and pasture-lands. These tribes had distinctive names in their own country, but after leaving that they began to be denominated by the names of their leaders, like Seljukians, after Seljuk; Othmanlis or Ostmanlis, after Othman or Osman. They were pastoral in their occupations; warlike in disposition; rapacious and predatory in their habits; nomadic in their mode of life, and surely pagans in practice of religion. They first settled in Persia, and there they came in contact with the religion of Mohammed. They accepted it and entered the Mohammedan army. They excelled the Arabs in enthusiasm, in intolerance, and cruelty, especially upon the Christians. Indeed, the entry of the Mongolian hordes, or the Turks into Western Asia was and still is the worst of all evils and the severest of all the calamities that ever was inflicted upon the Armenians or any other Christian nation in western Asia.

But the downfall of that dynasty which had maintained its existence over a century and a half was not brought about by the hands of the merciless Arabs, nor even by those of the barbarous Turks, though cruel and savage they were. In those days, they did not often do with treachery what they could not with bravery. Even the Turks were somewhat more honest than they are now.

Cakig,[49] the last king of this dynasty, had made himself both popular and beloved on account of his just and wise administration of the government. The Greek Emperor, Monamaches, demanded from Cakig for some pretense the surrender of the Capital Ani. Cakig’s reply to the Emperor was “I can never be prevailed upon quietly to relinquish my paternal inheritance to any individual.” Hereupon the emperor sent a large force against the king; however, the troops were defeated. He again tried by force to accomplish his object, but his attempt was unsuccessful; he then entered into an alliance with the Mohammedan governor of the districts bordering on the provinces of Cakig to ruin the latter; but this also proved to be a failure. Then the emperor pretended to be appeased and entered into friendship, inviting the king on a visit to Constantinople. Cakig doubted the apparent friendship and the sincerity of the emperor, but alas, some of his chiefs who had conspired against him and were sharers of the guilt of the emperor prevailed upon him. Confiding in the solemn assurances of the emperor, and in compliance with the requests of his chiefs, he went to Constantinople. First he was exiled by this perfidious emperor to an island, then to Asia Minor. This dethroned king, deprived of his rightful crown and scepter and paternal inheritance, after a period of thirty-five years of exile, was assassinated by the Greeks.

While King Cakig was an exile the Greeks took possession of the capital, the City of Ani, and a large territory. The Seljukian Turks, who had settled themselves in Persia, were increasing in number and in power, finding the country in a defenseless condition, invaded Armenia. At this first incursion they desolated twenty-four provinces; at their second attack ruined many cities and towns and carried an immense number of the inhabitants into captivity. In the third, they laid siege to the city of Arzu, where many had taken refuge, it being a walled city. The inhabitants made a desperate resistance, but the enemy was too strong, and the Armenians, too fatigued to fight any longer, surrendered. The Seljukian Turks, after having taken possession of the city, displayed a barbarism which was a true example and an equal to those of later cruelties of the Mongolian Tatars. Of the one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants and those who had taken refuge in the city, some were butchered in cold blood, some were roasted to death, and the rest carried into captivity. This doleful calamity, one of many, took place in the year of our Lord, 1049.

Several times during every year, the Seljukian Turks and Tatars repeated their incursions, devastated and plundered the country, and indiscriminately massacred the people or enslaved them. Togrul Beg, for fourteen years, before he went to meet the Judge of Nations, tormented, tortured and butchered the Christian Armenians, and dyed the land of Ararat crimson with the blood of her inhabitants. These persecutions and massacres compelled the people to migrate into safer districts. Some of the Armenian princes who were assuming royal titles, instead of uniting their forces against a common enemy, fell prey to the foe, or exchanged their vast territories with the Greek emperor for other provinces. Thus King Sennacherib transferred his immense estates of Vaspuragian and took instead of them the city of Sebastea (now Sivas) and the country about it, extending to the banks of the Euphrates on the east.

The Armenians were rapidly increasing in the provinces of Cappadocia and Cilicia on account of the frequent invasions and incursions of the Seljukian Turks. Alp Arslan, the nephew of Togrul Beg, succeeded him 1063. In the following year, Arp Arslan (valiant lion) invaded Armenia, laid siege to the royal city of Ami, and took it. “It is impossible to describe the destruction and slaughter wrought by the hands of these barbarians, the blood of thousands and ten thousands dyed the waters of Aphour (the river that runs through the city), and the magnificent buildings were set on fire, and numerous bodies, the carcasses, were covered under the ashes and ruins.”[50] Arp Arslan invaded Armenia, again, in battle against the Greeks and captured emperor Romanus Diogenes (1071) and wrested the entire country from the Greeks. His fearful career came to an end by the dagger of a captive enemy in the following year in Turkestan. His son, Malick Shah, succeeded him, and extended the empire from the shores of the Mediterranean on the west to the borders of China on the east. “In religion Seljukian sovereigns surpassed the other moslems of their age in fierce intolerance, and thereby inadvertently provoked the famous Crusades of the western nations. Upon wresting Jerusalem for a time from the dominion of the Egyptian Caliphs, they visited with such hardships the resident and pilgrim Christians, that Europe armed for their deliverance from oppression.”[51]

Many of the Armenians, driven by these powerful invaders and oppressors, had made their way into Cappadocia and Cilicia, and both in the plains and also in the Tauros Mountain districts they formed a strong colony. A young man, who was a relative and a companion with two others, of the unfortunate King Cakig, had made his escape from the plans of the assassins who intended to kill these also after they had done away with the king, found refuge in the mountains. This man, whose name was Reuben, was a center of attraction among the Armenians, a man of warlike disposition and personal prowess, and bent on vengeance. He resided with his son Constantine in Cilicia; his condition must have been very much like that of David when he was a fugitive from the face of Saul. Reuben cautiously avoided conflicts with the Greeks when he was not sure of success, but such contests that he had with them he was invariably victorious. He attacked and wrested the fortress of Parzherpert (lofty fort), and from this time (A.D. 1080) he styled himself Reuben the First, assuming independent reign over the Armenians, who were increasing year by year. Thus began the Reubenian dynasty of the Armenians in Cilicia.

It was during the reign of Constantine, the son and successor of Reuben I, that the immense army of the Crusaders for the first time marched into Western Asia, took the city of Nice and various other places, and laid siege to Antioch. But a terrible famine broke out in their camp. When Constantine and his chiefs were informed of the condition of the Crusaders, he sent an abundance of provisions to the army of the defenders of the Cross. This last dynasty of the Armenians in Cilicia covers a period of almost three centuries. It was by no means in a favorable condition, while Western Asia was in a fearful turmoil and agitation, the conflicting forces by no means disappearing.

The Seljukian Turks, after losing their capital, Nice, made Iconium (which over ten centuries before had listened to the famous missionaries, Paul and Barnabas, tell the story of the Cross) their capital, and made it resound with the “ezzen” of the “Muezzin” from the numerous minarets. It became a source of great trouble to the Armenians. The Greeks, inflamed with like hatred and malice as before, were more or less in constant conflict with them. The Armenians, over-exultant on account of the presence of the Christian forces of the Western nations in the East, were willing to enlist in aid of their cause by entering into an alliance with them, but by doing so they intensified the jealousy and hatred of the Greeks and the wrathful cruelty of the Turks. Moreover, the suspicions of some that these foreigners were anxious to bring the Armenian church under the control of the Pope of Rome were sustained by the facts revealed in due time.

It may be interesting to give a sample of the zeal of the Armenians in their effort to assist the Crusaders and the consequences: King Leo I of Cilicia was in an alliance with the Latin princes of Antioch. The emperor of Constantinople was bent on recovering that famous city from the Crusaders. Consequently to accomplish his purpose he marched on to Cilicia with a large army. The emperor and his generals seem to have been strategists and good warriors. They wrested the city of Antioch and reduced many Cilician provinces and took Leo and his two sons, Reuben and Toros, captives and carried them to Constantinople (1136). The cruel Greeks, after tormenting and torturing their captives, deprived the crown-prince, Reuben, of his eye-sight, then, still not satisfied, they put him to death in the presence of his father, the king. This barbarity so affected him that he died heart-broken in his dungeon (1141). The history of Armenia presents a melancholy picture to the friend of humanity and Christianity; especially when you find some so-called Christians worse than pagans, you still feel thankful that they are at least nominally Christians; what would have happened if they were heathen? Arp Arslan did not treat Emperor Romanus in that manner, because he was not a Greek Christian.

A new tremendous army of the Mongolians, under the command of Genghis Khan, made its appearance in Western Asia; and spread all over Persia, Armenia, Caucasus, Russia, and part of Asia Minor destruction, devastation, and death; committing wholesale massacres, consuming the cities and towns by fire, and carrying away hundreds and thousands into captivity. “Seven years in succession was the conqueror (Genghis Khan) busy in the work of destruction, pillage, and subjugation, and extended his ravages to the banks of the Dnieper.” Armenia has been, over and over, inundated with the blood of her inhabitants, enriched with the carcasses of her people upon her face; her beautiful and bright sky was often rendered dark by the smoke of the conflagrations of her immense cities and numerous towns, kindled by her enemies; her fair sons and graceful daughters were torn away from her maternal bosom, carried into captivity and sold for slaves; her magnificent churches and monasteries were converted into mosques and “tekes.” Yet the “The House of Togarmah” marches on through these tremendous seas of injustice, oppression, persecution, cruelty, and bloodshed, from a remote antiquity to the end of the fourteenth century of our era, lifting up the old, centuries-old flag of liberty, torn to pieces and ready to fall into an irreparable dissolution.

Toros, the son of the unfortunate King Leo I, effected his escape from the Greek army and returned to Cilicia (1145). He gathered about him a nucleus and gradually recovered Cilicia from the Greeks and after a reign of twenty-three years, he died in peace (1168). Reuben II succeeded his uncle, Mileh, and reigned until his retirement in 1185, and his brother Leo II followed him. It was during the reign of Leo II that Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders (1187), a terrible slaughter of the Christians had been committed by the defender of the Mohammedan faith, which caused the western nations to call for the third crusade, headed by Frederick I, surnamed Barbarossa, a German emperor of Rome. He marched with his army opposed by the Greek emperor and the sultan of Iconium. From the latter place he sent a letter to Leo II, asking his assistance and telling of his need of supplies. Leo, Catholicos and Bishop Nerses, with abundant provisions, set out to meet him. But they did not have the pleasure of seeing him; for he was drowned while crossing a stream. What a pity! He was going to fight in defense of the Oriental Christians, not to put a crown on Saladin’s head, nor a wreath on his tomb; he was not going to offer his unsought-for friendship to the bloodthirsty followers of Mohammed, neither was he going to encourage them to massacre the lowly followers of the lowly Nazarene. Yet he was drowned. Surely “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.” We do not question His wisdom nor His goodness.

No doubt the object of the popes, who urged the Western sovereigns to raise crusades against the Mohammedans, and kept them engaged in this unsuccessful enterprise for a long time at the expense of immense wealth and the sacrifice of millions of human lives, was two-fold; to exercise their sublunary power over these potentates, and to further their influence over other Christian nations in the East. But they failed in both of these purposes. There came a time when the popes had no influence over the kings of Europe. And the Crusaders in the East rendered their names detestable forever, both to Christians and to non-Christians.

“In 1204 A.D., the Capital (Constantinople) was captured by the Crusaders, whose conduct fixed an indelible stain upon the name of the Franks throughout the East, especially as it is contrasted with that of the Mohammedans, who, a few years before, had conquered Jerusalem. When Saladin entered the latter city the church of the Holy Sepulchre was respected, and the conquered Christians remained in possession of their property; no confiscations were made of the wealth of the non-combatants. But the vaunted chivalry of the Papal church plundered a Christian city without remorse, desecrated its shrines, and maltreated its inhabitants, while the profane cry of ‘God Wills It,’ was raised to excite each other to act the part of brigands and debauchees. Sacred plate, golden images of saints, and silver candelabra from the altars; bronze statues of heathen idols and heroes, precious works of Hellenic art; crowns, coronets, thrones, vessels of gold and silver; ornaments of diamonds, pearls, and precious stones from the imperial treasury and the palaces of the nobles; jewelry and precious metals from the shops of the goldsmiths; silks, velvets and brocaded tissues from the warehouses of the merchants, together with coined money, were accumulated in vast heaps as spoils to be divided by the victors. A few of the crusading clergy endeavored to moderate the fury which the bigoted prejudices of the Latin Church had instilled into the minds of the soldiery against the Greeks, but many priests were as forward as the most abandoned of the troops in robbing the temples of a kindred faith.”[52]

Our Saviour’s words were literally fulfilled; with what measure the Greeks so often had measured and dealt with the Armenian, it was meted to them by the hands of the Crusaders; yet such a conduct of the Crusaders with the Christian, and undoubtedly a conduct a good deal worse than this towards Mohammedans, accounts for the determination and fury of the latter against the Christians. The reply of Meleck Nasr Mohmud, the Egyptian Sultan, to an application of the Armenian king Leo V, for a treaty of peace was the following: “I will never make peace with you until you promise on oath not to hold any correspondence or communication with Western nations.” Often did the Mohammedan powers imagine that the Armenians had again stirred up the Western nations, that they were marching against them in greater forces than ever before, and then they would attack the cities and towns of the Armenians and commit all manner of atrocities, thinking that that might be their last opportunity.

After the withdrawal of the Western nations—or rather their being driven out from the East—in full satisfaction of their complete failure, either to maintain their position or ameliorate the oppressed condition of the Oriental Christians under the Mohammedans, the latter had first little difficulty in destroying the independence of the Armenians in Cilicia. By various incursions of the Mohammedans of Egypt into Cilicia, the Armenians were reduced in strength and in numbers; finally a vast army of the enemy marched against them. Those missionary soldiers of Mohammed, indeed brutes in character and nature, though clad in clayey garments of human forms, spread themselves all over the country. No city, town, or village, or building of any value, whether church, monastery or dwelling, and no human being of any age or either sex that fell into their hands, was spared; they slaughtered every human being and burnt to ashes every building or razed it to the ground. In the execution of their unfortunate victims they did not leave any mode of torture untried. “The deceitful above all things and desperately wicked heart” of a depraved human creature could not have suggested any other method of torment and torture that these Mohammedans did not devise and experiment upon their captives. The Turks of to-day must have been studying their predecessors in faith and practice. King Leo VI and the garrison surrendered on condition that their lives would be spared; the Egyptian general promised this on oath; Leo was fettered, and with his family carried to Cairo in the eleventh year of his reign (A.D. 1375).

The king and family, after serving a period of imprisonment at Cairo, were freed by the mediation and valuable presents of the King of Spain. Leo with his queen and daughter, went to Jerusalem; there he left them at their own request, then visited the European countries. On the 19th of November, A.D. 1393, he ended his mortal career in Paris. “Leo King of Armenia, was of a small stature, but of intelligent expression and well-formed features. His body was carried to the tomb clothed in royal robes of white, according to the custom of Armenia, with an open crown upon his head and a golden scepter in his hand. He lay in state upon an open bier hung with white and surrounded by the officers of his household, clothed, all of them, in white robes. He was buried by the high altar of the Church of the Celestine.”

FOOTNOTES:

[44] According to ancient authorities, Byzantium was built by a Grecian colony about 658 B.C.

[45] An Armenian historian says, Tigranes translated thirty thousand inhabitants of Cappadocia, the Greek historian three hundred thousand.

[46] Rawlinson, “The Seventh Oriental Monarchy,” p. 546.

[47] Mohammed was born in Mecca 570, he fled to Medina 622. “Hegira” (the flight), and he died in the latter city A.D. 632, after two weeks of intense suffering which began before his death. See Chap XII, p. 204.

[48] See p. 52.

[49] The Kings of this dynasty: Ashod I, Sumpat I, Ashod II, Abas, Ashod III, Sumpat II, Cakig I, John Sumpat, Cakig II.

[50] Balasanian, “History of Armenia,” p. 285. (This work is written in Armenian language.)

[51] Milner, “The Turkish Empire,” p. 5.

[52] Milner, “The Turkish Empire,” London, pages 238-9.

VI
THE ARMENIAN CHURCH

The Armenian church claims to be apostolic in its origin, Christianity having been introduced into Armenia by the Apostles, and having survived the persecutions of heathenism during the first three centuries, had finally, about the end of the third century, subdued the entire nation. As has been said before, St. Gregory the Illuminator was sent to Cæsarea, Cappadocia, to be, and was, ordained Bishop of Armenia, A.D. 302.

The Armenian church, therefore was and still is, a national church; the prosperity of the nation also was the prosperity of the church. The nation had but little rest after her embrace of Christianity. Christian Armenia, during the first three centuries of her acceptance and existence as a Christian state, however, made such a noble defense of her faith against Zoroastrianism that the latter was completely paralyzed, and no longer able to lift up the sword against the followers of Christ. But with the rise of Mohammedanism, a more formidable, cruel, unjust, and inhuman enemy arose. The Saracens or the Arabs, who were both the soldiers and missionaries of the Mohammedan faith, literally panted after the blood of the Christians. Even these, after sucking all the blood that they could imbibe, fell off like swollen leeches and were swallowed up by the Seljukian, Tatar, and Mongolian Turks, who surpassed even the Arabs in cruelty and indisputably deserved to be called “the unspeakable Turk.” The Greeks, with all their subtility, volatility, perfidy, intrigues, and intolerable bigotry, could do no more than to cause some of their formalism to creep into the Armenian church.

But this is not all; for while the Armenians were driven into the mountainous districts of Cilicia, the land of the brave apostle Paul, by the Mongolian and Tatar invaders who spread desolation, destruction, and death wherever their feet touched the soil, there came with the appearance of the Crusaders into the East a number of zealous missionaries of the Romish church, who neglected even to attempt a quiet missionary work among the Mohammedans, but insidiously first, then openly, tried to bring the Armenian church into a subordination and under the jurisdiction of the popes of Rome.

The papal missionaries, under the order of the Unitors, who had insidiously sown the seeds of dissension in the Armenian church, availed themselves of every misfortune that befel the people, and later, being augmented by the Jesuits and their intrigues, until about the beginning of the eighteenth century, they converted this dissension into a volcanic eruption. Consequently thousands of the Armenians avowed their spiritual allegiance to the pope of Rome.

The following is from a French writer:

“Fortunately for the Catholics, they found a powerful protector in DeFeriol, the French ambassador, who obtained an order from the Porte, in 1703, for the deposition and banishment of the (Armenian) patriarch Avedik. Exiled to Chios, he was clandestinely carried off during the passage and conducted, some say to Messina, others to Marseilles, and thence to the Island of St. Marguerite, where he died of martyrdom. There were strong grounds for suspecting the Jesuits established in Chios and Galata of having contrived this plot in concert with the French ambassador.”[53]

The Mohammedan rulers always dealt with their Christian subjects with the utmost contempt, unmodified injustice, and with relentless cruelty and persecution. Many of the people did undoubtedly delude themselves with the idea that by uniting with the Romish church they would secure protection from the Turkish cruelty and oppression, through the influence of Romish France, which was then more influential in the East. For it is quite improbable that they could believe that the Roman church was any better in simplicity and purity than the Armenian church.

Returning to the history of the Armenian church from the schism in the church, it may be well to state that for over half a century (302-363) it was the custom of the Armenian bishops to be ordained at Cæsarea, Cappadocia, but during the patriarchate of Nerses the Great, the clergy and laity unanimously agreed to have their bishops ordained in Armenia by the Armenian bishops. It is therefore evident from this fact that there was no higher rank or order than that of a bishop or presbyter, which names are interchangeably used in the New Testament as Vartabed (doctor) M. Muradian, of St. James’ Monastery at Jerusalem, correctly states in his “History of the Apostolic Church of Armenia.”[54] It may also be interesting to add as a fact of history that in the time of St. Gregory and his successors for several centuries, the bishops were married and heads of families. Celibacy was not required of them, neither separation, but it was optional with them to choose either or none.

“The election of the bishops, like that of all the Armenian clergy, takes place by universal suffrage,” the ordinations take place generally at either Etchmiadzin, Akhtamar, or Sis, by the presiding bishop and his associates. The priests or presbyters (Yeretzk) are chosen by the people among themselves. They are expected to have tolerable knowledge of the Bible and the liturgy of the church (some in former years knew very little of either) and are ordained by the bishops. The priests live with their families among the people and attend their daily duties in the church services morning and evening; they perform baptism for the infants, and marry and bury the young and old as the occasion may require.

“The Armenian clergy receive no stipends, and exact no contributions like those of the Greek church; their revenues depend entirely on the voluntary contributions of the faithful; it is therefore rare to meet with a wealthy priest, though some few were in easy circumstances. With respect to morals, also, though it is difficult to pronounce absolutely on the subject, the Armenian clergy appear to be very superior to the Greeks.”[55] The deacons are elected and ordained like the priest, and have no income whatever; they serve the church and assist the priests in the daily ministrations and attend to their business, whatever it may be.

There is another class of the clergy of the Armenian church called Vartabeds, or doctors in theology. It is very probable that the very necessity of the case created this order. In former years, after the conversion of the Armenians to Christianity, most of the literary men were of the clergy, and the monasteries became the seats of learning. Those who loved a literary life would retire to those places and pursue such a course. Asceticism of the East also must have played a good part in it. Those who were ordained evangelists to visit the churches and to preach the gospel to the people, who were so often persecuted and oppressed by their enemies, at first, most likely voluntarily preferred celibacy in order to devote their whole time to the work of the church. But what was with them optional has become now a condition for that order, though “the Vartabeds form the most enlightened and learned portion of the Armenian clergy,” from whom the bishops are elected and ordained, are unfortunately “restricted to celibacy.”

“The monks or celibate priests are, I believe, always connected with convents, they are known under the style of Vardabets or doctors, this title being attached to their individual names. They are governed according to the rule of St. Basil of Cæsarea, the contemporary and monitor of the Armenian pontiff, Nerses the Great (A.D. 340-374). They do not practice the tonsure, and they wear their beards. They are attired in long black robes with conical cowls.... At present there are in all not more than some fifty Vardabets within the wide limits of the Russian province (of Armenia). Of these about half reside at Edgmiatsin.... All monks in Russian territory are ordained at Edgmiatsin, and it is the custom for all bishops, whether in Russian Armenia, or abroad, to be consecrated in the Church of the Illuminator.”[56]

The Armenian church differs from that of Rome on the following points: (1) It denies the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. (2) It has not accepted the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon as ecumenic. (3) It rejects the introduction of filioque into the creed, but admits that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. (4) It rejects the Romish doctrine of purgatory. (5) It rejects indulgences. (6) It has no equivalent word for Transubstantiation. (7) It does not withhold the Bible from the people, but encourages them to read it.

In the very year while the Armenians were alone fighting with the Persians in defense of Christianity, and the verdant fields of Ararat were dyed with the blood of the martyrs, the Greek and Latin theologians were holding their council at Chalcedon, engaging the influence of the Emperor to condemn Eutychus. He had gone to the other extremity of the question with regard to the person of Christ, for which Nestorius had been condemned in the previous council (at Ephesus A.D. 431). The latter was supposed to teach two personalities in Christ, on account of his emphasizing the distinctive characteristics of Christ’s divine and human nature. Eutychus was condemned because he made the divine nature of Christ to absorb his human nature, he, therefore, was called a monophysite.

The Armenians did not accept the decision of the Chalcedonian council, not because they were in sympathy with Eutychus’ doctrine, but because the question did not concern them. Moreover some other questions decided in that council were objectionable. “From the council of Chalcedon to the death of Boniface II, bishop of Rome, was a period of rivalry for sole dominion in the church between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople. By the council they had been recognized as entitled to higher honors than the rest. From that date it became an object of ambition with both to secure, each for his own self, the admitted title of sole superiority.”[57] Such being the case the decision of the council of Chalcedon is like the Mohammedan creed, part truth and part lie. The Armenians had already accepted the truth. They were satisfied with the orthodoxy delivered to them by the teachings of the Apostles and the three former councils, held at Nice A.D. 325; at Constantinople A.D. 381; and at Ephesus, A.D. 431. The pity of it all is that the Greek and Latin writers represented and condemned the Armenians as Monophysites and the Armenian church was cut off from the Western (Latin) and the Eastern (Greek) Churches.

The following is from the long defense and confession of the Synod of the Armenian bishops who answered the Persian grand vizier, Mihrenerseh, in A.D. 450, a year before the Council of Chalcedon: “He (Christ) was in reality God and in reality man. The Godhead was not withdrawn through the human nature, nor was the human nature destroyed by his remaining God; but he is both one and the same.”

Another writer says: “It is now evident that the Armenian church, of St. Gregory, wholly rejects the heresy of Eutychus, condemned by the council of Chalcedon; and she does so as much as the Eastern (Greek) church.”[58] Though this charge of heresy brought against the Armenian church by the Greek and Latin churches was absolutely unfounded, yet it was a fertile source of much trouble, oppression, persecution, and bloodshed, and almost the sole occasion of the overthrow of the last two Armenian dynasties.

The influence of the Greeks in the Grecian provinces of Armenia often outweighed in appointing a bishop over the Armenians, who would be favorably inclined to the acceptance of the decision of the Chalcedonian council and some other rites of the Greek Church. Such appointments often took place and furnished new sources of dissensions and contentions among the clergy and laity. The Greeks, taking advantage of such internal contentions, did their best to unite the Armenian church with the Greek church, but they invariably failed. “The more attractive the offer of the Greeks, the greater grew the hatred of them; nor have the popes met with better success. When we reflect that this obstinate people are as intelligent as any in the world in various pursuits of civilized life, our anger at such conduct, which gave away the cause of civilization, may be tempered by a different feeling. The Armenians have fought at all hazards to preserve their individuality, and the bulk of the nation have perished in the attempt. The remnant may be destined, like the son of Anak, to redress the wrongs inflicted by their ancestors upon the common Christian weal.”[59]

The Armenians have fought at all hazards not only to preserve their individuality, but especially to preserve their church from an ecclesiastical vassalage. They fought for principle, not for policy. Their descendants seem to have inherited the same spirit. On account of their adherence to principles of right and justice, they are brought to the very verge of national annihilation. It is not the Armenians of the past or the present that have inflicted wrongs upon the common Christian weal, but on the contrary, the so-called Christian nations of the past and the present are responsible for the wrongs that have been inflicted upon the defenseless Armenians.

It is the shallow and narrow-minded student of history and Christianity, who, seeing the great Christian nations at war says: Christianity has failed as a religion, or as a civilizing force. It is not the fault of Christianity, it is the lack of it. As it is now, so it was in the past. Had the Greeks the true spirit of Christianity, or even had they some far-sighted statesmen, they would have encouraged and strengthened the Armenians on the east, instead of weakening and hastening the overthrow of the Armenian independence. They could have made them like a strong stone wall against the Mongolian hordes, who not only swept over Armenia, but within a short time swept and reduced the Eastern empire. The City of Constantine the Great became for centuries the seat of the assassins.

Towards the end of the seventh century the Greeks invaded Armenia, devastated twenty-five provinces and carried away eight thousand families into captivity. Not very long after this event the Saracens invaded the country again and secured the entire subjugation of the people. The news of this event enraged the Greek emperor Justinius II again, who with an immense army attacked the Armenians and captured the prelate Isaac and five other bishops. After receiving a sufficient number of hostages, he left the prelates alone and returned to Constantinople.

It was only a few weeks after this that the Saracens, under the leadership of Abdullah, returned to Armenia and fell upon the people and plundered the churches and monasteries, and desecrated the sacred edifices and the unfortunate prelate Isaac was carried to Damascus in chains, where he ended his eventful life of martyrdom while a prisoner. Isaac was succeeded by Elias, the archbishop of Armenia, and Gashim was appointed by the Caliph governor of the country. Gashim was by no means inferior in cruelty to the previous Arab generals. In fact, all the followers of Mohammed, from the beginning well learned the behest of their lord, “To do aught good never will be your task, but to do evil ever your sole delight.” Gashim gathered all the leading men into the church of Nachichavan, on pretense of making a treaty of peace with them; he then set the church on fire and burned them alive.

The orthodoxy of the Armenian church would not have been questioned by some of the Western writers had they not drawn their information from the Greek and Latin sources only. This could not have been avoided in the early years of the middle ages on account of the scarcity of the Armenian scholars among the Western nations. Even now the Armenian language is studied by very few. Yet a careful and happy writer, like the following, is apt to avoid mistakes: “In points of doctrine and ritual the Armenian church is extremely conservative, and has been wise or fortunate enough to avoid defining her faith with the particularity which had produced so many schisms farther west. Her formulas do not commit her to Monophysite views, although, chiefly owing to a national jealousy of Constantinople, she has refused to accept the decrees of Chalcedon.... She has avoided the use of any word corresponding to the term Transubstantiation....”[60]

The following, from “the History of the Holy Apostolic Church of Armenia,” by Vartabed M. Muradian, of St. James’ Monastery, at Jerusalem, may show the orthodoxy of the Armenian Church:

“It is sweet and comforting to discourse on the revealed truths of the Bible which is the only foundation of undefiled doctrine, to which always have the holy church-fathers trusted for the defense of faith.

“The Bible teaches concerning God two things: first that God is one and there is no other God beside Him; second, that divine nature is common to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, and these three persons have one Godhead. This is the faith of the Christians in harmony with the manifest words of the Bible. This Trinity is the foundation of the Christian faith, and the three persons have one influence for our salvation, but in different ways of manifesting it; that is, the Father calls and causes us to approach His Son, whom He begat from eternity and prepared His coming. The Son came from heaven and was united with human nature that He might save us from sin and give us eternal life. The Holy Spirit is our regenerator, Who re-establishes in us the likeness of God, making us receptive of the Salvation offered by God.

“The Bible teaches that Christ, on account of His eternal generation from the Father, is called the Son of God, but for His incarnation in time, the Son of Man, brother of men, through whom we obtain the right to call God our Father, and for this reason the Church confesses in the personality of Christ two natures, the divine and the human, distinct and inseparable in their union. This mystery of incarnation is the great mystery of God’s love for the world; and as much of this is incomprehensible and inconceivable by human intelligence, so much is it natural with divine love and omnipotent nature. In this great mystery was the salvation of mankind, for this the entire humanity waited, and, therefore, the law and the prophets in this mystery of incarnation were fulfilled. Because Christ, as the true Messiah, performed prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices, and became for us the true Prophet, true Priest, and true King; teaching the doctrine of redemption, elucidating the past, the present, and the future of mankind, forgiving and redeeming us through the sacrifice of Himself and reigning over us with a heavenly and spiritual kingdom.

“The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds and flows from the Father, not as a common influence of God, but as a person of the Holy Trinity, infinite, eternal, a true God. But with respect to us the Holy Spirit is the Fountain of God’s union with man, and the seal by which we are known as Christians; because without the Holy Spirit’s dwelling in us, His help and guidance we are alive only (carnally), for the Holy Spirit is co-worker with the Father and the Son for our salvation; and as the manifestation of God through (or in) Christ to the world is called REDEMPTION, so also the revelation of God through the Holy Spirit is denominated REGENERATION and SANCTIFICATION.

“At this present day there is not a book like the Bible from which the intellectual world has been able to derive so much good for the real well-being and progress of human society. There is not a book, and cannot be, that is translated into so many languages and is distributed so extensively as the Bible. Our immortal translators felt this great want and they began the first step of the nation’s enlightenment and progress by the translation and study of the Holy Scriptures, and this translation is so choice, that with various praises bestowed upon it by the European scholars of the present century, who know the Armenian language, it is called the ‘Queen of Versions.’ But we will be giving a still greater praise to our forefathers if we generalize the study of the Holy Scriptures among our people and rear the edifice of education upon that solid foundation of the Word of God.”[61]

By no means should the reader think that the writer is partial in not telling something of the superstitions, formalism, and ignorance still in existence and practice among the Armenians and in their church. These have often been written and spoken of, even with a great deal of lack of knowledge and charity. Had those writers on these aspects of the Armenian Church and people remembered that for almost sixteen centuries this Church has been in constant conflict with paganism, Zoroastrianism, Mohammedanism, and the evil influences of the so-called other Christian Churches, they would not have been so severe in their denunciations of that old relic of the ancient Christian Church. Often were the bishops and priests in the battlefield with their flocks against the enemy of the Church. Often were they in chains, in imprisonment, in hostage at the pagan, Mohammedan and so-called Christian Courts; often were they carried away into captivity and massacred by their captors because they would not denounce their faith in Christ. In the massacre of 1895-6 not one out of one hundred and seventy Armenian priests and twenty-one Protestant Armenian ministers, who were cruelly butchered by a slow torture for their faith, was willing to exchange his Christian faith for his life. The same was true for centuries. How could they give more attention than they did to the education and enlightenment of their people and to the purity of the Church? Even to-day the best intellects of the Armenian church, the educators and lovers of reform and the purity of the Church and the people have been butchered by the unspeakable Turks with the consent of their allies or have chosen voluntary exile. Certainly these circumstances will not justify the condition of the church, but they ought to modify the severity of our judgment and fill us with a deeper sympathy, with a truer Christian love and activity for its reform, purity, and spiritual prosperity. (See Chapter XV.)

FOOTNOTES:

[53] Ubicini, “Letters on Turkey,” Vol. II, pp. 256-7.

[54] Muradian, “The History of the Apostolic Church of Armenia,” p. 35. (This work is in the Armenian language.)

Armenia, a martyr nation / A historical sketch of the Armenian people from traditional times to the present tragic days

ARMENIA
A Martyr Nation

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

CONTENTS

A CRY FROM ARMENIA

I
ARMENIA

FOOTNOTES:

II
THE ARMENIANS

FOOTNOTES:

III
THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT ARMENIANS

FOOTNOTES:

IV.
THE CONVERSION OF THE ARMENIANS

FOOTNOTES:

V
THE CONFLICTING FORCES

FOOTNOTES:

VI
THE ARMENIAN CHURCH

FOOTNOTES:

Armenia, a martyr nation / A historical sketch of the Armenian people from traditional times to the present tragic days

ARMENIAA Martyr Nation

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

CONTENTS

A CRY FROM ARMENIA

IARMENIA

FOOTNOTES:

IITHE ARMENIANS

FOOTNOTES:

IIITHE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT ARMENIANS

FOOTNOTES:

IV.THE CONVERSION OF THE ARMENIANS

FOOTNOTES:

VTHE CONFLICTING FORCES

FOOTNOTES:

VITHE ARMENIAN CHURCH

FOOTNOTES:

ARMENIA
A Martyr Nation

I
ARMENIA

II
THE ARMENIANS

III
THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT ARMENIANS

IV.
THE CONVERSION OF THE ARMENIANS

V
THE CONFLICTING FORCES

VI
THE ARMENIAN CHURCH