Armenia, officially Armenian Hayastani Hanrapetut’yun, German Republic of Armenia, landlocked country in southern Transcaucasia with (2018) 3 million residents; The capital is Yerevan.
The Ararat plain and the area around Lake Sevan were built between 1100 and 880 BC. Conquered by the Urartians. Under Sarduri II (765 to around 733 BC) the kingdom of Urartu (9th to early 6th century BC; own name: Biainili, from which the toponym Wan [Van] in Armenian) extended its power from northern Syria to to Lake Urmia (Iran), including large parts of Transcaucasia and Lake Van and the Tuschpa residence as the center.
Ethnogenesis and origin of name
In the ethnogenesis of the Armenians (6th – 2nd centuries BC), in addition to Hurrian-Urartian, Indo-European (especially Luwian) as well as autochthonous Asian Minor and Trans-Caucasian population groups were involved. In the myth, the progenitor and eponym Hajk - originally the ancient Armenian father of gods – leads his people from the bondage of the “giant Bel” (Babylon) in Mesopotamia to the northeast to the “land of Ararat” (Urartu). The Armenian name as Hajk(toponym “Hajastan”) is also associated with the Hajassa area (15th – 13th centuries BC), which borders the Hittite Empire and is documented in cuneiform texts.
The name “Armina” (or “Harminuja”) is found for the first time in the trilingual cuneiform texts of Naksch-e Rostam and Bisutun of the Persian great king Darius I (around 518 BC), Armenia’s participation in the rebellion and submission to the satrapies of his empire around 521-519, where Armenia in the Babylonian version was equated with “Uraschtu” (“Urartu”).
Empires up to the Middle Ages – Under Roman-Byzantine, Persian and Arab supremacy
In the power triangle between Rome, the Parthians and the Seleucids, Armenia was able to maintain a relative independence despite changeable imperial ties. The Roman victories over Antiochus III. (190 BC) enabled the Armenians – initially under Roman protection – to establish independent states under Artaxias (“Armenia maior”; main or greater Armenia) and Zariadris (Sophene / “Armenia minor”; little Armenia), those under Tigranes (around 94–56) were united into a unified empire. During the period of greatest expansion of power (83–69 BC), the Armenian area of influence extended between the Mediterranean and the Caspian Sea to Iberia (eastern Georgia), Albania (northwest Azerbaijan) and Palestine; 69 BC BC (3rd Mithridatic War) Tigranes became of the legions of Lucullusdefeated, his empire came under Roman tutelage. Courted by Rome and Parthia as a buffer state, the throne was occupied by a branch of the Parthian Arsacids (Treaty of Rhandeis 63 AD) and assigned to Rome as a “client” until Armenia in 387 between the Roman Empire and the Persian Sassanids (224– 642), with three quarters of Armenia falling under Persian rule. The adoption of Christianity as the state religion under Tiridates (Trdat) III was of decisive importance for the continued existence of the Armenian nation and culture . (287–294 and 298 to around 330) in 301 (Armenian Church).
With the deposition of the last Arsacid king in 428, according to politicsezine, the political identity of Persian Armenia disappeared, while in the Roman part a reorganization based on the Byzantine model and forced integration took place. The Arabs advancing since 640 succeeded in integrating rival Armenian feudal parties into their power interests. This fact was used by the Bagratids dynasty, who under Ashot I (885–890) were able to establish an Armenian territorial kingdom (Kingdom of Shirak with the capital Ani, 961–1045). The princes’ urge for independence and Byzantine intrigues prevented the emergence of a central state in the Middle Ages. In 908 the Waspurakan (Wan) region split off as a competing southern power center, where under Gagik Artsruni(908–937) a second kingdom emerged, which was able to assert itself against Byzantine supremacy claims until 1021. The deposition, exile and murder (1079) of the child king Gagik II. Bagratuni (1042–45) by the Byzantines and the victory of the Seljuks against Byzantium (Battle of Mantzikert [Manaskert], north of Lake Van, 1071) finally ended the Bagratid rule in Shirak. The Turkic people of the Seljuks were able to assert themselves in the Armenian highlands all the more easily as Byzantium had previously pushed or forced Armenian princes and their entourage to swap their territories and relocate to Cappadocia or Cilicia , which led to the depopulation of entire regions. Outside the historical settlement area, the Bagratide founded Ruben1080 in Oberkilikien a barony and thus the last Armenian state in the Middle Ages. Since 1198/99 kingdom under Levon I. Rubinjan (1187-98), the small Armenian state in Cilicia was able to assert itself under the protection of the Crusaders until 1375, when Cilicia was first subjugated by Egyptian Mamluks and incorporated into the Ottoman Empire (Turkey, history) in 1487 became.
Armenians under Ottoman rule and in the tsarist empire
After the conquest of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II established an Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate there in 1461 as a counterweight to the spiritual head of the subjugated Byzantines. As a “nation of faith” (Ermeni millet-i), Armenian apostolic Christians had autonomy in internal church legal matters as long as no Muslim interests were affected, but as non-Muslims they paid special and additional taxes and were legally disadvantaged. The election of the patriarchs only became legally valid with the consent of the sultan.
Ottoman and Persian claims led to the repeated division of the area between the two powers (Treaties of Amasya 1555 and Diyarbakır 1639). Did Tsar Peter I, the Great,Already granted special rights to the Armenians in the Russian Empire, Russia has been claiming protection rights for all Armenian Christians since 1763. The Russian advance into Transcaucasia during the three decades of wars against the Persians and Turks ended with the annexation of Karabakh (Treaty of Gülistan 1813), the East Transcaucasian Persian Khanates of Yerevan and Nakhchivan (Treaty of Turkmanschaj 1828) and the former Ottoman Paschaliks of Akhalkalaki (Armenian: Akhalkarak, also Dschawachk; Georgian: Dschawacheti) and Akhaltsikhe (Armenian: Akhaltscha; Georgian also Samtskhe), sealed in the Treaty of Adrianople (1829). According to the additional clauses of these contracts, around 130,000 Armenians immigrated or returned to the new Russian acquisitions. While only 20,000 Armenians lived in the province of Yerevan in 1827, there were already 700,000 at the end of the 19th century. In 1828, the creation of an Armenian region (oblast) created the first modern administrative unit that officially bore the name Armenia, but not the remaining Eastern Armenian areas were assigned. During the administrative reform of 1840, Karabakh and the southeastern peripheral zones of the Armenian Highlands became the new Caspian Province (since 1868: Jelisavetpol Governorate) as well as the Armenian-populated districts of Akhaltsikhe, Akhalkalaki, Lori and part of Gandscha (Armenian: Gandsak) on the northern edge of Armenian Hochlands added to the Georgian-Imeretian Governorate (since 1846 distributed to the governorates of Kutaisi, Tbilisi, Schemachi and Derbent). Founded in 1849, the Yerevan Governorate also included Nakhichevan and Ordubad. A statute (1836) recognized the religious independence of the Armenian Apostolic Church, but made it subject to state control. showed in the confirmation of the Catholicos by the tsar. The capture of cities like Kars, Ardahan, Erzurum, Bajasid (Turkish: Bayazit) and Alaschkert in the Russo-Turkish War 1877/78 (Turkish Wars) raised the hope of a unification of the western and eastern Armenian territories. Article 16 of the preliminary peace treaty of San Stefano (1877) provided for Russian security guarantees for the Christian Armenians in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire with simultaneous stationing of Russian units, but was weakened with Article 61 at the Berlin Peace Conference (Berlin Congress, 1878), which the the Ottoman government at least obliged to administrative autonomy in the “Armenian-inhabited provinces”. The withdrawal of Russian troops, increasing attacks by Muslim sections of the population (especially Kurds and North Caucasians) triggered a renewed wave of Armenians migrating to Transcaucasia and a radicalization of the disappointed Armenians. who founded a Revolutionary Armenian Federation (Daschnakzutjun) in Tbilisi in 1890 with the aim of self-defense and emancipation of the Armenians. Demands for reforms in the Ottoman Empire were made with state-organized mass violence (massacres 1894–96, 1909), deportations and Genocide against the Armenians (1915/16, up to 1.5 million deaths) answered. Renewed waves of flight, which in the late 19th century burdened the social and ethno-religious fabric in Transcaucasia, were the result. After the assassination of the liberal Tsar Alexander II (1881), Russian policy on Armenia intensified. In Eastern and Russian Armenia, measures such as the restriction of Armenian charities and cultural institutions (1900) and the confiscation of Armenian church property were intended to nip the germs of national-revolutionary institutions, but led to increased resistance against the autocracy and a relocation of the revolutionary movement from the Ottoman Empire Transcaucasia.
