HISTORY

Birth of a Nation

Legend says that the Armenian patriarch Hayk defeated the evil Assyrian ruler Bel in an epic battle similar to that of David versus Goliath to win his people's freedom. The land Hayk's people occupied came to be known as Hayastan, a name still used by Armenians to this day. This legend is but one example of Armenian's rich, storied past, where Armenian heroes fought nefarious invaders and overlords to gain freedom for their people. These legends are not far-fetched, and these tales correlate with historic events. Throughout its history, Armenia has come under the attack of warring peoples who sought to absorb the land and its people into their dominions to exploit the country's resources. Though its mountainous terrain helped protect Armenia from such invaders. In the centuries to come, the emergence of strong Armenian rulers, the adoption of Christianity as its state religion, and the advent of the Armenian alphabet would foster a strong Armenian national identity.

                  

The First Christian state in the world

One of the most crucial events in Armenian history was the conversion to Christianity. By adopting the new religion, Armenia established a distinct Christian character of its own and, at times, became identified with the Western world. KingTiridates III (Trdat), having been converted by Gregory the Illuminator, proclaimed Christianity as the religion of the state in 301 A.D. Thus, Armenia became the first nation to embrace Christianity officially. This was 12 years before the Emperor Constantine's Edict of Milan which declared tolerance of Christians in the Roman Empire. Gregory the Illuminator, was elected Catholicos of the new Armenian national Church, he elected supreme head of the Armenian Church. The creation of the Armenian alphabet in 405 A.D. solidified the unifying factor of the Armenian language for the divided nation. Mesrop Mashtots, a scholar and clergyman, shaped the thirty six (three characters were added later) letters that distinguished Armenia, linguistically and liturgically, from the powers surrounding it. The alphabet representing the many distinct consonants of Armenian has remained unchanged for 1500 years.

Mashtots Creates the Alphabet

       

As the Armenian Church developed, Armenian priests sought to acquire knowledge and contribute such wisdom for society's benefit. Due to the lack of an Armenian script, their teachings were conducted in foreign languages, mainly Assyrian and Greek. The need for an Armenian alphabet arose amongst scholars. A devoted monk named Mesrob Mashtots began studying languages in the latter part of the 4th century AD. He focused his attention on the pronunciations of words Armenians used with the intent of creating a distinct Armenian alphabet. With the help of his students who traveled all over Armenia, he gathered the sounds that Armenians used in their speech, and in 405 AD introduced the thirty six characters that make up the basis of the Armenian alphabet. Mesrob Mashtots went on to build schools across Armenia to teach the alphabet and is even credited for the role he played in developing the alphabets of neighboring nations. His contribution to Armenian culture was immense because it further distinguished the Armenians from neighboring peoples thereby making the process of assimilation difficult. The invention of the Armenian alphabet also paved the way for the first Golden Age of Armenia, and over the subsequent centuries, Armenian writers, philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists, have achieved world acclaim due in large part to St. Mesrob Mashtots' seminal work. Over the centuries, the Armenian language underwent grammatical and phonological changes

At least three different forms of the Armenian language are in use today - Classical Armenian, or Grabar, the scholarly form of the language used to this day by the Armenian Church; Western Armenian, commonly found in American, European and Middle Eastern Diaspora communities; and Eastern Armenian, the official language of the Republic of Armenia and the spoken language of Armenians in Iran and Russia. Russian is widely known in Armenia as well, and English is increasingly gaining prominence, followed by French, German and several oriental languages.

Ottoman Empire and the Genocide

During the 19^th  century, the Armenians living under Turkish rule suffered from discrimination, heavy taxation and armed attacks. As Christians, Armenians lacked legal recourse for injustices. They were taxed beyond their means, forbidden to bear arms in a country where murdering a non-Muslim often went unpunished, and were without the right to testify in court on their own behalf. In the late 19^th century, Sultan Abdul Hamid II sat at the head of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. In 1820, Greece was able to break free of the Turkish yoke that had enslaved it for over three hundred years, but Abdul Hamid's empire still encompassed a vast amount of territory from Eastern Europe through the Near East, into the Middle East, and the Armenian Plateau. Ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire were pressing for reforms that would give them equal rights or freedom from Ottoman rule altogether. For this purpose, Abdul Hamid chose the Armenians. Thus, in the spring of 1909, the sultan ordered new bloodshed 30,000 Armenians lost their lives after a desperate resistance. This decree was to be just the beginning of the darkest page in Armenian history. After the turn of the century, Ottoman Turkey's territorial boundaries continued to shrink despite the Sultan's previous warning to ethnic groups. As the First World War commenced, the Young Turks allied their empire with Germany and the Axis Powers against the French, British, Russians, and eventually the US. As the first step in a long and bloody campaign, on April 24, 1915, the Young Turks gathered the intellectual leaders of the Armenian community living in Istanbul and executed most of them without giving any reason or proof of wrong-doing. Armenian males serving in the Ottoman army were separated from the rest and slaughtered. The Istanbul government decided to deport the entire Armenian population. Armenians in towns and villages were marched into deserts of Syria, Mesopotamia and Arabia. By 1923, an estimated 1.5 million of the nearly two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire had been murdered or died due to the direct actions of the Turks. Many were buried alive in pits, drowned in rivers, beheaded, raped or abducted into harems. Most of the remaining Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey managed to flee to neighboring countries, some moving later to Europe or the Americas, and established Diaspora communities. Another wave of massacres occurred in Baku (1918). Shushi (1920) and elsewhere. After the tragedy that plagued Europe under Nazi rule, noted historian Rafael Lemkin coined the phrase "genocide" and cited the Armenian experience as one such example of man's inhumanity toward man.

Armenia's First Independent Republic

With the help of their Russian allies, Armenians in Eastern or Russian Armenia were able to ward off Turkish attempts to overrun the country and unify Turkey and Azerbaijan. After several decisive battles, Armenian irregular troops and freedom fighters such as Drastamat "Dro" Kanayan and Andranik Ozanian were able to push back the Turks.

In the face of overwhelming difficulties, Armenia declared its independence on May 28, 1918. Armenian leaders continued to press their nation's plight to the world powers; however, their pleas fell on deaf ears as successive peace treaties reduced the size of the new republic. While the Armenian Republic struggled to establish civil institutions such as a state university in 1919, their efforts were undermined by two new powers in the region - the Republic of Turkey, established by Turkish nationalist and general in the Ottoman military, Mustafa Kemal, and the Bolsheviks, who had engineered the Russian Revolution. The Western powers' apathy toward the Armenians and the Turkish and Russian desire to expand their borders meant that the fledgling republic's days were numbered.