The Many Armenias

Last month I was in for a visit with the doctor, and before I stepped out I asked him one last question: "Are you from Armenia?" His accent wasn't quite telltale to me, but between an Armenian name that I had an eye for--often ending in "-ian", like the all too well known Kardashians--and a postcard depicting Mount Ararat, my curiosity was piqued. Indeed, he was Armenian, but he was born in Iran. "Farsi baladi?" I asked him in the Iranian tongue, and he amusingly confirmed that yes, he did speak Farsi. I had dated an Iranian girl, I explained, when he asked how I learned, and I explained that I generally have an affinity for languages and had spent time in Beirut studying Arabic before I visited Armenia myself. "My wife is from Beirut!" he exclaimed, mentioning the city's famous Armenian quarter, Bourj Hammoud. And there I was in Southern California, home to perhaps one million Armenian-Americans, discussing Mount Ararat with an Iranian-born Armenian man who was married to a Lebanese-born Armenian woman.

Bourj Hammoud's main avenue (mia-azar.com)

In the 21st Century, there are many Armenias, whether in North America, South America, Europe, or Asia. In days past, however, Armenia was unique in that it had two parts in quite different places, and the Armenian diaspora of today truly begins during this time. While I was living in Beirut in 2011, I quickly heard about the sizable Armenian community there, and before long found myself in Bourj Hammoud exploring the architecture, the posters in strange writing, the different types of food, and the overall atmosphere of the Armenian quarter. My interest only grew from there, and soon I was reading up on just what brought the Armenians to Beirut. Shortly thereafter, I had booked a flight from Beirut to Yerevan, the Armenian capital that sits at the foot of Mount Ararat.

Learning what brought so many Armenians to Beirut was a sobering study. Rather than finding some odd and amusing turn of historical events, I instead as made aware of the grim and brutal Armenian Genocide. The Armenian Genocide was very likely the first time the word "genocide" was applied to any atrocity involving ethnic persecution, and despite its notoriety among Turks--the perpetrators--and Armenians, it seems that few in the West have heard of it, especially considering its position two decades in the shadow of the Nazi Holocaust.

The story of Armenia is a long one, with little known roots in rather well known history. Armenia proper is wedged between the rugged landscapes of eastern Turkey, Northern Iran, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Armenia’s history is a rich one, with many glorious periods of self-rule and expansion—including Armenian presence on the shores of the Mediterranean, in modern day Syria and Turkey, as early as the first century B.C. The original boundaries of the Armenian nation ran roughly around the three major lakes of the region—Lake Van, Lake Sevan, and Lake Urmia. Today Armenia, is much smaller, but at times it was much larger yet.

My own photo from Yerevan, Armenia, 2011--Mount Ararat the larger peak on the horizon.

Although lying on a distant horizon from such cultural centers as the Levant, Byzantium, and mainland Europe, Armenia set itself up for a crucial role in history by becoming the first kingdom to adopt Christianity as its official religion. By the time the Roman Empire had split, leaving the Byzantine Empire to rule the east, Armenia gravitated toward the Christian capital on the Bosphorus and became an object of contention as empires wrestled for control of Anatolia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. Armenians continued to migrate toward the Mediterranean, and soon the Kingdom of Cilicia became a center of Armenian culture and Christian civilization in lieu of the Armenian kingdom in the east, which came under tight Islamic rule.

By the time of the Crusades, there were two Armenias. The western kingdom, in Cilicia, became a strong ally of the Crusaders and their kingdoms, and as a result the state became fully autonomous—free of political control from Byzantium as well as military threat from Arab Muslims. Despite playing a crucial role in enabling and supporting the Crusades, Armenia failed to keep its foothold. The Egyptian Mamluks brought turmoil to the region, and Cilicia soon found itself under Muslim rule, or that of the prince of Cyprus at different times. 

(aghtamar.org)

Weakened, with political power offshore or abroad, the kingdom later fell victim to the sweeping conquest of Tamerlane. Turks began to move in, and Armenians were forced out, thus initiating a diaspora within a diaspora. The wealthy fled to Cyprus and Western Europe; others spread through the near east and even remained in Cilicia. The sun had set on Armenia’s period of expansion, and soon both the eastern and western parts were under Ottoman rule. Meanwhile, Armenians had settled in such far flung places as Amsterdam, Calcutta, Singapore, and Ethiopia in pursuit of opportunity, fortune, and serenity.

At the turn of the 20^th Century, the Armenian Diaspora was taking on its modern appearance, driven by the rule of Ottoman Turks that brought religious and ethnic discrimination to a Christian people in a Muslim realm. Ottoman rule would cause the first major wave of modern dispersion; the Armenian genocide would be next, followed by the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Armenian Genocide itself took place over many years, but it’s beginnings, like other genocides, were in radical political ideals incorporating totalitarian nationalism, racism, and xenophobia. In the late 1800s, an Armenian push for more political and religious freedom was met on several occasions with repressive violence. Tension between ethnic Armenians and the Ottoman government was cultivated in the years leading up to World War I, and Armenia, alongside several other Ottoman fringe territories, became to lean toward open rebellion and dissent. In an eerie parallel to the policies of Nazi Germany, the Ottomans passed vague legislation in the name of security that allowed for resettlement and deportation of Armenians who threatened the empire. As Turkey entered World War I, many Armenians saw salvation in the Allied forces, particularly in the potential of Russia to defeat the Turks in the Caucasus and Black Sea region. As a result, the overt actions of some Armenians led to a brutal state-sanctioned reaction by the Ottomans, and deportations began en masse.

One of the more mild images of the Armenian genocide--Turks marching deportees to the desert, and to death. (telegraph.co.uk)

Armenians first began to lose their property and wealth, then faced exile. Long marches through the unforgiving Syrian desert became a staple policy. The Three Pashas, who had become the ruling triumvirate of the empire, began a campaign of atrocity as their solution to what was being called “the Armenian Question”. Diplomats from America, Germany, and beyond were witness to the Turkish treatment of the Armenians, and were quite aware of the greater plan of “Turkification” of the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, Turkish intellectuals were debating methods of purifying Turkish language—removing Arabic and Persian terms, among others, in order to create a language that was free of outside taints. Such thinking, again, is indicative of a radical and xenophobic sentiment that was infiltrating the Turkish psyche.

Soon the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire shrank from almost 2 million to less than 400,000—with 1.5 million not just deported, but many of them killed in what would later be deemed a genocide. By the time the Ottoman Empire had completely dissolved as a result of defeat in World War I, the Republic of Turkey was all that remained—with a nearly non-existent Armenian population. Those who survived did so mostly outside the newly formed republic, in nearby places such as Russia, the Balkans, Greater Syria, and the nascent Armenian republic to the east. This small Armenian state was at war with Turkey almost immediately, before being annexed by the Soviet Union in 1922.

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Armenian people were once again beaten, stateless, and spread thin. In 1935, William Saroyan, an American writer and son of Armenian immigrants, synopsized the enduring Armenian spirit:

"I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose history is ended, whose wars have been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, whose literature is unread, whose prayers are no longer answered.... For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a new Armenia!"

Indeed, Saroyan’s own parents had arrived in the United States in 1905 from the Ottoman Empire, and settled in California. Major American cities saw Armenian influx before World War I, then after, as refugees fled Ottoman oppression. After World War II, Armenians abroad returned to the new Soviet Armenia in some cases, while others continue to go west to Europe and the US. Beirut, however, remained the primary recipient city of Armenian migrants. Beirut’s proximity to the Armenian Genocide meant that many Armenians arrived on foot from the Syrian desert, and the foundation of communities in such places as the Bourj Hammoud neighborhood or the city of Anjar formed a cultural gravity in Lebanon that continued to draw Armenian immigrants to join the gathering masses.

In 1975, civil war broke out in Lebanon, and over the next fifteen years Beirut would be rattled and broken by sectarian violence. The Armenian community, unlike the native Lebanese, saw little reason to become invested in the conflict and aimed for neutrality. However, many saw emigration as their best option, and these Armenians left Lebanon for the United States, many arriving in California and what is now known as Little Armenia. 

After this wave of the Armenian Diaspora, another followed as the Soviet Union withered in the 1980s. In 1991, upon the fall of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Armenia became an independent state—but few Armenians rushed back. The myriad expats worldwide expressed skepticism at the Russified culture and government of the oldest Armenian homeland, while many others—a majority—had no knowledge of family history in this Armenia, but rather only in western Armenia, the Ottoman Empire, Lebanon, and Cilicia.

Map of the modern day Armenian Diaspora. (Wikimedia Commons)

The result of centuries upon centuries of cultural dispersion is an Armenian Diaspora that exists today in many Armenias. Whether it is in California’s busiest cities, along the banks of the Seine, the Georgian countryside, the sprawling metropolis of Moscow, or at the edge of the world in Argentina, Armenians have spread far and wide with little desire to return to a long lost home—if it even exists. Thus is it a plausible story that an Iranian born man found a cultural connection to his Lebanese born wife, has visited the forsaken slopes of Mount Ararat, brought home a postcard, immigrated to the United States, and still calls himself an Armenian. 

Truly, home is where you make it in the case of the Armenian Diaspora, and being Armenian in a too big world is something unique. As 20^th Century Armenian writer Gostan Zarian put it, “Being an Armenian is a merciless task and a heroic enterprise. It is a commandment, a mission, and a destiny that history has imposed on us from the depths of centuries. We are the shock troops of the struggle between light and darkness… And we are charged with an awesome responsibility.”