Vol. 1 No. 25 (2022): 2022-1

The Armenian Question and Armenian Genocide archive, totaling 11 boxes of thousands of documents in different languages, stored at the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, was digitized. Presently the preparation of the catalogue of these documents is underway by a team led by this author. The archive was compiled by the “Information Bureau”, created in 1919 under the aegis of the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, archbishop Zaven Ter-Yeghiayan. The article presents the history, functions and goals of the “Information Bureau”, and the original report of Karapet Nuryan. For the first time, the archive’s “Content” is published. The archive is invaluable as a unique source of political history of the era in unveiling new details of Ottoman and Kemalist rulers’ 1912-1922 policy towards the extermination of Armenians.

Tavush is one of the powerful and famous fortresses of medieval Armenia. It is located in the south-eastern part of Berd city in Tavush Province. It was most probably built by Smbat I during the period between the middle of the last decade of the IX century and the end of the first decade of the X century. It was first mentioned in connection with the revolt of Tslik Amram in 921, the governor of the Uti administrative unit, against Ashot II Yerkat. Tavush fortress belonged to the Bagratids until 1045. After that it passed to Byzantium, the Kyurikids, the Seljuks and the Vahramyans. During that period it was the center of the administrative unit of the Kyurikid Dynasty established in the Tavush river basin, the Seljuk sultanate, and during the Vahramyans it was the center of the Tavush Province administrative unit. It was captured and destroyed by the Mongols in 1236.

Gagik I Bagratid (990-1018) occupied a special place and played an important role in the history of Bagratid Armenia. He was a very powerful monarch and tried to restore the power and boundaries of the rule of the first Bagratid kings. During his reign, the kingdom's partially lost international prestige and its influence in regional processes increased. On the other hand, under Gagik I, the country experienced a great cultural upsurge: in this respect, the country reached the peak of its prosperity. Medieval authors recorded the aforementioned realities, as a result of which it is generally believed in Armenian studies that under Gagik I, the kingdom of the Bagratids reached the peak of not only cultural prosperity, but also military-political power, which requires a new approach and revision.

The article also examines the titles of Gagik I, of which he preferred the titles "Shahnshah of Armenia and Georgia" and "King of the kings of Great Armenia". The first was an internationally recognized title of the Bagratid kings, and the second expressed the highest status of Gagik I in Armenia.

The German Eastern Mission, founded by Dr. Johannes Lepsius on September 29, 1895, abandoned its initial Christian propaganda program in the Muslim regions of the East due to the systematic massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and dedicated itself to supporting the endangered Armenian people. Carrying out complex activities of informative nature concerning the massacres, the organization united the German public and church circles, and with their material support undertook the rescue of thousands of helpless orphans and widows. Orphanages, handicraft enterprises, hospitals, and other institutions were established in Urfa, Caesarea, Diyarbakir, as well as in a number of regions of Bulgaria and Persia, where there were large numbers of refugees, which were of valuable importance for the survival of the Armenians who had escaped the massacres. In parallel with the organization of the Armenian relief work, the German Eastern Mission was actively fighting against the Turkish misinformation, at the same time trying to urge the German government to resolutely defend the endangered Armenian people.

The growth of Armenians’ well-being in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries could not have escaped the attention of the country’ ruling circles and not become a decisive factor in further development of the events. The idea of ​​making the economy of the Ottoman Empire homogeneous and Turkish became one of the necessary conditions for the further existence of the state. The extermination of Armenians and the appropriation of their property in Adana started in 1909 and continued during the Armenian Genocide. After the ceasefire of 1918, Armenians returning to Adana province tried to get back their confiscated property. Initially, the defeated Ottoman Empire discussed and even passed bills to return the confiscated property, perhaps for propaganda purposes only. However, as the situation changed, the Ottoman authorities, then the Kemalist regime, enacted laws on confiscated real estate or movable capital, which was considered “abandoned property”, increasingly neutralizing the slightest possibility of Armenians to return their property, thus strengthening by the force of law the robbery carried out at the highest state level.

The annihilation of the Armenian community had a crucial role in the Unionist project of transforming the Ottoman empire into a Turkish nation-state. The article was written taking into consideration ideas circulating among the Armenian society presenting conversion during the Armenian genocide and assimilation as a “window” of salvation, as well as the tendency to inflate the numbers of converted Armenians and assign to it a political potential. The main issue of the article is to show that the forcible transfer and assimilation of the genocide were not unambiguous by presenting the content of some of the genocidal orders of forcible transfer, their implementation, and consequences. As a result of this state-led and state-coordinated action, selected representatives of the Armenian community specified by gender and age were put in the state institutions or in the households of individual Turks, continuing to be victims of the genocidal system: they were destroyed, sometimes subjected to sexual or labor exploitation beforehand and to the conversion of identity. In general, the article emphasizes that forced assimilation was one of the methods of the Armenian Genocide, aimed at the destruction of the Armenian people as such.

The article presents massacres, repressions and looting of the Armenian civilian population in Kars by the Kemalists in 1920-1921.  Researches and analyzes prove the genocidal actions that took place in the surrendered city, the aim of which was to deprive the Armenian people of their homeland. The massacres in Kars province and the eviction of the Armenians can be considered a continuation of the Armenian Genocide in the territory of Eastern Armenia.

The article presents the activities of the German-Armenian Society, aimed at the benefit of the Armenians in 1988-1994, exclusively on the basis of German primary sources. In particular, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the steps taken by the society to promote its fair settlement, the devastating earthquake of December 7, 1988 in Spitak and aid to the disaster zone are considered, the struggle of society for the protection of the rights and interests of Armenians living in Turkey is presented.

The Armenian-Azerbaijani relations in general are justly described as hostile, and most often it is considered that the processes that began in the late 1980s, the struggle for the self-determination of Artsakh as well as the Karabakh wars have formed the ground for this situation. Thus, the impression is created that these relations became antagonistic within a short period of time, and the Armenians and Azerbaijanis turned from the Soviet fraternal peoples to irreconcilable enemies. It is necessary to state and highlight that there were grounds and reasons, transforming the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations from passively negative to actively negative, hostile. These issues were best reflected in the memoirs of the statesmen, political and state leaders of Soviet Armenia of various years, and in this article on the basis of these sources we tried to shed light on the foundations of important layers of the Armenian-Azerbaijani

The archaeological studies  and  excavations of the monuments, located on the south-eastern side of  the famous  Sanahin monastery complex, (the complex is situated in administrative region of Alaverdi community, in Lori region of the RA) are part of a huge project sponsord by the American Embassy in Armenia. The Project is directed to the restoration of St. Jacob church, St. Harutyun chapel,  the cross-stone of Grigor Tutervordi and conservation jobs (the orderer is “Armenian Association of Architects of Historic Monuments”).

St. Jacob and St. Harutyun churches are located out of the fenced area of the complex, approximately 70-100 m south-east from the main complex. A great  number of pottery ,dated from 11-13^th c., were founded during the excavations, the most notable of which are ornamanted bricks.

The article is devoted to the study  of St. Vardan imonuments in Gegharkunik province in the context of the S. Vardanants. The study of the available materials and field research during our scientific expeditions are bases to think that the path of the Armenian detachment retreating to Artsakh after the Avarayr battle passed through the Selim passage to the Sevan basin. The next clashes with the Persians pursuing them took place on the valley of Argichi River and not far from the historic village Kot.

The variety of Old Armenian voiceless h (h) in comparative Armenology (comp. *H (7)/ *p (52)/ *s (16)/ *ø (12)/ *k^ṷ (4)) gives rise to a certain set of problems when identifying the prototype(s) of h (h). One of these problems is the relevance of the laryngeal sounds in common Indo-European language, since Armenian, together with Hittite and Old Greek, was considered one of the key languages that had preserved the reflexes of the IE laryngeal sounds (V. Georgiev). We are more prone to accept the theories that discard the existence of certain unique “laryngeal” sounds in the common Indo-European language. These theories hypothesize that the IE *h was an “ordinary voiceless back-lingual” sound (O. Semerenyi, E. Makaev and others). The Armenian words starting with h (h), which the supporters of the “Laryngeal theory” identify with the IE first shewa (*ə) or a laryngeal sound marked with *H, was, in fact, an ordinary voiceless fricative *h. One of the prototypes proper of the Armenian h (h) was *s, since if not in the Indo-European, then at least in the first IE dialects, the sounds *s and *h were in sequential relationship. This idea is well-supported by typological evidence. The transition of the IE *p> to Arm. h (h), despite its overwhelming number as compared to the others, took place much later when Armenian was already an independent language. The phonetic transitions IE *ø > Arm. հ (հ), IE *k^ṷ > Arm. հ (հ) are of secondary significance for us since in case the IE *ø > Arm. հ (հ) match, the Armenian h (h) is most apparently a later addition while the transition IE *k^ṷ > Arm. հ (հ) is a non-standard phonetic phenomenon that can be well observed in the history of the Armenian language as an independent language.

Hovhannes Catolikos Draskhanakertsy is an influential Armenian figure, statesman, spiritual leader and chronicler of the late IX and early X centuries. His well-known work “History of Armenia” was written in the ancient Armenian language, but it was a period of decline of the ancient literary language, in the depths of which a new Middle Armenian language was already being formed under the influence of dialects, new borrowings from the languages ​​of the conquerors and neighboring peoples. This article reveals the rich semantics of phraseological units of the book “History of Armenia”. The vocabulary of Hovhannes Draskhanakertsy is rich in phraseological units of different semantic fields, the chronicler possessed figurative thinking, had an artistic style. The analysis shows that the largest group encountered is somatic phraseological units. In second place are phraseological units formed from words denoting thinking, knowledge and speech, in third place are military affairs and weapons. The dominance of these thematic groups is not accidental, since the IX-X centuries for Armenia were the time of wars and the national liberation struggle against the Arab conquerors, the restoration of Armenian statehood. The verb components of these phraseological units are verbs denoting physical actions and beingness.

  A comprehensive linguistic-stylistic examination of the creative work of Teryan's "Twilight Dreams" series was carried out for the first time in the article.  The process of Teryan’s creative elaboration is conditioned by such factors as:

1. The poetic temperament of the writer,
2. The effect of the symbolic direction,
3. Trends in the development of fiction (especially verse) language at that time in general.

As a result, the changes were mainly made in the following directions: 1. metaphor strengthening  2. fiction accuracy 3. compression 4. melodiousness, 5. poeticization- teryanization of the elements of literary language 6. strengthening the psychological side of speech 7. emphasizing the overall mood of the series ։

Especially the choice of words was subjected to the twilight mood. As a result of creative choice, true values of fictional speech were born; the genius poet edited his speech with an unmistakable feeling, revealing the essence of the phenomenon.