Visions of Ararat: Writings on Armenia ; Christopher J. Walker

As early as 1889 I was interested in Armenian history, and I made a brief incursion into this interesting subject in a volume entitled Mission Scientifique au Caucase, fitudes archeologlques et historiques. Tome II. Recherches sur les origines des peuples du Caucase, But, as the title shows, this research was not restricted to the Armenians and the history of Armenia was only included in its main aspects, my attention being more particularly directed to the questions as to the origins of the Kartvelian peoples.

This essay was written with a particular audience in mind. The audience in question may have heard of or even seen Armenia firsthand, known some of its people, food, or holidays, but its encounter with Armenian culture in all its depth and richness has remained in a fog of mystery. My purpose in writing this essay was thus to convey to such an audience some of the meanings which I experienced and conceptualized firsthand as belonging to the core of the Armenian world so as to lift this fog and afford intelligibility and insight. Armenia as I experienced it was replete with paradoxical meanings. These various meanings not only revealed truths about the land and its people but raised a host of questions that cannoteven ought not-be easily answered. Indeed, this essay is an attempt to chart out some of these meanings in as much detail as is necessary for an understanding of Armenia that is descriptively rich and which seeks to leverage rather than obfuscate the very sense of curiosity that prompts these questions into their existence. By the end, the reader should be able to imagine and think about Armenia along the following two dimensions: (b) the faith and (c) the law. The question concerning Armenia's faith seeks to address core aspects of the history and nature of Armenian Christianity, its relationship to pre-Christian Armenian paganism, as well as its mythological substructure. The question concerning the law, then, seeks to address core aspects of Armenians' attitudes toward rule-following, social complexity, and institutions, outlining some possible causes of their deficiency.

2014

The history of the Armenian communities of western Anatolia remains a largely unexplored subject in the field of Armenian Studies. Armenians first settled in these communities during the Roman and Byzantine periods and their numbers grew throughout the twelfth to sixteenth centuries as life in their homeland was plagued by turmoil and war. A great many left the plains and mountains of the Armenian Plateau for towns and cities whose histories dated back to antiquity, such as Konya, Bandırma, Eskişehir, and Sivrihisar, while at the same time building entirely new settlements, including Bardizag, Armash, and Adabazar. They established their own churches, schools and institutions which, in time, rose to prominence as centers of culture and learning and gave birth to such luminaries as the musicologist Komitas Vardapet. This chapter traces the founding of these communities, their social and cultural development in the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, and their final and complete destruction during the 1915 genocide. By drawing from the memorial volumes of Armenian compatriotic societies and regional histories, ethnographic studies, archival documents, contemporary almanacs, travel accounts, and oral history interviews, this paper seeks both to introduce and enlighten our understanding of the life and death of these communities.

2020