Ancient history
In Armenia was formed in the 1st millennium the Hurrian kingdom of Urartu which elaborated an original indigenous civilization, destroyed by the invasions of Cimmerians and Scythians (7th century). Subjected to the Achaemenid dominion (6th-4th century) and conquered by Alexander the Great (331), the region was then ruled by local dynasties, formally dependent on the Seleucids of Syria, and divided into two satrapies which the Romans called Armenia Minor and Armenia Maior, respectively to the West and E of the Euphrates. Reunited into a single political entity by Tigrane (early 1st century BC) and involved in the Second Mithridatic War, it had to yield the Armenia Minor to Rome and be protected. Since then it was always attracted by its geographical position in the repeated wars between the neighboring Parthians and Rome, of which it had to recognize the supremacy (66 AD) remaining, with alternating events, in a condition of controlled autonomy or subordination until 387, when was divided between Byzantium and Persia. THERE. major was brought back under the sovereignty of the Empire by Justinian and then reorganized into four provinces which were preserved almost until the Arab invasion (7th century AD)
According to localcollegeexplorer, some fortified polygonal (Bakhrikhač, Kalkar) and ovoid (Tilorpaš, Norašen, Krekants) sites date back to the time of the Achaemenid domination. Blur) with roughly hewn stone walls and unfired bricks; to the same period a group of silver vases of the rhytòn type is dated, with zoomorphic and anthropomorphic representations.
Middle Ages and Modern Age
With the Arab occupation, consolidated at the time of the Caliph Mu‛āwiyah (660-680), the to. major became a border province of the Muslim Empire, ruled by an Arab governor. A beginning of independence took place under the caliph al-Mutawakkil, who in 863 recognized Ashot as vassal prince of the Bagratid dynasty. The Bagratids lasted two centuries, then the external pressure of Seljuks and Byzantines caused the collapse of the Armenian national state, annexed by Byzantium in 1045. In 1064 Ani, the Armenian royal capital, was stormed by the Seljuk Alp Arslān and all Great Armenia fell into the power of the Turks.
An independent Armenian state reformed shortly thereafter in Cilicia, that is, in Little Armenia, and lasted three centuries, serving as a bulwark of the Byzantine Empire against Muslims and Crusaders. Its apogee was reached with Leo II (1199-1219), who organized the kingdom, subjected to vassalage towards Holy See and the Germanic Empire, on the model of the Frankish principalities of the East. In the 14th century. Little Armenia began to decline, corroded by internal religious struggles. The transition to the Lusignano dynasty of Cyprus (1342) sparked new struggles which led (1375) to the betrayal of Leo VI of Lusignano and to the settlement in Cilicia of the Syrian-Egyptian Mamluks (1382). From that moment on, until the 20th century, all traces of an independent Armenian state disappeared.
Armenia own, after the Seljuk conquest in the 11th century, it underwent the dominion of the Mongols of Genghiz Khān (1206) and Tamerlane (1387), until in 1473 the Osmanli Turks arrived there with Muhammad II. 1st century 17th and 18th centuries spent in continuous wars between sultans of Constantinople and Shah of Persia and to. it remained divided between those two Muslim states.
Contemporary history
Persian from the middle of the 18th century. began to pass into the hands of the Russians (treaties of Gulistān, 1813, and Turkmanciāi, 1828), following the fate of the Russian Empire until the revolution and then becoming part of the USSR (➔ Armenia, Republic of).
The part of. remained in the Ottoman Empire, the hopes of achieving independence and civil liberties were disappointed, it passed to revolutionary action, with the creation (1887-1890) of revolutionary committees on the model of the Russian nihilists; Sultan ‛Abd ul-Ḥāmid responded with a ferocious repression. The first massacre of Armenians took place in August-September 1894, followed by the massacre of 1895-96. With the 20th century the situation worsened again, when i Young Turks they began to advocate the ideal of the supremacy of the Turkish race in the territories of the Ottoman Empire. Thus there was the massacre of Adana of 1909 and, during the WWI, the mass extermination of the Armenian people. The survivors took refuge in the Republic of., In Egypt, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Israel, in Iran, in Europe and in the United States. At the end of the war, the allied powers imposed on Turkey the granting of independence to the Armenians (Treaty of Sèvres, 1920), but the agreement was thwarted by the arrival to power of the nationalist leader Atatürk, who initiated the political assimilation. cultural heritage of ethnic minorities, further increasing the Armenian diaspora around the world.
To this day, the Armenians are asking for their Turkish lands to be returned to them and for it to be recognized that they were victims of genocide. The recognition of the extermination of the Armenians was among the conditions set by the European Parliament for Turkey’s entry into the European Union but, despite some openings by politicians, in Turkey publicly naming genocide still represents a crime punishable by three years of prison.
