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Little-known civilization Armenia

The amazing people who regained their country after many years of extinction

By Tilly CaraPublished about a year ago 8 min read
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Christianity

Today the Republic of Armenia is a small country with a land area of about 29,800 square kilometers and a population of more than 3 million people. Armenia ranks 135th among the more than two hundred countries and regions in the world in terms of land area, smaller than the area of Hainan Island in China, and with a population slightly smaller than that of the Tibet Autonomous Region in China. However, at one point in history, Armenia's territory was much larger than it is today, and like the Jews, the Armenians were a miraculous people who managed to regain their country after many years of disintegration.

Around the 6th century B.C. Armenia was a vassal state of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia. The Persian Empire was destroyed by Alexander the Great in 330 BC. Alexander did not pass through Armenian territory during his expedition to Persia, so there was a huge power vacuum in the Caucasus after the fall of Persia, and this provided an opportunity for the Armenians to establish an independent state. After Alexander's death, three of his generals divided up the empire: Antiochus occupied the European part, Seleucus the Asian part, and Ptolemy the Egyptian part.

The Seleucid dynasty, which occupied the Asian part, was too busy fighting the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt to care much about Armenia. After the defeat of the Seleucid Empire by Rome in 198 BC, Armenia stopped paying tribute to the Seleucids in the name. After that, the Armenian plateau was divided into Armenia Minor and Armenia Major. Lesser Armenia was a region heavily influenced by Hellenism and came under the control of the Seleucid Dynasty, the Benduid Dynasty, or Cappadocia at different times; Greater Armenia remained independent for the most part and had some cultural differences from Lesser Armenia.

In 95 BC, the greatest king in Armenian history, Tigran the Great, unified Armenia, both large and small, and conquered large areas of Komagene, northern Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia in turn. Armenia became one of the most powerful states in Western Asia at that time: its territory stretched from the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt. However, Armenia's glory did not last long: the Armenian Artaxerxes dynasty collapsed around the year A.D. under the influence of the Sabbatian Empire to the east and the Roman Empire to the west.

For more than a thousand years after that, Armenia was occupied by neighboring powers, so the Armenian people and the Jewish people have some similarities, but there are also differences between the Armenians and the Jews: after the fall of the ancient Jewish state, the Jews moved around the world for thousands of years before returning to the land of Canaan to restore their country; in contrast, the Armenians were under foreign rule for thousands of years, the Armenians struggled for thousands of years under foreign rule, during which time Armenia was constantly being restored and reconquered by new conquerors.

In 301 A.D., King Tiridates III of Armenia made Christianity the state religion, thus making Armenia the first single-religion state in the world. The Arabs who occupied Armenia in 680 A.D. forced the Armenians to convert to Islam, but the Arabs' goal was ultimately unsuccessful because the Armenians resisted. In 885 AD Ashot, I re-established the Armenian kingdom of the Bagratid Dynasty, however, Armenia then became the object of competition between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Turkish Empire.

After 1220 A.D., Armenia was conquered by the Mongols on their western expedition. Before that, the Arabs and Seljuks had tried to force Islam into Armenia, but the Armenians held on to their faith. The Mongols maintained a relatively neutral attitude toward all religions, so the Armenians were able to maintain their Christianity during Mongol rule. 1454 Armenia was conquered by the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and in 1828 Tsarist Russia seized the eastern part of Armenia from Turkey, which continued to rule Western Armenia.

In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined World War I as an Allied member, but it was soon caught in a multi-front war: on November 22, 1914, the British captured Basra, which was poorly defended by the Ottoman Turks, and by the end of 1914 the Ottoman Minister of War, Enver Pasha, led an army of 90,000 men to attack Russia In late 1914 the Ottoman Turkish Minister of War Enver Pasha led an army of 90,000 men to attack Russia, but was defeated by the Russians at the Battle of Sarykamis and eventually fled back to Constantinople after losing more than 70,000 men.

Regional division

The egotistical Enver blamed the Armenians for the defeat, and the Ottoman Turkish government increased the persecution of Armenians until it became a massacre: on February 25, 1915, Enver ordered all military units to remove Armenians from their units and reassign them to unarmed labor battalions. At the end of May, the Ottoman Turkish government ordered the "transportation" of the eastern Armenians to the desert areas of Syria and Iraq, where 25 concentration camps were built along the Euphrates River.

In the process, millions of Armenians began their desperate journey, with less than 20 percent reaching their destination alive. According to eyewitness accounts from neutral countries, as well as from Germany and Austria-Hungary, which were allies of the Ottoman Empire, approximately 1-1.5 million of the nearly two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire at the time were robbed, raped, and killed by the Turks. Talat Pasha, who was then the Minister of Interior of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, openly declared that "to solve the Armenian problem once and for all, the Armenian race must be physically eliminated".

In 1918 the Ottoman Turkish Empire was dismembered as a defeated state in World War I. Western Armenia, under Turkish occupation, became independent and, in turn, formed a Soviet state with Eastern Armenia under Russian rule on Nov. 29, 1920. When the Soviet civil war spread to the Caucasus, the Armenian Soviet state merged with the Georgian and Azerbaijani Soviet states to form the Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Federal Republic on March 12, 1922, and on December 30, 1922, the Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Federal Republic officially joined the Soviet Union.

In 1936 the Soviet Union reorganized the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Republic into three republics - Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan - based on the principle of national self-determination after a re-identification process. Under the auspices of the central government of the USSR, the demarcation and territorial distribution of these three republics were completed, but inevitably many conflicts arose among the three peoples during this process. During the Soviet period, the three countries maintained a superficial peace under the pressure of the central government: the leaders of the three countries called each other brothers and sisters.

However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the long-standing conflicts between the three countries began to erupt: about 96% of the total population of Armenia is Armenian, in addition to Russian, Ukrainian, Assyrian, Greek, Georgian, Belarusian, Jewish, Kurdish, etc. The population is generally Christian and Russian-speaking, with Armenian as the official language. Armenia's neighboring country, Azerbaijan, is a Turkic and Islamic country, and historically Armenians have been involved in some kind of feud with Azerbaijanis.

The demarcation of the border during the Soviet era has created new conflicts between the two sides. The conflict is centered in the Naka region: the Naka region, covering an area of about 4,400 square kilometers, is now located in the southwestern part of Azerbaijan, which does not share a border with Armenia and is about 50 kilometers away from the Armenian border. Historically, Christian Armenians and Turkic Azerbaijanis of the Islamic faith lived in this region for a long time. During the Soviet era, Naka became an autonomous region of Azerbaijan, but the Naka region, where more than 80% of the population is Armenian, resented this.

During the Soviet period, Armenia and Azerbaijan maintained a rapprochement as Soviet republics, but on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan began to clash over the issue of the NK region's membership, and in 1988 the NK Soviet adopted a resolution to join Armenia, and the Armenian side agreed to take over, while the Azerbaijani side was adamantly opposed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the NK region was declared an independent "Nagorno-Karabakh Republic". As a result, war broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The war resulted in the death of about 30,000 people. By 1993, Armenians controlled 20 percent of NKR and surrounding areas. In 1994, Armenia and Azerbaijan reached a ceasefire agreement under the auspices of the Minsk Group, which was established by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe at the initiative of Russia and chaired by Russia, the United States, and France. Despite the ceasefire agreement between the two countries, there was no agreement on the ownership of the Naka region. Azerbaijan insists that NK is part of its territory, but the region is controlled by the Armenians.

After the 1994 ceasefire, skirmishes often broke out in the NK region. In 2016, the largest war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the region since 1994, the "April War," broke out. The four-day war left at least 200 people dead and ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire.

A new round of clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted in the Naka region on Sept. 27, after clashes between the two countries broke out again in July, killing at least 16 people. As of Sept. 28, at least 32 soldiers were killed and hundreds injured in the exchange of fire between the two sides in the Naka region. Armenia claimed to have shot down four Azerbaijani helicopters and hit 33 tanks and armored vehicles, while Azerbaijan declared control of seven villages around Naka. Both countries have declared a state of war: Armenia has launched a general national mobilization, while Azerbaijan has imposed martial law and curfews in the capital Baku and several cities.

Historical
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About the Creator

Tilly Cara

Each one of us is a shining star, and we should all shine for ourselves

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