Jewish history of Armenians

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Jewish history of Armenia is over 2,000 years old and begins long before the emergence of modern Armenia. Already in antiquity there were settlements of Jews in all large cities and capitals of Armenia. Assyria, which seized control of Israel and Urartu / Armenia in 700 BC, deported Jews to these lands.

Armenian historian Kevork Aslan indicates that the Jews of Samaria were deported to Armenia. With the defeat of Assyria, Babylon conquered most of Western Asia. Judea, without a powerful ally in the person of Assyria or Egypt, could not by itself resist the large Babylonian army. Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar gathered a huge army to punish Judah for going over to the side of the Egyptians (598 BC). When a large army of Babylon appeared at the walls of Jerusalem, the new king of Judah, Jeconiah, realizing that resistance was futile, handed the city over to Nebuchadnezzar (597 BC). The conqueror then appointed Zedekiah the new king for Judah. According to the traditions of the time, Nebuchadnezzar deported about 10,000 Jews to his capital in Babylon. It was a strategy to weaken resistance to foreign rule by eliminating the cultural elite. The deportees were carefully selected. This was the Jewish elite of professionals, wealthy and craftsmen. The peasant class and other common people were allowed to stay in Judea. The deportation of the Jewish elite is now known as the Babylonian Captivity. This was followed by the resistance and reaction of Babylon. 11 years after Zedekiah (Tsedkiyahu) declared the separation of Judea from Babylon, the Babylonians led by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. captured Jerusalem again and this time completely destroyed to the very foundation the Temple of Solomon, which is often referred to as the First Temple. Most of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were killed, the rest were taken captive and driven into slavery in Babylonia. In the Oral Torah (Midrash Eikha Raba, ch. 1) it is said that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar after the destruction of the First Temple in the 5th century BC. e. drove part of the Jews to Armenia.

The Armenian historian of the 5th century Movses Khorenatsi reported that the Bagratuni clan, which later gave two royal dynasties - Armenian and Georgian, descended from Jews captured and resettled after the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel in Armenia. Bagratuni owned a huge territory, including Mount Ararat, where, according to legend, the remains of Noah's ark were located. They managed to unite several rival feudal principalities and became the rulers of all Armenia. Artashes goes to the confluence of Yeraskh and Metsamor and, having chosen a hill here, builds a city on it and calls it by his name Artashat … He takes the captive Jews from the city of Yervand, who were transferred there from Armavir, and settles them in Artashat. In the History of Armenia, Movses Khorenatsi writes: About an Armenian king named Khraceai, a contemporary of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, it is said that he begged from Nebuchadnezzar one of the main Jewish captives named Shambat, brought him to Armenia, settled him there and showered him with honors. From Shambat (or Smbat) comes, according to legend, the Bagratuni clan, which is confirmed by the fact that Bagratuni often gave their sons the name Smbat, and this is true.

The Georgian chronicle "Kartvelis tskhovreba" - "Life of Georgia" - says: And it was … King Nebuchadnezzar overrun Jerusalem, and the Jews persecuted from there arrived in Kartli and, promising to pay tribute, begged for land from the Mtskheta elder. And they were given the right …and in the same place: Seven brothers fled from captivity and finally came to Ekletsi, where the palace of the Armenian queen Rakael was located. Here they soon converted to Christianity, and three of the brothers remained in Armenia. The four others decided to go further north. So they ended up in Kartli. One of the brothers ascended and became Eristav. He is the ancestor of the Georgian Bagration. Despite some differences, the Georgian historical version confirms the Armenian one. The first mention of the name of Armenia (which was synonymous with Urartu) is found in the Behistun inscription dating back to 520 BC. e. On the maps of the largest historians and geographers of antiquity, Armenia is marked along with Persia, Syria and other ancient states. After the collapse of the empire of Alexander the Great, the Armenian kingdoms arose: the Airarat kingdom and Sophena, subsequently conquered by the Seleucids; after the defeat of the latter by the Romans at the beginning of the II century. BC e. three Armenian kingdoms arose: Great Armenia, Little Armenia and Sophena.

In the IV century BC. e. there was a large Jewish settlement in Armavir. While King Yervand IV was on the throne of Armenia, the Jews from Armavir were resettled to the new capital - the city of Yervandashat. With the coming to power of Artashes, the capital of Armenia was transferred to the city of Artashat, which he built, to which Jews from the former capital also moved. Great Armenia under Tigranes II. Another Armenian king, Tigran II the Great, who ruled in 95-55 BC, continued to pursue the policy of resettlement of Jews to Armenia. e.. According to Hovhannes Draskhanakerttsi Tigran, having put things in order and arranged a lot, goes to Palestine and takes captive many Jews … Tigran the Great, while retreating from Israel, takes 10,000 Jews to his homeland, where he settles in the city of Armavir and in the village of Vardkes on the banks of the Kasakh River. Jewish families deported to Armenia settled in the cities of Artashat, Vaghasabat, Yervandashat, Sarekhavan, Sarisat, Van, and Nakhichevan. Another time, the father's work was continued by Artavazd II, who reigned in 55-34 BC. e., intervening in the internecine war of the Jews for the throne, taking one of the parties, he takes prisoners of the supporters of the other, whom he settles in the city of Van.

The first wave of Jews resettled by Tigran eventually adopted Christianity, and the second wave of resettlement, organized by Artavazd - the Van Jews - continued to profess Judaism.

Armenian kings developed cities, and Jewish settlements were needed for their development, since the latter had the skill of urban life. As a result, the number of Jews in Armenia increased significantly, in some cities up to half of all residents. Jews in Armenia developed trade and crafts, so, Josephus Flavius, who was at the reception of the Roman empress, when asked what he knew about Armenia, answered: Jews live well in Armenia … Armenian cities of this period retained a Hellenistic appearance and lived relatively freely, Jews constituted a significant part of the urban population in Armenia and played an important role in trade. The rulers did not interfere with the free movement of residents of different religions, which contributed to the well-being of Jewish communities engaged in trade and crafts.

Under Tigranes II, Great Armenia turned into a large state stretching from Palestine to the Caspian Sea. However, Tigranes was defeated by the Romans and lost all conquests, except for Great Armenia proper (the Armenian Highlands between the Euphrates, Kura and Urmia) and Sophena, with an area of about 220,000 square meters. km. Subsequently, Great Armenia turned into a buffer state between Parthia and Rome, and later (in the 3rd-4th centuries AD) - between Rome and Sassanian Iran.

In 387, Great Armenia was divided: the smaller, western part of the country went to Rome, while the main part went to Persia. Stability and prosperity ended when many Jews were deported to Persia as a result of the capture of Armenia by the Sassanid shah Shapur II. The number of Jews of that time is clearly shown by the data of the 5th century Armenian historian Favstos Buzand, who describes a significant number of Jewish families taken prisoner by invaders who invaded Armenia. In total, 83 thousand Jews from six cities of Armenia were evicted in Buzand. "From all these gavars, territories, gorges and countries they took prisoners, drove everyone to the city of Nakhichevan, which was the concentration of their troops. They also took and destroyed this city and from there they took away 2 thousand families of Armenians and 16 thousand families of Jews and other prisoners.”It is this region of Nakhchevan (from the 10th century Nakhichevan) coincides with the place of residence of the zoks until 1989-1990. Favstos Buzand lists other Armenian cities from where the Persian Shah brought Armenians and Jews out. From 360 to 370, 40 thousand Armenian and 9 thousand Jewish families were taken away from the city of Artashat, 20 thousand Armenian and 30 thousand Jewish families from Yervandashat, 5 thousand Armenian and 8 thousand Jewish families from Zarekhvan, Zarishat - 10 thousand Armenian and 14 thousand Jewish families, from Van - 5 thousand Armenian and 18 thousand Jewish families. Ya. A. Manandyan wrote that “there is no doubt that Jews and Syrians … constituted a significant part of the urban population in Armenia "." The eviction of the Jews by the Persians is described by the Armenian author Raffi (Hakob Melik-Hakobyan) in the historical novel Samvel about the struggle of the Armenian people for independence, in which a whole chapter of the novel is devoted to the Jews driven from Armenia to Iran in the 5th century. Here is just one excerpt from a book in which, with undisguised sympathy and sympathy, the classic of Armenian literature writes about the Jews driven from Armenia to Persia: The prisoners were not provided with any shelter, and they lay in the open sky, right on the bare ground, suffering from the burning sun during the day, and from the cold at night. Among them were the Armenians and Jews (for the most part who converted to Christianity during the reign of Gregory the Illuminator, the first Catholicos of the Armenian Church) … These Jews were captured during the reign of Tigran II and resettled to Armenia from Judea by Barzafran Rshtuni. The valiant commander of King Tigran populated the Armenian cities that were deserted after the wars and replenished the population of his country with a businesslike and intelligent people … In the same period of time, the Talmud mentions the sage Yakov from Armenia (Gittin 48a), in addition, the yeshiva (school of Torah study) in the Armenian city of Nizbis is also mentioned.

In the middle of the 7th century, the Armenian lands were seized by the Arabs. The newly created region of Arminiyya (Arabic: ارمينيّة) also included Georgia, Arran and Bab al-Abwab (Derbent) with the administrative center in the city of Dvin. By 1375, after the fall of Lesser Armenia, Jewish communities began to disappear as single ethnic communities, many began to accept Christianity. Alexice Schneider in the “History of the Jewish People” states that the Ashkenazi (more precisely, Khachkinazi) in the Holy Scriptures mean the inhabitants of the Armenian Khachen Principality (the State of Khachkinazi, the Ashkenazi Kingdom, the Khachan Principality), which existed at that time on the territory of modern Karabakh. In November 1603, Shah Abbas I with his 120 thousandth army captured Armenia, after which, as the 17th century writer Arakel Davrizhetsi writes, the Shah ordered to evict all the inhabitants of Armenia - both Christians and Jews - to Persia, so that the Ottomans, having come, would find the country depopulated. Later, the Armenian writer with sympathy and sympathy described the history of the Jews living under the rule of the Persian kings. These data clearly explain why there are so few Jews left in Armenia. Remaining in Judaism, almost all were resettled to Iran. Jews who converted to Christianity became Armenians. The results of the DNA analysis carried out within the framework of the "Armenian DNA Project" revealed the relationship between Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Assyrians and Jews, the newspaper Milliyet writes. The aim of the project was to identify the genetic links between Armenians, which were scattered around the world after the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Along the way, a close relationship at the genetic level was found among peoples living side by side with the Armenians for centuries. The results of the study, published by the Armenian newspaper Agos, amazed scientists. The Kurds and Armenians are most genetically close to the Jews (especially the Sephardim), but by no means the Palestinians and Syrians. A team of geneticists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published the results of a large-scale study that reliably determined the degree of genetic relationship between Jews and peoples inhabiting the Middle East. According to the leaders of the study, Ariella Oppenheim and Marina Fayerman, the Kurds and Armenians are most genetically close to the Jews (especially the Sephardim), but by no means the Palestinians and Syrians. The Jews and Kurds, apparently, had a common ancestor - a people who lived somewhere in the area of the current border of Iraq and Turkey, that is, where the bulk of the Kurds still live (the common ancestor, apparently, either Assyrians - North Akkadian tribes; or the Israelites, taken prisoner by the Assyrians in the 8th century BC). Also, American geneticists under the leadership of the Armenian woman Zhanna Nersesyan, professor of medicine, full member of the New York Academy of Sciences, having examined 60,000 Armenians in Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Moscow, came to an amazing conclusion. It turned out that all Armenians have an identical genetic code … Nersesyan claims that Armenians are practically identical in genetic code with Jews.