PRESS RELEASE
Department of Armenian Studies, Haigazian University
Beirut, Lebanon
Contact: Ara Sanjian
Tel: 961-1-353011
Email: [email protected]
Web:
HAGOP CHOLAKIAN LECTURES AT HAIGAZIAN UNIVERSITY ON THE HISTORY OF
ARMENIANS IN THE ORONTES RIVER MIDDLE VALLEY
BEIRUT, LEBANON, Friday, 28 January 2005 (Haigazian University
Department of Armenian Studies Press Release) – Hagop Cholakian, a
seasoned Armenian educator and author based in Aleppo, Syria, was the
guest of Haigazian University on the evening of Friday, 5 November 2004.
He delivered a public lecture entitled ‘The History of the Armenians in
the Orontes River Middle Valley’. The talk was organized by the
university’s Department of Armenian Studies.
Alongside his distinguished career as a teacher and author of a number
of textbooks of the Armenian language, Cholakian is a poet and has a
number of academic publications in the field of Armenian Studies. He
received his university education in Yerevan. His lecture was the
summary of his doctoral dissertation defended at the Institute of
Archeology and Ethnography in the Armenian National Academy of Sciences
in 2002.
Cholakian told the audience, at the beginning of his lecture, that
classical sources attest that Armenians lived in the city of Antioch, as
well as in nearby villages scattered throughout the Orontes River
Valley, as early as late Roman times. Armenians continued to live in the
area in the Byzantine era, and the Armenian population of the area
actually increased during the period of Arab domination. When the
Byzantine Empire recovered the area as a consequence of decline of Arab
military might, it transferred there new waves of Armenians. Some
governors of Antioch were Armenians in the 10-11th centuries. Philaretus
Varazhnuni, a former Armenian commander in the Byzantine army, briefly
captured Antioch in 1078, before the city passed on to the Seljuks.
Citing mostly contemporary Arab sources, Cholakian spoke in detail about
the assistance rendered to the Crusaders in 1097-98 by the Armenian
population of Antioch and the neighboring villages and fortresses. The
lecturer surmised that these Armenians were probably hoping to establish
an Armenian state with the help of the Crusaders, for, once they
witnessed the confiscation of their fortresses by the Crusaders and
realized that the latter had come to Antioch to stay, the Armenians of
Artah rebelled and got in touch with the Rawan, the Muslim ruler of
Aleppo, as early as 1103, seeking on this occasion the latter’s
assistance against the Crusaders. During the ensuing decades, some
Armenians fought as mercenaries for the Crusader Principality of
Antioch, and when Saladin advanced into the area in 1188, the fortresses
of Kifr Tebbin (modern Hamameh) in the Shughr area, which was controlled
by an Armenian, surrendered without a fight. Some scholars believe that
the present Muslim inhabitants of Hamameh are the descendants of
Islamized Armenians. Armenian sources refer to three separate dioceses
of the Armenian Church in this area in the twelfth century, based
respectively in Laodicea (modern Lattakia), Apamea and Antioch.
Cholakian outlined how the Armenians of the region suffered during the
period of Mamluk and Ottoman dominion. Many villages vanished and their
inhabitants migrated. All Armenian monasteries disappeared during this
period. By the mid-nineteenth century, Armenians of the area had
retreated into five relatively small enclaves: around the town of Beilan
near the Bay of Alexandretta; the region of Musa Dagh; around the
village of Kessab; on the Nusayri mountains east of the town of Lattakia
(including the villages of Aramo and Ghnaymiyyah); and along the Orontes
Valley (including the villages of Qnay and Yaqubiyyah). Armenians in
these clusters shared a common dialect and many similar customs.
Although the Armenians of the Orontes River Middle Valley had adopted
Arabic as their mother tongue by the mid-nineteenth century, they still
used a number of Armenian words in their vocabulary and children’s play
songs.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, said Cholakian, the apathy
of the Armenian Church leaders in Cilicia, Jerusalem and Aleppo made it
relatively easy for Protestant and Catholic missionaries to convert a
significant number of Armenians in the area. The lecturer cited a number
of instances where individuals manipulated the opportunities for
conversion to push for their material interests. Cholakian argued that
these conversions also caused assimilation among many Armenians living
in the area.
The region was heavily affected during the massacres of Armenians in
Cilicia in 1909, said the lecturer. However, the Roman Catholic
missionaries in Yaqubiyyah and Qnay managed to prevent massacres in
those villages by arranging for the arrival of Ottoman troops from
Antioch, an event which encouraged a new wave of Latinization among the
local Armenians.
Cholakian stated that all Armenians in the region were deported during
the genocide of 1915, except a few villages in Musa Dagh, which resisted
until their rescue by Allied ships. The Armenians of Yaqubiyyah and Qnay
were not deported. The exact reason behind their avoiding the sad fate
of their ethnic kin in the region is not known. The local Roman Catholic
priests claim that these Armenians escaped deportation because they were
registered as Christians of the Latin rite. Other Armenians of Latin
rite from Kessab and Beilan were deported, however. The deportees, who
survived the ordeal, returned to their villages after the armistice
signed in late 1918, only to clash with the local Muslims, who made them
scatter into the neighboring Christian villages until 1923.
The last part of Cholakian’s lecture dealt with the attempts of the
Armenian Church to reassert its presence in the area. In 1923, for
example, Catholicos Sahak II of Cilicia, now based in the new state of
Syria, tried to revive the activity of the Armenian Church in Kessab. In
1928, the Armenian Prelacy of Aleppo sent an Arabic-speaking priest to
Yaqubiyyah. He reopened the old Armenian church in the village and
helped the majority of the local Armenians return to the fold of their
old Church. Yaqubiyyah soon got an Armenian school as well, and, in
1954, a new church was built. A number of Armenian students from
Yaqubiyyah studied in Soviet Armenia from the mid-1950s and played an
important role in reviving Armenian cultural life in the village after
their return. Today, speaking the Armenian language has again become the
norm for the Armenians living in Yaqubiyyah. Some Armenian villagers of
Latin rite in Qnay, too, are now sending their children to an Armenian
school nearby, and the speaking of the Armenian language is also on the
increase in Qnay. Past Armenian migrants of Latin rite from these two
villages have not undergone similar re-Armenization, however. Finally,
the Armenians of Beilan and Musa Dagh (except the village of Vakif) all
migrated when the French mandatory authorities ceded the sanjak of
Alexandretta to Turkey in 1939.
During the question-and-answer session that followed, Cholakian surveyed
a number of suggested etymologies regarding the place names Ghnaymiyyah,
Qnay and Yaqubiyyah that are in circulation today. He also pointed out
that Armenians from Yaqubiyyah are active in the cultural life of Syria.
Cholakian commended the role played by Cardinal Gregory Peter Agagianian
in 1946 when he arranged that the Armenians of Latin rite living in
Kessab should join the Armenian Catholic Church, which uses the Armenian
language in its church services. Since the Armenian language is now
taught in Syria as a language of religious rites, Latin rite schools
cannot teach the Armenian language, because the Latin Church does not
use Armenian in church services. Moreover, all Armenians of Latin rite
from Kessab and Musa Dagh who had migrated to South America before 1946,
have not maintained links with the Armenian Catholic churches on that
continent. Cholakian also praised the work of Sister Marie Jeanne
Topalian, an Armenian Catholic nun, who teaches Armenian songs to
children among the Arabic-speaking Armenians in Qnay and encourages
parents to send their children to the nearest Armenian school. He
concluded that the Armenian Church should learn lessons from the fate of
the Armenians of the Orontes River Valley and become more active among
its flock so as to preserve Armenian national unity. Finally, a member
of the audience pointed out that the first ever Armenian Diasporan
student to study in a Soviet Armenian institution of higher learning in
the post-Stalin period was from Yaqubiyyah.
Haigazian University is a liberal arts institution of higher learning,
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For additional information on the activities of its Department of
Armenian Studies, contact Ara Sanjian at <[email protected]>