The Times (London)
April 21, 2006, Friday
Two countries with the same name
Have two countries with the same name ever existed in entirely
different locations at the same, or different, points of history?
Further to your previous replies (March 24, April 7), there is at
least one other example -Armenia.
Although it is now an independent country sandwiched between Iran,
Azerbaijan, Turkey and Kazakhstan, it was once much larger, with a
seaboard on the Caspian Sea, and sat beneath the Caucasian versions
of Iberia and Albania (already mentioned). In AD301 it adopted
Christianity as its state religion, more than a decade before
Christians were tolerated by Rome.
Armenia was swallowed by the Byzantines and then the Turks, and in
1064, refugees fleeing the Seljuks, created a new Armenia by the
Mediterranean, the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. Against the odds,
this lasted about 300 years. It was propped up by Frankish crusaders
after the First Crusade and became a French crusader state, adjacent
to Antioch and Edessa. It grew to become the Kingdom of Armenia in
1198 under Leon II, a dominion on the underbelly of Turkey from the
Euphrates to what is today Gazipasa. It ended with the Marmeluk
invasion of 1375.
Randolph Simms, Exeter