625 



ARMENIA. 



AKMLEY. 



They have a printing-office well stocked with Armenian types, formerly 

 cast at Amsterdam under the directions of Lucas Vanant. Many 

 important works of a general interest have already come from the 

 Armenian press of San Lazaro ; among others one of the latest is an 

 edition, in Armenian and Latin, of three ' Sermones ' of Philo the 

 Jew, the Greek original of which is lost. Within the last ten years 

 the fathers were engaged in publishing a kind of Armenian Penny 

 Magazine, as the work is described by one of themselves, the Pere 

 Qregoire Alepson, in a letter to the conductor of this work. 



Religion. Before their conversion to Christianity the Armenians 

 had a religion made up partly from the doctrines of Zoroaster and 

 partly from the Nature worship of the East. Their chief gods were 

 Aramazt, the Magiau Onnuzd, and Anaites or Anahid, the Babylonian 

 impersonation of the passive principle. Their temples were crowded 

 with statues, and animal sacrifices were offered upon their altars. At I 

 the funeral of their great king Artaces many Armenians immolated j 

 themselves after the Scythian custom upon his body. 



As Christians the Armenians adopt the Apostolic, the Nicene, and 

 the Athanasian creeds, but reject the decrees of the Council of 

 G'halcedon, and follow the Monophysite heresy in admitting but one 

 nature (namely the divine) in the person of Christ. They assert also 

 that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father only. They have the 

 seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, namely, Baptism, Con- 

 firmation, Matrimony, Consecration of Priests, Confession of Sins, 

 Eucharist, and Extreme Unction. They admit the doctrine of the 

 transubstantiation of the bread and wine used in the sacrament, which 

 they administer under both forms to laymen as well as to ecclesiastics, 

 dipping the bread into the wine. " The Armenian clergy are divided 

 into monastics and seculars. The former (under which class are 

 comprised patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, doctors, monks, and 

 hermits) live in celibacy ; the secular clergy are permitted and advised 

 to marry. The Armenian Church does not acknowledge the 

 supremacy of the Pope ; there are however many Armenian congrega- 

 tions that do, and are therefore called United Armenians or Armenian 

 Catholics. It is governed by patriarchs, who reside at Ech-miadzin, 

 Sis, and Akhtamar. an island in the south of Lake Van. The number 

 of their bishops amounts to between 50 and 60. 



The Armenians have an era of their own, which commences with 

 the year 551 of the Christian era. Their year is a moveable solar 

 year. 



Population, Taxation, Ac. The"population, which is scanty compared 

 to the extent of the country, consists chiefly of Armenians, Kurds, 

 and Turks, with a small number of Turkomans in the north, and 

 Home Yezedeeg and Arabs in the basin of the Tigris. The Armenians 

 constitute the bulk of the agricultural and trading part of the 

 population ; they are a down-trodden, long-oppressed race, with great 

 aptitude for business nevertheless, and a wonderful fidelity to their 

 religion, to which alone they are indebted for their existence as a 

 separate people throughout long centuries of subjection. They are 

 generally prohibited from carrying arms ; they are not allowed to 

 remove with their families to parts of the country that are thinly 

 peopled or where spare lands abound. This prohibition is enforced only 

 against the Christian Rayahs, and is intended to prevent migration and 

 the diminution of contributions to local taxation ; for the head of a 

 family ia called npon to pay his portion at the place where his family 

 resides though he himself may have been obliged to seek employment 

 elsewhere. 



The Armenian houses on the table-land have been before described. 

 Colonel Sheil thus speaks of the best house in a village on the 

 eastern frontier : " A more unclean place I have seldom seen. . . . The 

 dingy denizens are reared in dirt most conspicuously ; every body was 

 filthy tad in rags, but their poverty was more apparent than real, for 

 the house was crowded like the generality of other houses with cows, 

 calves, buffaloes, &c." The houses were not more than four feet high 

 outside, but as there was a considerable descent at the entrance the 

 height was much greater within. The houses both on the table-land 

 and in the basin of the Tigris are built mostly with arched roofs, on 

 account of the scarcity of timber ; and in summer they swarm with 

 retmhi, so that living under tents becomes then a necessity to all 

 except the case-hardened. 



In describing the dress of the Armenian villagers, Colonel Sheil 

 remarks that " they can scarcely be said to wear any dress at all ; it 

 is generally made of shreds and patches, and the marvel is how a 

 man gets in or out of it, if he ever takes that trouble. Instead of 

 trowwrH, which are universally worn by Mohammedan females, the 

 Armenian women wear a petticoat, they also wear a large white 

 cotton veil and a slip of white cloth which partially conceals the 

 mouth." 



All the male Rayah population above 14 years of age pay Kharaj, or 

 poll-tax ; they are divided into classes, each of which pays a different 

 amount. Another tax, which is not paid exclusively by Armenians, 

 in th .W/"'/'. or .Klnimixtration-tax, to provide for the salaries of 

 the public servants. This ia an arbitrary tax varying in amount, 

 according to the disposition or necessities of the pasha, who produces 

 no accounts to regulate or justify its amount. The mode of its 

 imposition is this : When the amount is fixnd by the pasha the heads 

 of each religious sect meet at the capital of the pashalik, ;m<\ apportion 

 it among their districts ; then the heads of the sects in the districts 



apportion the sum allotted to the district among the villages ; and in 

 the villages the sum to be raised in each is again subdivided among 

 the inhabitants by the heads of the village. The Moslem population 

 in some parts of the country at least are exempted from the saliyaueh 

 altogether. Some of the villages on the leading route are exempted 

 from it on condition of furnishing post-horses or of entertaining 

 travellers. These taxes in addition to a tenth of the produce of the 

 soil paid to the pasha by all cultivators weigh heavily (sometimes as 

 many as three saliyauehs are paid in the year) ; but the greatest 

 grievance under which the Armenians groan is the abhorred ' kishlak,' 

 by which they are forced during the long winter to receive the Kurds, 

 their families, and cattle, into their houses, and to supply them with 

 food, fodder, Ac., receiving in return whatever the pasha, not their 

 guests, may be pleased to pay. Yet perhapa all this would be endurable 

 were there a steady and regular government ; sometimes however 

 the authority of the pashas is set at nought by the Kurdish chiefs, who 

 impose a less amount of taxation on the cultivators, but leave them 

 exposed to the plundering propensities of their insolent and lawless 

 followers. Before the battle of Nezib, in 1838, when Hafiz Pasha was 

 defeated by Ibrahim Pasha, the Turkish governors made great efforts, 

 and very generally succeeded, in checking the depredations of the 

 Kurds, and a kind of militia was established in part of the table-land 

 at least which promised to give greater security of life and property ; 

 but we are unable to say whether there has been a steady advance 

 towards regular government since, or whether matters have returned 

 to the old state. 



The Kurds have spread themselves over the greater part of Armenia, 

 and form perhaps the majority of the population. They are divided 

 into Us, or clans, who are often at feud with each other. Some of 

 them have villages in which they reside constantly ; others reside in 

 their villages only during the whiter, and others agaiu have no settled 

 habitations but live under tents during the open season, and are 

 quartered on the Armenian villages during the winter. For this they 

 agree with the pasha or the serasker of whatever province they are in 

 to pay a certain sum aa ' kishlak-parah-si,' or tax for winter quarters 

 and the pasha allots them arbitrarily among the Armenian villages, 

 sometimes in the ratio of one Kurdish family to two Armeniau, often in 

 the ratio of two to three. 



In spring the nomad Kurds first graze the low grounds, and rise 

 toward the higher mountains as the season advances and the lower 

 pastures are consumed. They return gradually from the high grounds 

 as the cold forces them to descend ; about the end of October they go 

 into winter quarters where they remain between five and six months 

 in the close and filthy houses of the Armenians. Although there is 

 positive evidence of pastoral wealth among the Kurds their women 

 and children are never well clothed, the latter being either naked or 

 scantily covered with a few rags. In youth nevertheless both sexes 

 are robust and healthy, and have beautiful teeth ; but their exposed 

 and laborious life makes them (the females especially) grow 

 prematurely old. Among the house-dwelling Kurds only women of 

 high rank conceal their faces, but among the tent-dwellers all exhibit 

 their features without reserve, and have considerable intercourse with 

 the men of the encampment. It is very common for the young men 

 to run away with the young women of a neighbouring encampment, 

 which produces violent quarrels and often gives rise to blood 

 feuds. 



The Kurds have a strong propensity to rob ; they will even thieve 

 in the hope that by some expedient a part may be retained. No 

 shame or punishment is attached to acts of this kind. In their plun- 

 dering expeditions, which they generally undertake after the ingathering 

 in hopes of greater booty, they endeavour to surprise the inhabitants 

 and carry off everything they can seize ; if resistance is made or 

 rescue attempted, many lives are lost. Their women not unfrequently 

 load the rifles of their husbands, and often take a more active part in 

 the affray. 



Some of the tribes rear fine horses of the Arab breed, and the Kurds 

 generally are excellent horsemen. Colonel Sheil describes the dress 

 of a Kurdish chief as follows: "Short yellow boots blue cloth 

 trowsers of prodigious dimensions ; three jackets of different colours, 

 and one of them with sleeves two yards in length ; a wide silk sash round 

 the waist, and an enormous turban of silk of every colour ; a white 

 Arab cloak ; a dagger and a pair of long pistols in his belt, and a sword 

 worn with the edge to the rear complete his costume." This gay 

 dress is imitated more or less by every one according to his means. 

 The poorer Kurds wear the coarse woollen manufactures of their 

 made into a short jacket and trowsern. 



(Papers by Colonel Sheil, Mr. Brandt, Mr. Ainsworth, and others, 

 in the Royal Geographical Journal, vols. iii. vi. and x. ; Rennell's 

 Geography of Herodotus; Moses of Chorene, History of Armenia; 

 Chamich's History of Armenia ; Ritter's Erdkunde, vol. x.; History 

 of Vartan, and Vahram's Chronicle of the Armenian Kingdom in 

 Cilicia, translated from the Armenian by Neumann ; Klaproth, in the 

 Nouvean Journal A tiatique, vol. xii. ; Colonel Chesney's Survey of the 

 l'.iij,ln-iites and Tigris; Kinneir's Travels in Armenia; Prichard's 

 Natural History of Man; St. Martin's Mem. inr I' Arme'nie ; Rich'a 

 Narrative of a Residence in Kurdistan.) 



ARMENTIE'RES. [NonD.] 



ARMLEY. [LEEDS.] 



