The Armenian Quarter (;(, ) ; ) is one of the four sectors of the walled Old City of Jerusalem. Located in the southwestern corner of the Old City, it can be accessed through the Zion Gate and Jaffa Gate. It occupies an area of 0.126 km2 (126 dunam), which is 14% of the Old City's total. In 2007, it had a population of 2,424 (6.55% of Old City's total). In both criteria, it is comparable to the Jewish Quarter. The Armenian Quarter is separated from the Christian Quarter by David Street (Suq el-Bazaar) and from the Jewish Quarter by Habad Street (Suq el-Husur).
The Armenian presence in Jerusalem dates back to the 4th century CE, when Armenia adopted Christianity as a national religion and Armenian monks settled in Jerusalem. Hence, it is considered the oldest living diaspora community outside the Armenian homeland. Gradually, the quarter developed around the St. James Monastery—which dominates the quarter—and took its modern shape by the 19th century. The monastery houses the Armenian Apostolic Church's Jerusalem Patriarchate, which was established as a diocese in the 7th century CE. The patriarchate is the de facto administrator of the quarter and acts as a "mini-welfare state" for the approximately 2,000 Armenian residents.
Though institutionally separate from the Greek Orthodox and Catholic Christians, the Armenians consider their quarter to be part of the Christian Quarter. The three Christian patriarchates of Jerusalem and the government of Armenia have publicly expressed their opposition to any political division of the two quarters. The quarter is perceived as separate from the rest of the Christian Quarter because of its distinct Armenian language and culture. However, after several generations of living with Palestinians, there are many Armenians who identify as both Armenian and Palestinian, and especially those whose ancestors had already lived in Palestine centuries prior to Armenian genocide, are well integrated into the Arabic cultural and linguistic milieu.
Location, borders and surface
The Armenian Quarter is located in the southwestern corner of Jerusalem's Old City. The quarter can be accessed through the Zion Gate and Jaffa Gate. According to a 2007 study published by the International Peace and Cooperation Center, the quarter occupies an area of 0.126 km2 (126 dunam), which is 14% of the Old City's total. The Armenian Quarter is formally separated from the Christian Quarter by David Street (Suq el-Bazaar) and by Habad Street (Suq el-Husur) from the Jewish Quarter.
The Armenian district of Jerusalem originated around the Armenian monastery in the south part of the modern Armenian Quarter. The convention of the boundaries of the Armenian Quarter may have originated in its current form in the 1841 British Royal Engineers map of Jerusalem, or at least Reverend George Williams' subsequent labelling of it. The city had previously been divided into many more harat (: "quarters", "neighborhoods", "districts" or "areas", see wikt:حارة).
Jewish immigration from the mid-19th century onwards meant the Jewish quarter began to expand into the cartographically defined boundaries of the Armenian Quarter.
The table below shows the evolution of both the Armenian Quarter and the Jewish Quarter, from 1495 up until the modern system:
Local divisionsWestern divisions Date 1495 1500s 1800s 1900 1840s onwards Source Mujir al-Din Ottoman Census Traditional system Ottoman Census Modern maps Quarters Bani Harith Bani Harith Jawa'na Sharaf Armenian Quarter West Dawiyya North Arman ("Armenian")Sihyun Arman SouthYahud ("Jewish") Yahud East Risha Silsila Jewish Quarter South Maslakh Saltin Khawaldi Sharaf Sharaf (Alam) 'Alam North Magharba ("Moroccan / Maghrebi") Magharba Magharba East
History
Origins In the early 4th century Armenia, under king Tiridates III, became the first country to adopt Christianity as a state religion. A large number of Armenian monks are recorded to have settled in Jerusalem as early as the 4th century, after the uncovering of Christian holy places in the city. However, the first written records are from the 5th century. Jerusalem is thus considered the oldest living diaspora community outside the Armenian homeland.
Philip Marsden wrote that the survival of Armenians in Jerusalem—"most intense of all cities"—proves their extraordinary resilience. Armenian churches were constructed during that period, including the St. James Monastery.Sanjian, Avedis (1965). The Armenian Communities in Syria under Ottoman Dominion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 1–6. The latter was last expanded in the mid-12th century. An Armenian scriptorium was in operation by the mid-5th century. A secular community composed of merchants and artisans was established in the 6th century in the Zion Quarter, where an Armenian street existed (Ruda Armeniorum).
Byzantine and Early Muslim periods In the First Council of Dvin (506), the Armenian Church broke off from Chalcedonian Christianity by rejecting the dual nature of Christ, which was agreed upon in the Council of Chalcedon of 451. Thus, the Armenians found themselves in direct confrontation with the Byzantine Empire. Emperor Justinian I persecuted whom he considered to be Monophysite Armenians, forcing them to leave Jerusalem.
A 7th-century Armenian chronicler mentioned the existence of seventy Armenian monasteries in the Holy land, some of which have been revealed in excavations. The Byzantines ceded Jerusalem to the Rashidun Caliphate after a siege in 637. Until this point, Jerusalem had a single Christian bishop. In 638 CE, Armenians established their own archbishop, Abraham I. He was officially recognized by Rashidun Caliph Umar. The foundation of the Armenian migration to Jerusalem thus solidified.
Crusader/Ayyubid and Mamluk periods In the 12th century, around one thousand Armenians moved to Jerusalem with the Crusaders, presumably mainly from the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia.
In 1311, during Mamluk rule, Archbishop Sarkis (1281–1313) assumed the title of patriarch according to a decree by Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad. In the 1340s, the Armenians were permitted to build a wall around their quarter. This signified that the Mamluk rulers felt that the quarter did not pose a threat. Destroying city walls and fortifications had been a staple of Mamluk governance in order to prevent the Crusaders from returning and reestablishing their rule. The Mamluk government also engraved the following declaration in Arabic on the western entrance to the quarter:
Jerusalemite historian Mujir al-Din provided a detailed description of pre-Ottoman Jerusalem in 1495 in which he mentioned Dir el-Arman (Monastery of the Armenians) or Kanisat Mar Ya'qub (St. James Cathedral).
Ottoman period
The Ottomans tolerated the presence of non-Muslim, Dhimmi, communities including the Christian Armenians. There was religious tolerance and an Ottoman administration existed to sort out religious differences between the rival Christian churches and Muslims. Israeli historians Kark and Oren-Nordheim wrote in 2001: "The Armenian Quarter, although Christian, represented a distinct ethnic group with its particular language and culture, intent on retaining separate identity and unity, minimizing the contacts with Arabs and the Ottoman authorities for fear of persecution."Kark, Ruth and Michal Oren Nordheim (2001). Jerusalem and Its Environs: Quarter, Neighborhoods, Villages, 1800–1948. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, p. 45. Many members of the Armenian community in Jerusalem spoke Arabic, in addition to Armenian.
In 1538, the current walls of Jerusalem were completed on the orders of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. These walls, along with the internal walls built by the Armenians, determined the outline of the quarter. In the 1562–63 record, only 189 Armenians were counted, whereas 640 were counted by the Ottomans in 1690, an increase of 239%.Peri, Oded (2001). Christianity under Islam in Jerusalem: The Question of the Holy Sites in Early Ottoman Times (Ottoman Empire & Its Heritage). Leiden: Brill, p. 20. According to the chronicler Simeon Lehatsi only some twelve Armenian families lived in Jerusalem in 1615–16. The significant increase in the population in 1690 is attributed to urbanization experienced by the Armenians and other Christians. Thus Armenians came to make up 22.9% of Jerusalem's Christians by 1690, becoming the second largest Christian community.
In the 19th century, most of the Armenian and Christian quarters had "European-style gable roofs" as opposed to the domes preferred in the Muslim and Jewish quarters. In 1833 the Armenians established the city's first printing press. A seminary was opened in 1857. In 1855 the first photographic workshop in Jerusalem was founded in the Armenian Quarter. Schools for boys (1840) and girls (1862) were united in 1869 under the name Holy Translators' School and became the first coeducational school in Jerusalem.
In 1854 Karl Marx reported 350 Armenians in Jerusalem. In 1883, 102 Armenian families (8%) constituted the third largest Christian community in the Old City after the Greek Orthodox and Catholic (Latin) communities. Besides these residents, in the same year, 46 Armenian priests and monks and 55 servicemen lived within the St. James Monastery. According to the 1905 Ottoman census in the Old City, the Armenian Quarter had a population of 382, of which Armenians (121) comprised less than one-third (31.7%). Jews (127) made up 33.2%, other Christians (94) 24.6% and Muslims (40) 10.5%. The Jews, who numbered a little more than the Armenians, inhabited the eastern part of the Armenian Quarter, which in the second half of the nineteenth century, became the western part of the Jewish Quarter.
World War I, British, and Jordanian periods Prior to World War I, there were some 2,000–3,000 Armenians in Palestine, mostly in Jerusalem, which was captured by the British in 1917. From 1915 and onward, thousands of Armenian genocide survivors from Cilicia (Adana Vilayet) found refuge, and settled in the quarter, increasing its population. In 1925, around 15,000 Armenians are believed to have lived in all of Palestine, with the majority in Jerusalem. During the British Mandate period, the number of Armenians is estimated to have reached up to 20,000. However, the 1931 British census showed only 3,524 Armenians in all of Palestine.
In 1947, around 1,500 Armenians from Palestine repatriated to Soviet Armenia as part of the Soviet government's efforts to boost Armenia's population by a large-scale repatriation of ethnic Armenians, mostly from the Middle East. This marked the beginning of the long-term decline of the Armenian community of Jerusalem. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Armenian Quarter housed Armenian refugees from all over Palestine. An Armenian civil guard, armed with "makeshift weapons", was formed to defend the quarter from the Haganah shelling of the Old City. More than forty Armenians were killed in the fighting.
Israeli period