Seljuk Years
The first interaction of the Haik with Turks occurred in the 10th c.
AD, during the rule of the Abbasid Caliphate, as Turkish commanders and
their families in the service of the Abbasids came in contact with
them. The Seljuk commander Cagri Bey, father of AlpArslan organized a
reconnaissance party into Eastern Anatolia during 1015-20. At that
time, the Haik were under Byzantine rule. The latter being Orthodox and
the former Gregorian, things weren’t smooth between the Empire and
their subjects on the Armenian Plateau. Basileios II had annexed the
Armenian Plateau and 40,000 Haik had been deported to Anatolia in 1022.
The next Byzantine emperor, Constantine II had killed the Haik rulers
in 1046 and appointed Vahram the Armenian Governor of Marash. In 1054,
the Seljuk ruler Tugrul Bey gave autonomy to the Haik. Vahram shortly
brought under his jurisdiction many cities such as Tarsus, Elbistan and
Adiyaman. He also conquered Edessa (Urfa) in 1077, and Antioch in 1078.
He then established a Kingdom in Cilicia, apparently as vassal to
Byzantium. But all this expansion did not go well with the Byzantines
and soured the relationships.
For all practical purposes, the Haik, therefore, welcomed the
Turkish victory, in 1071 by Alparslan, in Malazkiert, over the
Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes (1068-1071). Vahran even
converted to Islam and pledged allegiance to MelikShah, son of
AlpArslan. Upon Vahran’s death, the principality in Cilicia came under
Seljuk rule. Contemporary Haik historians such as Matias of Edessa
and Ashogik praised the tolerance and benevolence of the Seljuk rulers
aplenty. After the death of the Seljuk Sultan Kilich Arslan, Mathias of
Edessa wrote:
"Kilich Arslan’s death has driven Christians into mourning since he was a charitable person of high character. "
The same historian also wrote:
"Melikshah’s heart is full of affection and goodwill for
Christians; he has treated the sons of Jesus Christ very well, and he
has given the Armenian people affluence, peace, and happiness.”
How well the Seljuk Turks treated the Armenians is shown by the
fact that some Armenian noble families like the Tashirk family accepted
Islam of their own free will and joined the Turks in fighting
Byzantium.
Moreover, the Seljuks, like the Abbasid and Umayyad chalifs
before them, and the Persian Zoroastrians even before, have also
pretected from total annihilation the Nestorians from Byzantine
authority and from the zeal of the Greek Orthodox Church. Nestorians
were Christians who had not accepted the authority of the Third
Eucumenical Council at Ephesus regarding Mary’s status as the Mother of
God. Unfortunately, the Nestorians, like the Haik, would later in the
20th c. side with the Russians against the Ottomans in WWI and stab the
ZTurks in the back. The majority of them withdrew to the mountains of
Hakkari after the War and, from there, to Nothern Irak, where they live
today.
Another protected community of Christians, the Syrian Aramaics,
on the other hand, did not betray their benefactors and they still
continue their peaceful existence in and around Turabdin, near Mardin.
They are still free to practice their religion and speak their language
(Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke).
However, the special favors bestowed upon the Haik race were
met with ingratitude as early as the 11th c, when they collaborated
with the Crusaders in 1098 (Runciman, Steven,
A History of the Crusades, 3 Volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1951-1954). An alternative, excellent, and scholarly, narrative
of the Crusader movements is given by Amin Maalouf , in his Crusaders through Arab Eyes.
The Haik interpretation of the same events is quite different, though. Vahan M. Kurkjian, for example, tells us in his 1958 History of Armenia that:
[In the City of Ani in 1064, under Seluk attacks] "Men were
slaughtered in the streets," says Aristakes of Lastivert, "women were
carried away, infants crushed on the pavements; the comely faces of the
young were disfigured, virgins were violated in public, young boys
murdered before the eyes of the aged, whose venerable white hairs then
became bloody and whose corpses rolled on the earth."
Unfortunately, it was the Monghols who destroyed Ani in 1236,
not the Seljuks, who suffered as much as any other Anatolian group by
the Monghol invasions and the devastation in its trail.
Upon the Seljuk defeat in 1243 by the Mongols, the Haik loyalty
quickly switched over to the Mongols. This, however, could not prevent
the destruction in 1375 of their southern territories by the Memluks,
another Turkish state which was based in Cairo. The see of the
Catholicos, at Sis in southern Anatolia (Cilicia), had to be
transferred to Echmiadzin, in southern Caucus. In 1379, however,
another Mongol Khan, Timur the Lame, would devastate their eastern
territories as well. Timur went on to crush the armies of the proud
Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I (The Thunderbolt) in 1402, near Ankara. The
devastation in the wake of the Mongol herds would create a social and
political vacuum in Asia Minor that would last for the next half
century. Following an interregnum of 12 years, though, Sultan Murad II
managed to control some of his father’s possessions. His own son,
Mehmed II (The Conqueror), would bring political and military Ottoman
control over most of Anatolia. The Haik were among the people annexed
by the Ottomans at that time. As Mehmed moved the Haik Patriarch of
Bursa, Hovakim, to Constantinople in 1461, he bestowed upon him all
religious and secular powers of control over his own "Millet", i.e. the
Haik, as well as over the the monophysites and the Nestorians. Thus,
the See at Echmiadzin was reduced to nothing in terms of influence
among Ottoman Haik.
In 1579, Sultan Murad III conquered Georgia. In 1603-4, Shah
Abbas of Persia transfered the Haik of Erivan and Djulfa to central
Persia. In 1639, Murat IV concluded the Kasr-i Shirin
peace treaty with Safavid Persi, thus relatively stabilizing the
Turco-Persian border. Since that date, most later wars between the two
empires were fought over Armenia, thus changing the master of the Haik
back and forth between the Ottomans and the Persians many times over.
At that time, Erivan, the capital of Republic of Armenia today, was
under Persian control and almost entirely Muslim.