The Armenians claim that the so-called Armenian Plateau is their "historic homeland". They consider Mount Ararat (seen here
in a photograph by S. Hambartzumyan, taken from Armenia, looking West
towards Turkey) not only sacred but also theirs, and long for the days
it will belong to them again. A picture of Mount Ararat is in their Coat of Arms (click here
for the symbology) , and their constitution does not recognize the
territorial unity of Turkey. As a matter of fact, Armenia is the only
country in the world that claims land from all of its neighbors, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Nothing could be farther from the truth than the Armenian claims
on the geography, history and cultural heritage of the land in
question.
ARMENIAN PLATEAU
The word Armenian Plateau is a geographical connotation designating
an elevation between the Anatolian and Persian plateaus. The three
plateaus form the northern sector of the Middle East, where many nations throughout history struggled to establish political and military hegemony, as described in Robert H. Hewsen‘s Armenia: A Historical Atlas. In the same reference, an authorithy on Armenian history, the Russian Professor Diakonoff is quoted as suggesting: Since
the population of the Armenian Plateau was quite mixed by the beginning
of the 1st millennium BC, there was no common designation for the
people of the Plateau as a whole. The neighbors of the inhabitants
would have called the entire Plateau after the population nearest
themselves. For the Aramenans of Syria to the southwest, the
inhabitants would be called the Armnaia, a term borrowed from the word
Armania, used by the Persians to the southeast, or from the word
Armenioi, used by the Greeks to the west. The Urartians
called everything west of the Euphrates by the term Hatti.
Consequently, they called Hatti the predecessors of "Armenians", who
had migrated to the Armenian Plateau from the Hatti lands to the west.
Possibly for the same reason, these proto-"Armenians" also called
themselves something close to Hattiyos, which would eventually later
become Hay-k.It is interesting that Armenians have always called themselves "Hai" or "Haik" (plural), and the land they live on "Hayastan".
However, in the mythology they fabricated, mainly to support the thesis
of "Historic Armenian Homeland", the etymological connection between
the words Hattiyos and Hai has been suppressed. Instead, the source of
the word Hai has been attributed to the legendary (and imaginary) hero Haig Nagabeth.
Haig’s forefather, Aram, supposedly joined the nation together for the
first time and the country was called Armenia after him. As to the
timeframe all that happened, the Haik contend by telling us that Aram
was was of the sons of Shem, who was a son of Noah (!). So, it goes
back to the Flood. Oh, also, Haig the Patriarch traveled to Babylon to
asist in the construction of the Tower there, and had an affair with
Salamis, the Babylonian princess (Salamis, rather, was infatuated with
him- a Fatal Attraction of sorts-, but he knew how to get rid of her
and her armies). Today, the Haik erect statutes of Haig everywhere, next to monuments of remembrance of the "Armenian Genocide" .
ARMENIA
The origin of the name Armenia remains uncertain. Ara means mountain
in Persian. Har-Minni may have meant the mountains of Minni, a country
cited in the Bible. Minni itself might have originated from the
Mannaeans, who lived in the NW Iranian territories of W. Azerbaijan, c.
850 BC, possibly a branch of the Hurrians.
The term Armenia does not originate from an ethnonym (Armenian)
representing a race that first settled in the region called Armenia.
People who moved to and lived in this land at any particular period of
time in history are called Armenians, if they do not claim any other
particular ethnicity of their own. For example, Azeris who live on the
Armenian Plateau could be called Armenians, but are not. They are
called Azeris, because they wish to belong to this particular ethnic
lineage. By the same token, the Hai are one type of Armenian, while
Hayastan is part of the land the Hai chose to settle in, i.e.
Armenia.In this regard, the term Armenia is akin to the term Anatolia.
Although there does not exist a particular race called Anatolian, all
ethnicities who chose to settle in this particular geography throughout
centuries are referred to as Anatolians, be they Hittites, Thracians,
Turks, etc.CONSEQUENTLY, AND VERY IMPORTANTLY,
-
-
THE WORD "ARMENIA" EXISTED LONG BEFORE THE "HAIK" SETTLED THERE CIRCA 6th c. BC.
-
IT IS HISTORICALLY AND GEOGRAPHICALLY INCORRECT TO CALL THE
HAIK, AND ONLY THE HAIK, ARMENIANS. THIS WOULD DO INJUSTICE TO THE
OTHER INHABITANTS OF THE ARMENIAN PLATEAU, NAMELY THE GEORGIANS,
AZERIS, RUSSIANS, AND TURKS, WHO SHOULD ALSO BE REFERRED TO
COLLECTIVELY AS ARMENIANS, ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION. -
THE PEOPLE WHO MONOPOLIZED THE GEOGRAPHIC NAME ARMENIA AS
THEIR OWN ETHNONYM IN THE MIND OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD, SHOULD ALWAYS BE
CALLED HAI, HAIK, HAYK OR HAIG, JUST LIKE THEY CALL THEMSELVES
INTERNALLY. -
CALLING THE HAIK ARMENIANS GIVES CREDIT TO THEIR CLAIMS THAT
ARMENIA IS THEIR HISTORIC HOMELAND AND THAT THE WHOLE REGION HAD BEEN
NAMED AFTER THEM, BECAUSE THEY WERE THERE FIRST. -
SIMILARLY, JUST THE SIMPLE FACT OF USING THE WORD GENOCIDE,
EVEN THOUGH WE ATTEMPT TO ATTENUATE IT BY ADDING THE QUALIFIER
"SO-CALLED" IN FRONT OF IT, IS A CONCESSION IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL
WARFARE THAT THE HAIK IS WAGING, AND WINNING, IN THE WORLD THEATER.
THESE ATROCITIES SHOULD BE REFERRED TO AS "THE OTTOMAN SUPPRESSION OF
THE HAIK REBELLION". -
WE FIRMLY BELIEVE AND STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT THE WORDS
"ARMENIAN" AND "GENOCIDE" SHOULD BE AVOIDED IN OUR WRITINGS AND
CONVERSATIONS. THIS WOULD BE A FIRST STEP IN REVERSING THE CENTURY-LONG
HAIK GAINS IN THIS PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE.
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The Haik describe “Greater Historic Armenia” as the land spanning
from the Caspian Sea on the east to almost Konya and Kayseri on the
west; and from the eastern Black Sea coastal line on the north to
almost Antioch on the Mediterranean in the south, much like what the Empire of Tigranes the Great
used to be 1st c. BC. Obviously, this megalo-idea of the land, neither
Greater, nor Historic, nor Armenian, is a figment of the Haik
imagination but, sadly, it has come to be known as the accepted,
undisputable historic-geographic dogma of the later 20th century,
through the work of Haik “scholars” sponsored by Haik "Institutes" all
around the world. Sam Weems in his book "Secrets of a "Christian"
Terrorist State: Armenia writes the following:This dream of a
"Greater Armenia" that the Russians created in the minds of few
Armenians in the mid-1800s continues to this day. The Armenians took
this Russian promise (that the Russians had no intention of keeping)
and expanded upon it. Today, Armenians claim all the land between the
Black and the Mediterranean seas as their "historic homeland". Nothing
could be farther from the truth. The English fanned the flame by calling the Asia Minor of the Bible Armenia. It was Prime Minister William E. Gladstone
, in the early 1880s, who concocted the idea that it was in Britain’s
best interests to break up the Ottoman Empire. He wanted to create a
number of small friendly states under England’s influence in place of
the larger Ottoman Empire. Gladstone asked to the British press to
refer to eastern Anatolia as "Armenia". British consulates were opened
throughout the region, and their purpose was to make contact with the
local Christian population. An Anglo-Armenian Friendship Committee
was organized in London with the express purpose of influencing public
opinion. Many more Christian missionaries were sent into what England
had started calling "Armenia".
ARARAT
Etymologically
the word comes from the Bible, and has nothing to do with the Haik or
the Haik language. Nevertheless, for some strange reason, grandiose
actually, linked to their fabricated mythology, the Haik think that
they own Mount Ararat.
HATTI AND HITTITES
The Hatti were local aboriginal population of Anatolia who lived in
small city states/princedoms, until taken over by the Hittites. They
spoke a non Indo-European language. The Hittites, an Indo-European,
nomadic, illiterate tribe, invaded Anatolia from the northwest along
with the Cassites and the Hurrians (both of which were non
Indo-European) around 2100 BC., over the Balkans. They are part of the
tribes that moved in from the northern lands stretching from the North
Sea to the Urals. They moved South because of the onset of the mini-ice
age and the economic attractiveness of the rich and easy to conquer
South. By 1900 BC, they had already setled in the Hatti lands and began
to impose their superiority over the natives. By 1600s BC, Hattusas
(the old Hatti capital) was made their capital, and they were producing
tablets in the Mesopotamian cuneiform script. The Hittites formed a
powerful empire, sustained by agriculture, arts, trade, and mining, and
protected by a mighty army equipped with the light war chariot with
spoked wheels and pulled by swift horses, an invention attributed to
them as improvement over the bulkier Summerian war chariot.The Hittite
Empire started around 1800 BCE. They got very weak around 1650 BCE but
pulled themselves together and formed the Great Hittite Empire around
1600 BCE, which lasted until 1200. At about the same time, Troy was
destroyed. Some scholars claim that Troy, or Wilusa in Hittite tablets,
was a Hittite frontier city ruled by a prince who was a subordinate of
the Hittite King.The end of the Hittites came around 1200 BC, when
powerful invaders poured upon Asia Minor from all directions. Called
collectively as the Sea Peoples (correct the source,
these warrior tribes consisted of the Phrygians, Thracians, the
Aecheans, and an unnamed entity from the South, which destroyed Ugarit
in Syrian territory.After the destruction of the powerful Hittite
Empire, various principalities continued to exist without military and
political cohesion among themselves. Tribes of the Phrygians from
Europe, and their kin the Mushki divided the Anatolian Plateau among
them. In many Hittite principalities, camel-raiding Semitic tribesmen
from North Arabian desert moved into settled areas but, due to
competition among themselves, could not survive in front of Assyrian
and Babylonian pressure. "Assyria" Assyria (correct the source) became the dominant power in the region.At the end of this period, the "Urartians" Urartu (correct the source)
Kingdom started to emerge around modern day Van. Urartians were the
only state to withstand the Assyrian attacks and siege to their cities,
esp. Van. The Urartians, too, finally succumbed to attacks, not from
the Assyrians but from the Scythians. Combining forces with the Medes
and the Babylonians, the Scythians would later topple the powerful
Assyrian Kingdom, as well, in 612 BC.
HURRIANS
Beginning from c. 2300 BC, the Hurrians descended from the mountains
of the South Caspian and occupied the land in the great bend of the
Euphrates River, between the Hittites and Assyria, stretching from the
Khabur Valler to the Zagros Mountains (Amelie Kuhrt "The Ancient Middle East").
Although their capital Washukkanni has never been located, it is now
thought to be in northern Syria. The end of the Akkadian Empire enabled
the Hurrians to control the area militarily and dominate the people
culturally.Hurrians were local people like the Hattis. They were pushed
from South Central Anatolia further South East by the
Hittites.Ethnically, the Hurrians (click here)
were neither Semitic nor Indo-European. Linguistically, their tongue
was ergative [click here](like Kurdish) and agglutinative [click
here](like Turkish). The language called Armenian today is neither: It
belongs to the Satem group of Indo-European languages.Culturally, the
Hurrians adopted the Akkadian cuneiform script. Their gods were similar
to Anatolian deities.Although similarities between Hurrian and Armenian
words have been suggested by Armenian researchers [Martiros Kavoukjian
‘The Genesis of Armenian People’, Montreal, 1982; Raphael Ishkhanian,
‘Illustrated History of Armenia’, Yerevan, 1989], this can only be due
to the persistence of Hurrian cultural influence on all ethnicities
which inhabited the region at some point or another, such as the
Urartus or the Kurds. Attempts to relate the Haik of today to the
Hurris of the distant past, is at best, a stretch and at worst, a
chronological fallacy.
MITTANNIS
Around 1600 BC, an Iranian (Indo-Aryan) class of warrior kings,
called the Mittanni, began to rule the Hurris. Around 1350, the
Hittites defeated the Mittannis. And, starting from around 1300 BC, the
Hurrians have been assimilated into the other ethnicities of the
region; thus disappearing completely from the scene of history. Their
culture, however, particularly their language, lived on in that of
other nations, such as the Hittites and the Urartus. Eventually, that,
too, disappeared to be replaced by an Assyrian dialect of Akkadian or,
more likely, Arameic.
NAIRI STATES
The Hayik also adopted Nairi as a common women’s name in their
language, claiming that Armenian history can be traced back to the
Nairi States era. However, there was no relation between the Nairi
States and the Hayik. The truth of the matter is that the Nairi States,
particularly the Hayasa, and the Hurrian States, particularly the
Mittannis, were established in the Armenian Plateau at least 800-1000
years before the arrival of the proto-Hayik in the region. The Nairi
States were weakened through constant warfare with the Hittites. The
Hittites could not destroy them fully, nor could they conquer any of
the other native peoples of the Armenian plateau east of Euphrates. It
was the Assyrians who wreaked havoc on the Nairi states. Nairi proper
was known to them as Bohtan-su. Finally, the Sea Peoples (Thracians and
Phyrigians) from Balkans destroyed Hittites in the 12 B.C. The accepted
theory is that the proto-Hayik were the south-easternmost arm of the
Phyrigians, arriving in the region about 6th c. BC, and mixing with the
remnants of the Nairi States and the Hurri in the wake of the
devastation caused earlier by the onslaught of the Sea Peoples.
HAYASA-AZZI
The Haik assume that there is a relation between the Hayasa-Azzi and
their name. They identify Hayasa or Khayasa with Haik, Hark or Hayk ( Kretschmer P.
Vahan M. Kurkjian, ‘History of Armenia’, Ch 6. Published by the
Armenian General Benvolent Union of America, 1958). However,
Hayasa-Azzi, one of the Nairi states in the 13th c. BC, was a political
formation centered around modern Giresun, speaking a Hattic language
[Hewsen]. But there is no ethnic, linguistic, geographic or even
chronologic connection between the Hayasa and the Hayik (Armenians),
who emerged much later, in the 6th c. B.C.
THE SEA PEOPLES
At about 1200 BC, Dorians, Thracians and Phrygians fell upon the
Anatolian Peninsula and wreaked havoc to the existing civilizations
there. Most historians believe that the cause of the Sea Peoples were
the "Barbarian Dorians", who are the ancestors of the Spartans. Moving
over the Balkans, they destroyed and pushed everyone in front of them,
raping pillaging, killing, until they reached the Morean Peninsula,
where the Palesgians (ancestors of Palestinians) lived. Palesgians had
to move to today’s Palestine, pushing people in front of them, which
included the Hurrians, Hittites, and some Myceneans. These were
horrible years (1200-800BCE) where writing, art, and law and order
vanished. Dorians, being the ancestors of the Spartans, the West is not
much interested in talking about this much uncivilized period which
constituted the historical and cultural foundation for what would be
Hellenistic civilization later. Dorians destroyed the civilization in
Mycaene (mainland Greece), while the Thracians ended Troy on the
northeastern Aegean cost. Dorians and Thracians, collectively called
Achaeans (e.g. by Homerus) are the ancestors of today’s Greeks.
Phrygians, on the other hand, moved into western and central Anatolia,
making Kutahya their capital.Dorians did not destroy the Minoan
Civilization. It was already weakened by the huge volcanic explosion in
the Island of Thera around 1650 BC, followed by the Mycenaean invasion
around 1450 BCE. Minoans were Anatolian people who moved in the island
around 7,000 BCE. They used the Linear B alphabet which is still
un-deciphered. Some claim that this alphabet was of Middle Eastern or
Egyptian origin. After Mycenaean takeover, they started using the
Linear B alphabet which is claimed to be the very early form of a Greek
alphabet (which is really the Phoenician alphabet with consonants
added).
ARMENS
The Hayik claim that the main Proto-Haik tribe was the Armens,
supposedly one of the three Sea Peoples, along with the Aecheans and
the Phrygians [Fr. Hrozny in Kurkjian, op.ed.]. They claim that other
historians coincide in Hrozny’s opinion that the “Phrygians and the
Armens became the heirs of the powerful Hittite Empire”.
URARTU
The Hayik also claim that they are the same people as the Urartu.
That, too, is stretch of their imagination in their attempts to create
a solid historical foundation for their claims to the land. The
Urartians separated from the Hurrians sometime in the 3rd millennium BC
(the 2000s). Following the weakening of the Hittite Kingdom at about
1200 BC, various ethno-political entities that had formed over the
subsequent 300 years were united by Biainele king Arame (858), in the
high lands surrounding the Mount Ararat, hence their name Uruartu
(Assyrian) or Urastu (Babylonian) or RRT (in the Old Testament) or
Ararat (in the Greek Septuagint). Arame’s successors made Van (Tuspa,
Khauon Gr., derived from Bianinele) their capital. This federation,
under its Assyrian name of Urartu, lasted 300 years.Urartu kingdom
reached its zenith under Kings Menuas (810-714) and Rusa II (685-645).
King Menuas’ name was assimilated into the Haik God Mher (Persian
Mithra, Greek Mithras), and gate of Mher near Van was named after
him.Linguistically, Urartu’s were Hurrian speakers. Culturally, they
were under a strong Assyrian influence and adopted an Assyrian
cuneiform script. Their custume, armor, and weaponry were influenced by
the Hittite. Most importantly, though, the Urartian-Hurrian language
group had absolutely no affinity with the modern Hayik language. The
Urartian deities were Anatolian: Haldi or Khaldi after whom Urartians
were first called Chaldeans in 19th century. The Hittite god Siuni was
adopted by the Hayik as Siwni, after which the princely lineage -Siwnik
was named.Assyria and Urartu fought constantly. But Urartu was finally
overrun by Scythians, and its territory was conquered by Medes. Medes
were an Iranian people, settled in the Northwest Iran since about 836
BC. In 652, they passed under Scythian rule. In 612, Medes, Scythians,
and Babylonians jointly attacked and took Niheveh, officially ending
the Assyrian Empire. But before continuing any further, let us take a
look at the Medes and other Aryan groups that inhabited the Persian
Plateau during the first 2 millennia BC.
PERSIAN PLATEAU
The history of the region is told by the Middle Eastern expert Sandra Mackey
, in her book ‘The Iranians: Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation’
(Plume Printing, NY, April 1998). The section below is adapted from
Mackey (pp. 14- ): During the end of the 3rd millennium BC, the
hunter-gatherers of Neolithic times gradually gave way to organized
society. Among the most advanced of these societies was Elam,
spreading over the lowlands east of the Tigris and Euphrates and
climbing into the western Zagros Mountains. Drawing from the Sumerian
culture of the Fertile Crescent and adding to it elements that were
uniquely its own, Elam by the middle of the 11th c. BC had reached an
extraordinarily high level of artistic achievement. Soon,
successive groups of Aryans were migrating out of the steppelands of
Central Asia, moving down the eastern side of the Caspian Sea, and into
western Iran. The Medes came first, around 800s. To avoid
confrontation with the mighty Assyria to the west, the Medes settled
into the Zagros Mountains. Perhaps a century later, the
leather-helmeted Persians riding horses hung with bronze
ornaments followed. Eluding both the Assyrians and the Medes, they
wandered south along a norrow route drawn by mountains to the West and
deserts to the east. When they reached Fars, near the center of the
Iranian Plateau, they stopped. There, in the dry plains and barren
mountains of Fars, they planted the seeds of the Persian culture.
During the 500s BC, the Persians, along with other societies on the
Iranian Plateau, assumed more complex forms as they made the transition
from nomadism to settlement. Among other things, they adopted
Zoroastrianism as their religion and the local god, Ahura Mazda, as
their principal deity. During the 1200 years between the founding of
the of the Persian Empire and the arrival of Islam in the 7th century
AD, Persian culture and Persian identity took form on the Iranian
Plateau. It developed under the four dynasties of pre-Islamic Iran: The
Achamenian, Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanian.
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Achamenids:The great Persian Empire of the 500s
to 200s BC was almost the by-product of the search for security by the
Persians of Fars, in a quest for land, water, protection, order,
leadership, and morality. In essence, the history of ancient Iran began
when Cyrus of Fars deposed the king of Media to unite the Persians and
the Medes. Cyrus, who ascended the Persian throne in 559 BC, was the
son of Cambyses (grandson of the first Persian king, Achaemenis) and
Mandane (daughter of Median king Astyages). In 550, capturing the
Medean capital Ekbatana (now Hamadan), he united the Persians and the
Medes who, by that time, were also ruling over the Elamites. In 547, he
crossed the Tigris and laid siege to the Lydian capital Sardis of King
Croesus, capturing the city before winter set in. He then built his
capital, Pasargadae, in the southern reaches of the Persian heartland,
60 miles northeast of modern day Shiraz. Next, in 540, he conquered
Babylon, liberating the Jews from their captivity since the time of
Nebuchadnezzar. By the end of his reign, Cyrus had formed an empire,
based on the Zoroastrian principles of toleration and justice, spanning
the Nile, the Aegean, and the Indus, and stretching north to south from
Africa to China. His efficiently administered empire generally lived in
peace. The exception was a corner in northeast where the Massagetaes, a
nomadic branch of the Scythians who ranged the steppes along the
Jacartes River, continued to defy the Persian rule. Cyrus died in 530,
in a battle against them. Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who
pushed the Empire into Egypt. Upon his death in 521, Darius, the King’s
28 year-old spear bearer assumed the throne and married Cambyses’ widow
and Cyrus’ daughter. After crushing a rebellion, he drove his armies
east to Punjab in India in 517 BC, then west to Libya and to the lower
Danube in 512 BC. He also moved the capital of the Empire 50 miles from
Pasargadae to Persepolis. Darius had the Behistun stone erected 486,
packing it with instructions about his deeds in three languages:
Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. The earliest recorded reference to
Armenia occurs in the Behistun documents, among the regions subjected
to Persian rule by the king. By the time he died in 486, a distinctive
Persian culture had established itself.Xerxes, Darius’ successor and
the last of the great Achaemenian kings, took his army against the
Greeks in 481 BC. Crossing the Hellespont (Dardanelles) and moving
quickly through Macedonia, the Persian army met and defeated the
Spartans in Thermopylae and swept on through Attica, burning towns and
villages as it went. Taking Athens, the Persians stormed the Acropolis
and set fire to the partially finished Parthenon. But stripped of much
of its naval support by the battle of Salamis, the Persian infantry
lost to the Greeks at Plataea. Returning to Persepolis in defeat,
Xerxes spent much of his time seeking pleasure in his harem, until he
was murdered in 465 by a palace conspirator. In 332 BC, 130 years after
his death, Persia succumbed to the armies of Alexander the Macedonian,
who burnt Persepolis to the ground. -
Seleucids: For 42 years after the death of Alexander,
his generals squabbled over possession of his legacy. In the end, the
empire was divided. Egypt went to Ptolemy. The remainder, including
Persia, was seized by Seleucis, whose Seleucid line ruled Persia
between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC. But, while in the Seleucid
territories of Syria and Asia Minor Hellenism flowered, in Iran it only
remained an influence as the Persian majority (with the exception of
the elite) held to their traditional culture and nursed their
differences with their Greek masters. As early as 280 BC, Fars
established its independence in an uprising against the Seleucids. Fars
reverted to a series of tribal monarchies similar to those from which
Cyrus had sprung. Seleucid rule was finally lifted from Persia after
160 years, by a tribe of nomadic Aryans, the Parthians. -
Parthians: Advancing down the eastern side of the
Caspian Sea about the time Alexander died, the Parthians settled in
Iran, where they began to absorb the culture of Persia. In 163 BC, the
Parthians severed the main artery connecting Persia to the rest of theSeleucid Empire, reuniting the northern and southern ends of the
Iranian Plateau and giving birth again to Persia. The Parthians’ single
most important achievement was to fight and and check the Romans for
300 years, ensuring that Persia escaped the orbit of the West. In 53
BC, the Parthian army killed 20 thousand Romans in one battle. In 36
BC, in Azarbeijan, the mounted bowmen faced the famous general Mark
Anthony. In one confrontation, Rome lost 35 thousand men out of a force
of approximately 100 thousand. Mark Anthony fled to the arms of
Cleopatra and Rome retreated west of the Tigris, surrendring its chance
to further expand its empire eastward. The Parthians lasted a little
less than 400 years, from 163 BC to 224 AD, because of the inability of
any king to establish and maintain control over his kingdom. -
Sassanids: One of the tribal dynasties in Fars ruled
at a place called Istakhr, between Pasargadae and Persepolis, by a man
called Papak, son of Sassanian, the keeper of the shrine of Anahita,
the Zoroastrian provider of water. In 208 AD, Papak’s son, Ardeshir,
succeeded to his father’s throne and, in 224, challenged the last
Parthian king, Ardavan, to single combat for the title of King of
Kings. His victory ushered the Sassanid epoch, which lasted until 637
AD, and constituted one of the notable ages of Iranian history in the
form of a renaissance of Persian culture, the charisma of kingship, and
the religion of Zoroastrianism. Ardeshir’s successor, Shapour I, once
more took Persia into war against Rome, repeatedly defeating the Roman
army and capturing the Emperor Valerian. Between 560 and 579, Khosrow
(Husrev) I, sat on the throne, moved his capital to Ctesiphon in
Mesopotamia, and succeeded in reestablishing Persia as a military
power. From 602 to 620, the Persians drove into Byzantine territories,
capturing Antioch, Jerusalem, Sardis, Ephesus, Alexandria and Egypt.
But in 626, Byzantium struck back and, in a brilliant flank attack,
sailed across the Black Sea, positioned itself in the Caucasus, tore
through Armenia and Azerbaijan and into Mesopotamia, capturing
Ctesiphon, and paved the way for the fall of Iran to the Arabs in the
following decade. Notes:Because of the Achamaenids, Persians are known
as Acem in Turkish.Regarding the Haik during all this time: It isduring the Median interlude that the Haik first appear as a distinct
people.Xenophon mentions the word Armenian in his Cyropedia (Education
of Cyrus).When the Persian Sassanids overthrew Parthian Arsacids in
224, the Arsacid king in Armenia he thought of himself as having become
independent with the downfall of the Arsacids in Persia. But Sassanids,
under Ardashid I overthrew him and appointed a Sassanid king in his
place.
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HAIK
According to Hewsen (Historical Introduction), Armenian history can
be divided into ancient, medieval and modern eras. Although this
account is highly biased toward the Haik view of historical distortion
to make ancient civilizations appear as part of Haik legacy, it is
useful to quote it here from a point of view of studying what the enemy
thesis is. Below is an exact copy of Hewswen’s account.
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-
Ancient Armenian History:
-
Prehistoric Period (? – 9th c. BC): Old, Middle and New Stone Ages and the period of Nairi States,
-
The Urartian Period (9th c. – 6th c.BC)
-
Achaemenid Occupation (c. 550 BC – 330 BC)
-
Orontid-Artaxiad Period (c. 330 BC – 1st c. AD)
-
Pre-Christian Arsacid Period (1st c. – 4th c.)
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Christian Arsacid Period (314 – 428)
-
-
Medieval Armenian History:
-
Post Arsacid Period and Period of Byzantine-Persian Wars (428-654)
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Arab Period (564-885)
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Bagratid Period (885-1064)
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Seljuk Period (1064-1199)
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Georgian Period (1199-1236)
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Monghol/Ilkhanid Period (1236-1335)
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Cilician Period (1080-1375)
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Period of the Barony (1080-1198)
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Period of the Kingdom (1198-1375)
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Modern Armenian History:
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Early Period: From the fall of the Cilician Kingdom (1375 AD)
to the rise of the Armenian Question (1878), including as subdivisions:-
Post-Ilkhanid Turkoman Period (1355-1478)
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Ottoman-Safavid Period (1478-1722)
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Period of Russian Expansion into Caucasia
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Modern Period (1878-1991), subdivided into:
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Period of the Armenian Question (1878-1920)
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Soviet Era (1920-1991)
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Contemporary History (1991-present)
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Greeks first came in contact with Caucasian races (e.g.
Persians) in late Urartu periods [Persian Koh-Kas Mount Kas, or
Kas-pian Sea]. First Greek colonists named Black Sea Pontus Axeinos,
after the Persian Aksaina-dark. The Haik had nothing to do with this
interface. -
The only time the Haik had their independence was under the
reign of … between … and …. [Click Here]. Other than that, they always
lived subjugated to other Empires.
Next: Treatment of Minorities by the Ottomans