Armenian Jews

The history of the Jews in Armenia is one of the Jewish communities in the Caucasus region. There is evidence of Jewish settlement in the Armenian Highlands dating as early 1st century BC.

Historical Armenia

There are historical records that attest to the presence of Jews in pagan Armenia, before the spread of Christianity in the region by St. Gregory the Illuminator in 301 AD. Early medieval Armenian historians, such as 5th century historian Moses Khorenatsi, held that during the conquest of Armenian King Tigranes the Great (95–55 BC) he brought with him 10,000 Jewish captives to the ancient Kingdom of Armenia (which encompassed what is commonly known as Greater Armenia) when he retreated from Judea, because of the Roman attack on Armenia in 69 BC. Tigranes II invaded Syria, and probably the northern (Roman province of) Palestine as well.Jan Retsö, ''The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads'', 2003. p. 347. A large Jewish population was settled in Armenia from the 1st century BC. One city in particular, Vartkesavan, became an important commercial center. Like the rest of Armenia's population, they suffered the consequences of regional powers trying to divide and conquer the country.Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Eurasia: Armenia and Jews
By 360–370 AD, there was a massive increase in Jewish Hellenistic immigration into Armenia; many Armenian towns became predominately Jewish. After the conquest of Armenia in the 4th century AD by the Sassanid King Shapur II, he deported thousands of Jewish families from Persian Armenia and resettled them at Isfahan in modern Iran.

In 1912 the archaeologist Nikolai Marr announced the discovery in 1910 of a tombstone in the village of Yeghegis that carried a Hebrew inscription. In 1996 investigations at Yeghegis, in Armenia's province of Vayotz Dzor, discovered the remains of a medieval Jewish cemetery from a previously unknown Jewish community. In 2000, a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem excavated on the southern side of the Yeghegis river, opposite the village, a Jewish cemetery with 40 gravestones with Hebrew inscriptions dating between 1266 and 1347. One non-Hebrew word in the inscriptions may indicate the origin of the community. Michael Nosonovsky has stated that "The word khawajah is of Persian origin and it probably indicates that the Jews who settled in Yeghegis came from Persia and kept Persian as their spoken language. Biblical quotations and Talmudic formulas are evidence of a high learning standard in the community."Yeghegis
, International Jewish Cemetery Project – International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies A group of Armenian and Israeli archaeologists and historians excavated the site in 2001 and 2002 and found 64 more tombstones. Some are decorated with motifs of the Orbelian kingdom. The archaeological team also found three mills, which the bishop says show that the community had a business because one mill could feed several families. 9 of these tombstones had inscriptions, all in Hebrew except for two, which were in Aramaic. The oldest dated stone was from 1266 and the latest date was 1336/7.

Modern period

In 1828, the Russo-Persian War came to an end and Eastern Armenia (currently the Republic of Armenia) was annexed to the Russian Empire with the Treaty of Turkmenchai. Polish and Iranian Jews began arriving, as well as Sabbatarians (''Subbotniks'', Russian peasants who were banished to the outskirts of Imperial Russia during the reign of Catherine II. They were Judaizing Christians and mostly converted to mainstream Judaism or assimilated). Since 1840 they started creating Ashkenazi and Mizrahi communities respectively in Yerevan. Up to 1924, the Sephardic synagogue, Shiek Mordechai, was a leading institution among the Jewish community.

According to the 1897 Russian Empire Census, there were some 415 people in Alexandropol (Gyumri) and 204 in Erivan (Yerevan) whose native language was "Jewish" and significantly smaller numbers elsewhere 6 in Vagharshapat, 15 in Novo-Bayazet. The number of self-reported Jewish-speakers was the following in other Armenian-populated areas of the Russian Empire that now lie outside Armenia: 4 in Shusha (Azerbaijan), 93 in Elizavetpol (Ganja, Azerbaijan), 4 in Iğdır (now Turkey), 424 in Kars (Turkey), 111 in Ardahan (Georgia), 438 in Akhaltsikhe (Georgia), 72 in Shulaveri (Georgia).

As for Western Armenia (Turkish Armenia), according to official Ottoman figures from 1914, 3,822 Jews lived in the "Six vilayets" that had significant Armenian population: 2,085 in Diyarbekir Vilayet, 1,383 in Van Vilayet, 344 in Sivas Vilayet, 10 in Erzurum Vilayet, and none in Bitlis

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