Читать книгу Armenia and Her People; or, The Story of Armenia by an Armenian - George H. Filian - Страница 19

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As already mentioned, Haig was the founder of the Armenian kingdom. He can scarcely be called a king, because in his time there was not a great Armenian nation; it was rather a tribe, and Haig was chief or governor. His position was like that of Abraham; what would now be called a sheikh; and like Abraham, he was a worshiper of the true God.

Haig went from the highlands of Armenia to the plains of Shinar to help build the Tower of Babel. During the progress of the work, Belus, a warlike giant, descended from Ham, assumed to direct the enterprise; Haig would not submit to this, and so returned to his own country. When the undertaking failed, all the tribes became scattered. To wreak vengeance on Haig, Belus resolved to go to Armenia, kill him in fight, and reign over his land. When he reached Armenia with his men on his errand, Haig went with a force to meet him; a great battle took place and Haig was victorious, killing Belus and saving his country from being overwhelmed by the Hamites. His spirit was inherited by his posterity, though recent irresistible force and refusal of permission to bear arms may seem to make them submissive. They have battled stoutly against awful odds and with insufficient means for liberty and for freedom of thought and conscience; and millions have lost their lives for those principles; if they could now have arms and help, they would fight and die again for them.

After the repulse of this Hamitic invasion, the Armenians increased so rapidly that Haig became a real king and took that title, thus actually founding the Armenian Kingship. They were free, lived long lives, and married only one wife each—all favorable conditions for growth of population—it need not be pointed out how slavery and polygamy check national growth. And they kept their faith in the one true God, as their ancestor Noah did.

Haig’s son Armen succeeded his father, and greatly enlarged the kingdom. He subdued a large district northeast of Mt. Ararat and built cities and towns there. It is most likely the name Armenia comes from him. Some recent foreign writers have the impudence to say that there was no such king, but that his name was made up to account for that of Armenia; but the same records which tell us of Haig, tell us of his son. After Armen we find his son Armaiss, who built the city of Armavir.

I will not enumerate all the names of the dynasty; it would only be a tedious catalogue without profit. I will only mention the most noted ones, and those most interesting from their relations with the Jews or the heathen nations.

One of the notable kings is Aram, the seventh in succession, and the greatest of Armenian conquerors. He raised and drilled an army of 50,000 men, whose efficiency and his own military skill and energy are proved by his invading and conquering Media. He then invaded Assyria and conquered a part of that country. Next he marched westward and subjugated some of the eastern portion of Asia Minor inhabited by the Greeks—the later Cappadocia, along the Halys or Kizil-Irmak. Aram named this district the Hayasdan, translated by the Romans as “Armenia Minor”; which, oddly enough, in later times became Greater Armenia or Armenia Proper. Aram set over this province a governor named Mishag, with instructions to compel the Greeks to speak Armenian. Mishag built a city which exists in Cappadocia (Karamania) to-day, frightfully familiar from recent events. He called it by his own name; the Greeks mispronounced it as Mazag; the Roman emperors afterwards named it Caesarea, which the Turks corrupted into Kayseri, and several thousand Armenians were massacred there some months ago, which will be described further on. The richest and most enterprising Armenians in the Turkish Empire are from Kayseri, and it is a leading missionary station of the American Board. The writer preached there and in that vicinity for four years.

The enormous growth of the Armenian Kingdom under Aram, and its conquest of part of Assyria, excited the alarm of the Assyrian king, Ninos. Not feeling strong enough to engage in open warfare with him, he thought to compass his destruction by winning his friendship and then putting him out of the way, and, as a first step, sent him a costly jeweled crown. The intrigue failed, however, and Aram lived to a great age, reigning fifty years.

Aram was succeeded by his son Ara, called “Ara the Beautiful.” The fame of his beauty went abroad through the world; the Assyrian queen Semiramis was so enchanted by the sight of his person that she fell madly in love and proposed marriage to him, but he refused her. This military Amazon was not to be balked so. She resolved to marry him by force, and came with a great army to Armenia to capture the prize; but he was killed in the war, and she took possession of the country, with which she was so charmed that she decided to remain; she removed the capital of the enlarged Assyrian Kingdom to the lovely shores of Lake Van, erecting a palace there for herself, and building on the eastern side a city named “Shamiramaguerd” (built by Semiramis). Many years later, a king of the Haigazian Dynasty whose name was Van rebuilt it and called it after himself. This was the present city of Van, another great center of the American Board and of Turkish horrors.

LAKE VAN AND CITY OF VAN.

The next great interesting event was in 710 B.C. when Sennacherib of Assyria was assassinated by his two sons, Adramelich and Sharezer, who escaped into Armenia. The king of Armenia at this time was Sgayorti, which means “son of a giant.” He received the sons of Sennacherib with great kindness; they married Armenian women, and remained in the country till their death. Their descendants were great Armenian princes, bearing the titles Prince Arziroonian and Prince Kinoonian.

Armenia comes to view again in connection with Biblical history in the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, 600 B.C., and the deportation of the Judean people; the Armenian king, Hurachia, was one of his allies in the siege, and on returning to Armenia carried with him a Hebrew prince named Shampad. This was a very intelligent man, and made himself greatly loved and esteemed by the Armenians; a sort of Daniel or Joseph. He, too, married an Armenian noblewoman, and his descendants became the very foremost of the noble families and ecclesiastical functionaries of the country, crowning the kings on occasion. They were called Pakradoonian Princes, and at last one of them founded the third dynasty of Armenian kings, the Pakradoonian. Though the nation is Aryan, there is noble Hebrew (Semitic) blood mixed with it.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Haigazian Dynasty comes just before the end; the time of Dikran or Tigranes I. In him both wisdom and valor were combined to an eminent degree. As soon as he succeeded his father, Yerevant, he instituted great reforms to improve the state of the country. He not only enlarged it by conquest, but he greatly improved public education and morals, removed obstructions to international commerce, introduced navigation on the lakes and rivers, encouraged cultivation; trade flourished, every acre of ground was tilled, the country was alive with energy and hope. This vigor and prosperity aroused the envy of Ashdahag, King of Media; he resolved to kill Dikran, and to throw him off his guard married his sister, Princess Dikranoohi. A plot to murder Dikran was then set on foot; the princess learned of it, warned her brother, whom she loved, and ran away. Dikran collected an army, made a rapid march to Media, surprised and slew Ashdahag, and brought back a vast amount of spoils in captives and goods. He built a fine city on the banks of the Tigris, and called it Dikranagerd, the city of Dikran; it was afterwards the residence of the sister who had saved his life. It is now called by the Turks Diarbekr, and was the scene of a frightful massacre a few months since. The most important political achievement of his life was assisting Cyrus in the capture of Babylon 538 B.C.; the two monarchs were very friendly, and Dikran’s Armenian army was a chief factor in the conquest. In Jeremiah’s prophecy of the capture, about a century before it occurred, he mentions the Armenian Kingdom as one of the actors: “The Kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz.” (Jer. li. 27.)

After Dikran’s death his son Vahakn succeeded him; he was considered a god by the people, and worshiped as such through a monument after his death. Thus far the people had mostly worshiped the one true God, but from this time they relapsed into heathenism for a while on account of the influences pressing on them from outside. The last king of the Haigazian Dynasty was Vahe. When Alexander the Great invaded Persia, Vahe went to Darius’ help with 40,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry; but Alexander conquered first Darius and then Vahe (328 B.C.), and annexed both Persia and Armenia. Thus came to an end the first Armenian dynasty, after an existence of 1922 years.