HISTORY. The Armenians trace their descent from Haig, the grandson of Japhet. His descend ant. Aram, is the eponymous hero of the land, which was called Armina by the Persians, and Bail:, or Haiastan, by the Armenians themselves. Though possessed of an old civilization, the Armenians first appear in history about the mid dle of the Sixth Century B.C., when Dikran, or Tigranes, of the Haig dynasty, freed his nation from its subjection to the Assyrians and Medes. Subdued by Alexander the Great, the country was ruled by the representatives of the Seleucid until B.C. 190, when the satraps Artaxias and ° Zariadres revolted against Antiochus the Great and divided the province between them, the former taking the country east of the Eu phrates. or Armenia Major; the latter the west ern portion, or Armenia Minor. Armenia Major was subdued by the Parthians about B.C. 150, and ruled. except for a prief period of Persian dom ination (A.D. 232-200), till A.D. 428 by the family of the Arsacidie. The most celebrated prince of the line was Tigranes the Great, who, drawn by his father - in - law, Mithridates, into a quarrel with Rome, was completely overthrown at Tigranocerta (n.c. 69), but was left in power as a client king of the Romans. Armenia thus be came a butter state between the Roman Empire and the Parthians, and was controlled in rapid alternation by the two powers. In A.D. 387 the Byzantines and Persians definitively partitioned the country, the line of the continuing to rule in Persarmenia forty years longer.
About the year 2S5 Christianity
Armenia Minor for a long time had a history of its own. It was made a Roman province in A.D. 70; was conquered from the Byzantines by the Arabs about 633, and recovered by the By zantines 120 years later. In 1080 Rhupen, a de scendant of the Bagratids, made himself inde pendent in Armenia Minor; his successors ex tended their power over Cilicia and Cappadocia, and aided the Crusaders against the Saracens. The house of Rhupen fell in 1393, and the hind, after passing through the hands of the Egyptians and the Persians, came into the possession of the Turks in 1541.
Armenia, therefore, at the present is merely an historical conception. The ancient land is di vided among the Turks, the Russians, and the Persians, and the Armenian people have been scattered over Asia Minor and a considerable territory in Europe. Aspirations toward na tional unity have not been wanting among the Armenians, especially those dwelling in Asiatic Turkey. After 1885 a revolutionary movement, inspired by the Russian Nihilist propaganda, at tained to formidable dimensions. The Porte in trusted the pacification of the country to the Kurds, who constitute the national police. San guinary conflicts, marked by outrageous cruelty on both sides, occurred between the revolutionists and the police in the provinces of Trebizond, Bitlis, and Erzerum, and it was the news of the atrocities committed by Kurds, acting in their official capacity, that stirred Europe and Ameri ca to horror in the years 1895 and 1893. Signs of anti-Armenian feeling had appeared through out Asiatic Turkey as early as the spring of 1S94. In August of that year a massacre of Armenians was perpetrated at Sassmi, and the fever of murder spread all over Asiatic Turkey. All through the spring and summer of 1895 the slaughter of Armenian men, women, and children continued, until the representatives of England, France, and Russia, backed up by their assembled warships, wrested from the Sultan the promise of reparation and reforms. A commission was sent to the scene of conflict to investigate condi tions there, and the Armenian Patriarch was summoned to Constantinople to state the de mands of the Armenians, which included a share in the making of laws and the administration, and proportional representation in the national police. The Sultan's iradc went forth, the com mission labored, and the massacres continued. During the months of October and November Armenians were butchered at Trebizond, Erze rum. Akhissar, Bill is, Zeitun, Swas, Kurun, and Marash. At Diarbekr a pitched battle was fought between Turks and Armenians, in which 5000 men perished. In the Provinces of Erzerum and Trebizond entire villages were devastated, famine and plague attacked the survivors of the massacres, and the Turkish Government was forced, only after the greatest reluctance, into permitting the work of relief organized by Clara Barton and the Red Cross Society to he carried on. The outrages subsided in 1S96, but in Au gust occurred a fearful carnage of Armenians in the streets of Constantinople, perpetrated by a mob at the instigation of the Government, in retaliation for the attack on the Ottoman Bank made by Armenian patriots, August 26-28. At least 4000 Armenians, and probably twice that number, were beaten to death in the streets and on the roofs by the clubs of hired ruffians. Nor could reparation be demanded of the Turk ish Government, inasmuch as the Armenian revo lutionists, by their riotous action, had put them selves and their innocent countrymen outside of the law. Since 1896 the sporadic slaughter of Armenians on a minor scale has continued to the present day; but the attention of the powers has been directed elsewhere, and no real guaran tees for the safety of the unhappy people have been exacted from the Turkish Government.