Armenian

Armenians are natives of the highlands around Ararat and Van; Tigran the Great's kingdom stretched from the Caucasus to the Levant. Arsacid kings made Armenia the first state to adopt Christianity around 301, and Mesrop Mashtots gave the language an alphabet in 405, opening a golden age of religious and historical writing.

After Arab, Seljuk and Mongol upheavals the Bagratid kingdom revived statehood from 885; its 1045 fall and the 1064 Seljuk advance drove migrants to Cilicia, where Rubenid princes built a new Armenian state about 1080. Crowned a kingdom in 1198, it allied with Crusaders and Mongols, prospered at Ayas and fell to Mamluks in 1375.

The homeland passed to Turkmen confederations, then between Ottoman and Safavid empires, whose Amasya and Zuhab treaties of 1555 and 1639 split it for centuries. Armenians formed an Ottoman millet from 1461; Shah Abbas I resettled merchants at New Julfa in 1604, Armenians trading to India. Russo-Persian war ended with the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, the provinces around Yerevan and Sevan passing from Iran to the Russian Empire.