A single family comprises a very large number of members, all living in the same house. In one house in which I visited there were not less than thirty. I photographed a group of five generations in this family, each person being in direct lineal descent. The infant is the son of the pretty young lady on the left of the picture, and it reposes on the lap of her great-grandmother ([Fig. 169]).
To Erzerum belongs an antiquity which, if not remote, is at least respectable; and her history, or rather the glimpses which we obtain of that history, illustrate the time-honoured struggle between East and West. Founded during the reign of the second Theodosius (A.D. 408–450), at the instance of one of the greatest of the early Armenian patriarchs, and upon the site of a village which dated from ancient times,[20] the new city received the name of Theodosiopolis, and was designed to constitute an outer bulwark to the Roman Empire of the East. In the description of this event which we receive from Moses of Khorene the traveller recognises the familiar surroundings of the present town. The emissary of the emperor had journeyed over an extensive tract of country in search of a suitable site. His choice at length fell upon a position in the province of Karin, at the foot of a mountain in which several rivulets had their origin. At no great distance were situated the sources of the Euphrates, which, collecting into a sluggish stream, formed a large marsh, supporting abundance of wildfowl, on the eggs of which the inhabitants lived. The province lay in the centre of the country. Upon this site were laid the foundations of a fortified city, defended by moat and walls and towers. Baths of solid masonry were erected in the vicinity over the hot springs which welled from the ground.[21]
Seized in the year 502 by the Sasanian king of Persia at the inception of his war with Rome, this remote stronghold was shortly afterwards recovered by the Emperor Anastasius and restored to its former fame.[22] The fortifications were enlarged and increased by Justinian;[23] but at the close of the sixth century it again fell into Persian hands.[24] I do not know that we are able to follow its fortunes during the campaigns of Heraclius, who is said to have assembled there a council of Armenian bishops (A.D. 629?).[25] In the year 647 Theodosiopolis became the prize of the Arabs; and more than a century elapsed before it was regained by the Cæsars under Constantine the Fifth (755).[26] That monarch razed the walls, reduced the inhabitants to slavery, and transported a great number of Armenians of the Paulician sect to Constantinople and to Thrace.[27] Shortly after this event it appears to have been rebuilt by the Mussulmans; and it played an important part during the wars of Leo (886–911) and his son Constantine Porphyrogenitus (911–959) with the Arabs in the neighbouring province of Pasin.[28] But the waves of Mussulman conquest were closing in upon the Eastern Empire. About the commencement of the thirteenth century we find the place in the possession of a prince who bears the Turkish name of Toghrul Ben Kilijarslan. From his hands it passed into the dominions of the Sultan of Iconium.[29] The Seljuk Sultan was known as the lord of Erzerum, just as his Ottoman successors bore the title of lords of Kars.[30] The rule of the Seljuks was followed by that of their Tartar conquerors. In the first half of the fifteenth century Erzerum was in the keeping of the Turkomans, from whom it was wrested by the Ottomans under Mohammed II.[31]
The name Erzerum dates from Mussulman times, but its exact derivation is obscure. It may either signify the land (Ard in Arabic, Arz in Turkish) of Rum, or of the Roman Empire; or it may be compounded of this last name and of the name of an unfortified town in the vicinity which was known as Artze or Artsn. It is quite probable that this town was at an early date called Artze of Rum to distinguish it from another Artze in the south of Armenia which lay within the Persian sphere.[32] Local tradition places the site of the first of these Artzes close to the present city and on or near the banks of the Kara Su. We know that the place was sacked by the Turks in the middle of the eleventh century;[33] and according to Saint Martin the survivors took refuge within the walls of Theodosiopolis, to which they transferred the name of their own populous town.[34] However this may be, the ancient Armenian name of Karin is still applied to the present city.[35] The monuments of the Eastern Empire have been seen in Erzerum by modern travellers; and the chain of history has not been broken in a manner to disparage the identity of the Roman fortress with this key to the Asiatic dominions of the Ottoman Turks.
[1] The cone of Sheikhjik was visited by Dr. Wagner in the forties and has been described by him at some length (Reise nach Persien, Leipzig, 1852, vol. i. pp. 231 seq.). [↑]
[2] Smith and Dwight, Missionary Researches in Armenia, London, 1834, p. 62. [↑]
[3] The Jesuit father, Thomas Charles Fleurian (Estat présent de l’Arménie, Paris, 1694, 8vo, p. 81), speaks of Erzerum as “capitale de la haute Arménie sous la domination du Grand Seigneur ... une fort grande ville ... fort peuplée et fort riche; c’est le centre du commerce de tous ces païs-là. Les caravanes qui vont de Perse à Alep, ou à Smirne, ou à Constantinople; ou celles qui viennent de ces mêmes endroits en Perse passent toutes à Erzerom.” [↑]
[4] Tournefort, Voyage au Levant, Paris, 1717, vol. ii. p. 279, and cp. Schillinger, Persianische und Ost-Indianische Reise, Nürnberg, 1707, 8vo, p. 81. It is a relief to read the warm sentiments of Tournefort towards Mr. Prescot (such was the name of the British agent) in contrast to the verjuice with which our contemporary French travellers think it their duty to steep their pens when speaking of English enterprise or its agents in distant lands. The contrast enables us to measure the difference between the France of Louis XIV. and that of the Presidents. [↑]