The Armenians claim that the so-called Armenian Plateau is their "historic homeland". They consider Mount Ararat (seen here in a photograph by S. Hambartzumyan, taken from Armenia, looking West towards Turkey) not only sacred but also theirs, and long for the days it will belong to them again. A picture of Mount Ararat is in their Coat of Arms (click here for the symbology) , and their constitution does not recognize the territorial unity of Turkey. As a matter of fact, Armenia is the only country in the world that claims land from all of its neighbors, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Nothing could be farther from the truth than the Armenian claims on the geography, history and cultural heritage of the land in question.
ARMENIAN PLATEAU
The word Armenian Plateau is a geographical connotation designating an elevation between the Anatolian and Persian plateaus. The three plateaus form the northern sector of the Middle East, where many nations throughout history struggled to establish political and military hegemony, as described in Robert H. Hewsen's Armenia: A Historical Atlas. In the same reference, an authorithy on Armenian history, the Russian Professor Diakonoff is quoted as suggesting: Since the population of the Armenian Plateau was quite mixed by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, there was no common designation for the people of the Plateau as a whole. The neighbors of the inhabitants would have called the entire Plateau after the population nearest themselves. For the Aramenans of Syria to the southwest, the inhabitants would be called the Armnaia, a term borrowed from the word Armania, used by the Persians to the southeast, or from the word Armenioi, used by the Greeks to the west. The Urartians called everything west of the Euphrates by the term Hatti. Consequently, they called Hatti the predecessors of "Armenians", who had migrated to the Armenian Plateau from the Hatti lands to the west. Possibly for the same reason, these proto-"Armenians" also called themselves something close to Hattiyos, which would eventually later become Hay-k.It is interesting that Armenians have always called themselves "Hai" or "Haik" (plural), and the land they live on "Hayastan". However, in the mythology they fabricated, mainly to support the thesis of "Historic Armenian Homeland", the etymological connection between the words Hattiyos and Hai has been suppressed. Instead, the source of the word Hai has been attributed to the legendary (and imaginary) hero Haig Nagabeth. Haig's forefather, Aram, supposedly joined the nation together for the first time and the country was called Armenia after him. As to the timeframe all that happened, the Haik contend by telling us that Aram was was of the sons of Shem, who was a son of Noah (!). So, it goes back to the Flood. Oh, also, Haig the Patriarch traveled to Babylon to asist in the construction of the Tower there, and had an affair with Salamis, the Babylonian princess (Salamis, rather, was infatuated with him- a Fatal Attraction of sorts-, but he knew how to get rid of her and her armies). Today, the Haik erect statutes of Haig everywhere, next to monuments of remembrance of the "Armenian Genocide" .
ARMENIA
The origin of the name Armenia remains uncertain. Ara means mountain in Persian. Har-Minni may have meant the mountains of Minni, a country cited in the Bible. Minni itself might have originated from the Mannaeans, who lived in the NW Iranian territories of W. Azerbaijan, c. 850 BC, possibly a branch of the Hurrians. The term Armenia does not originate from an ethnonym (Armenian) representing a race that first settled in the region called Armenia. People who moved to and lived in this land at any particular period of time in history are called Armenians, if they do not claim any other particular ethnicity of their own. For example, Azeris who live on the Armenian Plateau could be called Armenians, but are not. They are called Azeris, because they wish to belong to this particular ethnic lineage. By the same token, the Hai are one type of Armenian, while Hayastan is part of the land the Hai chose to settle in, i.e. Armenia.In this regard, the term Armenia is akin to the term Anatolia. Although there does not exist a particular race called Anatolian, all ethnicities who chose to settle in this particular geography throughout centuries are referred to as Anatolians, be they Hittites, Thracians, Turks, etc.CONSEQUENTLY, AND VERY IMPORTANTLY,
THE WORD "ARMENIA" EXISTED LONG BEFORE THE "HAIK" SETTLED THERE CIRCA 6th c. BC.
IT IS HISTORICALLY AND GEOGRAPHICALLY INCORRECT TO CALL THE HAIK, AND ONLY THE HAIK, ARMENIANS. THIS WOULD DO INJUSTICE TO THE OTHER INHABITANTS OF THE ARMENIAN PLATEAU, NAMELY THE GEORGIANS, AZERIS, RUSSIANS, AND TURKS, WHO SHOULD ALSO BE REFERRED TO COLLECTIVELY AS ARMENIANS, ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION.
THE PEOPLE WHO MONOPOLIZED THE GEOGRAPHIC NAME ARMENIA AS THEIR OWN ETHNONYM IN THE MIND OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD, SHOULD ALWAYS BE CALLED HAI, HAIK, HAYK OR HAIG, JUST LIKE THEY CALL THEMSELVES INTERNALLY.
CALLING THE HAIK ARMENIANS GIVES CREDIT TO THEIR CLAIMS THAT ARMENIA IS THEIR HISTORIC HOMELAND AND THAT THE WHOLE REGION HAD BEEN NAMED AFTER THEM, BECAUSE THEY WERE THERE FIRST.
SIMILARLY, JUST THE SIMPLE FACT OF USING THE WORD GENOCIDE, EVEN THOUGH WE ATTEMPT TO ATTENUATE IT BY ADDING THE QUALIFIER "SO-CALLED" IN FRONT OF IT, IS A CONCESSION IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE THAT THE HAIK IS WAGING, AND WINNING, IN THE WORLD THEATER. THESE ATROCITIES SHOULD BE REFERRED TO AS "THE OTTOMAN SUPPRESSION OF THE HAIK REBELLION".
WE FIRMLY BELIEVE AND STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT THE WORDS "ARMENIAN" AND "GENOCIDE" SHOULD BE AVOIDED IN OUR WRITINGS AND CONVERSATIONS. THIS WOULD BE A FIRST STEP IN REVERSING THE CENTURY-LONG HAIK GAINS IN THIS PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE.
The Haik describe “Greater Historic Armenia” as the land spanning from the Caspian Sea on the east to almost Konya and Kayseri on the west; and from the eastern Black Sea coastal line on the north to almost Antioch on the Mediterranean in the south, much like what the Empire of Tigranes the Great used to be 1st c. BC. Obviously, this megalo-idea of the land, neither Greater, nor Historic, nor Armenian, is a figment of the Haik imagination but, sadly, it has come to be known as the accepted, undisputable historic-geographic dogma of the later 20th century, through the work of Haik “scholars” sponsored by Haik "Institutes" all around the world. Sam Weems in his book "Secrets of a "Christian" Terrorist State: Armenia writes the following:This dream of a "Greater Armenia" that the Russians created in the minds of few Armenians in the mid-1800s continues to this day. The Armenians took this Russian promise (that the Russians had no intention of keeping) and expanded upon it. Today, Armenians claim all the land between the Black and the Mediterranean seas as their "historic homeland". Nothing could be farther from the truth. The English fanned the flame by calling the Asia Minor of the Bible Armenia. It was Prime Minister William E. Gladstone , in the early 1880s, who concocted the idea that it was in Britain's best interests to break up the Ottoman Empire. He wanted to create a number of small friendly states under England's influence in place of the larger Ottoman Empire. Gladstone asked to the British press to refer to eastern Anatolia as "Armenia". British consulates were opened throughout the region, and their purpose was to make contact with the local Christian population. An Anglo-Armenian Friendship Committee was organized in London with the express purpose of influencing public opinion. Many more Christian missionaries were sent into what England had started calling "Armenia".
ARARAT
Etymologically the word comes from the Bible, and has nothing to do with the Haik or the Haik language. Nevertheless, for some strange reason, grandiose actually, linked to their fabricated mythology, the Haik think that they own Mount Ararat.
HATTI AND HITTITES
The Hatti were local aboriginal population of Anatolia who lived in small city states/princedoms, until taken over by the Hittites. They spoke a non Indo-European language. The Hittites, an Indo-European, nomadic, illiterate tribe, invaded Anatolia from the northwest along with the Cassites and the Hurrians (both of which were non Indo-European) around 2100 BC., over the Balkans. They are part of the tribes that moved in from the northern lands stretching from the North Sea to the Urals. They moved South because of the onset of the mini-ice age and the economic attractiveness of the rich and easy to conquer South. By 1900 BC, they had already setled in the Hatti lands and began to impose their superiority over the natives. By 1600s BC, Hattusas (the old Hatti capital) was made their capital, and they were producing tablets in the Mesopotamian cuneiform script. The Hittites formed a powerful empire, sustained by agriculture, arts, trade, and mining, and protected by a mighty army equipped with the light war chariot with spoked wheels and pulled by swift horses, an invention attributed to them as improvement over the bulkier Summerian war chariot.The Hittite Empire started around 1800 BCE. They got very weak around 1650 BCE but pulled themselves together and formed the Great Hittite Empire around 1600 BCE, which lasted until 1200. At about the same time, Troy was destroyed. Some scholars claim that Troy, or Wilusa in Hittite tablets, was a Hittite frontier city ruled by a prince who was a subordinate of the Hittite King.The end of the Hittites came around 1200 BC, when powerful invaders poured upon Asia Minor from all directions. Called collectively as the Sea Peoples (correct the source, these warrior tribes consisted of the Phrygians, Thracians, the Aecheans, and an unnamed entity from the South, which destroyed Ugarit in Syrian territory.After the destruction of the powerful Hittite Empire, various principalities continued to exist without military and political cohesion among themselves. Tribes of the Phrygians from Europe, and their kin the Mushki divided the Anatolian Plateau among them. In many Hittite principalities, camel-raiding Semitic tribesmen from North Arabian desert moved into settled areas but, due to competition among themselves, could not survive in front of Assyrian and Babylonian pressure. "Assyria" Assyria (correct the source) became the dominant power in the region.At the end of this period, the "Urartians" Urartu (correct the source) Kingdom started to emerge around modern day Van. Urartians were the only state to withstand the Assyrian attacks and siege to their cities, esp. Van. The Urartians, too, finally succumbed to attacks, not from the Assyrians but from the Scythians. Combining forces with the Medes and the Babylonians, the Scythians would later topple the powerful Assyrian Kingdom, as well, in 612 BC.
HURRIANS
Beginning from c. 2300 BC, the Hurrians descended from the mountains of the South Caspian and occupied the land in the great bend of the Euphrates River, between the Hittites and Assyria, stretching from the Khabur Valler to the Zagros Mountains (Amelie Kuhrt "The Ancient Middle East"). Although their capital Washukkanni has never been located, it is now thought to be in northern Syria. The end of the Akkadian Empire enabled the Hurrians to control the area militarily and dominate the people culturally.Hurrians were local people like the Hattis. They were pushed from South Central Anatolia further South East by the Hittites.Ethnically, the Hurrians (click here) were neither Semitic nor Indo-European. Linguistically, their tongue was ergative [click here](like Kurdish) and agglutinative [click here](like Turkish). The language called Armenian today is neither: It belongs to the Satem group of Indo-European languages.Culturally, the Hurrians adopted the Akkadian cuneiform script. Their gods were similar to Anatolian deities.Although similarities between Hurrian and Armenian words have been suggested by Armenian researchers [Martiros Kavoukjian ‘The Genesis of Armenian People’, Montreal, 1982; Raphael Ishkhanian, ‘Illustrated History of Armenia’, Yerevan, 1989], this can only be due to the persistence of Hurrian cultural influence on all ethnicities which inhabited the region at some point or another, such as the Urartus or the Kurds. Attempts to relate the Haik of today to the Hurris of the distant past, is at best, a stretch and at worst, a chronological fallacy.
MITTANNIS
Around 1600 BC, an Iranian (Indo-Aryan) class of warrior kings, called the Mittanni, began to rule the Hurris. Around 1350, the Hittites defeated the Mittannis. And, starting from around 1300 BC, the Hurrians have been assimilated into the other ethnicities of the region; thus disappearing completely from the scene of history. Their culture, however, particularly their language, lived on in that of other nations, such as the Hittites and the Urartus. Eventually, that, too, disappeared to be replaced by an Assyrian dialect of Akkadian or, more likely, Arameic.
NAIRI STATES
The Hayik also adopted Nairi as a common women's name in their language, claiming that Armenian history can be traced back to the Nairi States era. However, there was no relation between the Nairi States and the Hayik. The truth of the matter is that the Nairi States, particularly the Hayasa, and the Hurrian States, particularly the Mittannis, were established in the Armenian Plateau at least 800-1000 years before the arrival of the proto-Hayik in the region. The Nairi States were weakened through constant warfare with the Hittites. The Hittites could not destroy them fully, nor could they conquer any of the other native peoples of the Armenian plateau east of Euphrates. It was the Assyrians who wreaked havoc on the Nairi states. Nairi proper was known to them as Bohtan-su. Finally, the Sea Peoples (Thracians and Phyrigians) from Balkans destroyed Hittites in the 12 B.C. The accepted theory is that the proto-Hayik were the south-easternmost arm of the Phyrigians, arriving in the region about 6th c. BC, and mixing with the remnants of the Nairi States and the Hurri in the wake of the devastation caused earlier by the onslaught of the Sea Peoples.
HAYASA-AZZI
The Haik assume that there is a relation between the Hayasa-Azzi and their name. They identify Hayasa or Khayasa with Haik, Hark or Hayk ( Kretschmer P. Vahan M. Kurkjian, 'History of Armenia', Ch 6. Published by the Armenian General Benvolent Union of America, 1958). However, Hayasa-Azzi, one of the Nairi states in the 13th c. BC, was a political formation centered around modern Giresun, speaking a Hattic language [Hewsen]. But there is no ethnic, linguistic, geographic or even chronologic connection between the Hayasa and the Hayik (Armenians), who emerged much later, in the 6th c. B.C.
THE SEA PEOPLES
At about 1200 BC, Dorians, Thracians and Phrygians fell upon the Anatolian Peninsula and wreaked havoc to the existing civilizations there. Most historians believe that the cause of the Sea Peoples were the "Barbarian Dorians", who are the ancestors of the Spartans. Moving over the Balkans, they destroyed and pushed everyone in front of them, raping pillaging, killing, until they reached the Morean Peninsula, where the Palesgians (ancestors of Palestinians) lived. Palesgians had to move to today's Palestine, pushing people in front of them, which included the Hurrians, Hittites, and some Myceneans. These were horrible years (1200-800BCE) where writing, art, and law and order vanished. Dorians, being the ancestors of the Spartans, the West is not much interested in talking about this much uncivilized period which constituted the historical and cultural foundation for what would be Hellenistic civilization later. Dorians destroyed the civilization in Mycaene (mainland Greece), while the Thracians ended Troy on the northeastern Aegean cost. Dorians and Thracians, collectively called Achaeans (e.g. by Homerus) are the ancestors of today’s Greeks. Phrygians, on the other hand, moved into western and central Anatolia, making Kutahya their capital.Dorians did not destroy the Minoan Civilization. It was already weakened by the huge volcanic explosion in the Island of Thera around 1650 BC, followed by the Mycenaean invasion around 1450 BCE. Minoans were Anatolian people who moved in the island around 7,000 BCE. They used the Linear B alphabet which is still un-deciphered. Some claim that this alphabet was of Middle Eastern or Egyptian origin. After Mycenaean takeover, they started using the Linear B alphabet which is claimed to be the very early form of a Greek alphabet (which is really the Phoenician alphabet with consonants added).
ARMENS
The Hayik claim that the main Proto-Haik tribe was the Armens, supposedly one of the three Sea Peoples, along with the Aecheans and the Phrygians [Fr. Hrozny in Kurkjian, op.ed.]. They claim that other historians coincide in Hrozny's opinion that the “Phrygians and the Armens became the heirs of the powerful Hittite Empire”.
URARTU
The Hayik also claim that they are the same people as the Urartu. That, too, is stretch of their imagination in their attempts to create a solid historical foundation for their claims to the land. The Urartians separated from the Hurrians sometime in the 3rd millennium BC (the 2000s). Following the weakening of the Hittite Kingdom at about 1200 BC, various ethno-political entities that had formed over the subsequent 300 years were united by Biainele king Arame (858), in the high lands surrounding the Mount Ararat, hence their name Uruartu (Assyrian) or Urastu (Babylonian) or RRT (in the Old Testament) or Ararat (in the Greek Septuagint). Arame’s successors made Van (Tuspa, Khauon Gr., derived from Bianinele) their capital. This federation, under its Assyrian name of Urartu, lasted 300 years.Urartu kingdom reached its zenith under Kings Menuas (810-714) and Rusa II (685-645). King Menuas’ name was assimilated into the Haik God Mher (Persian Mithra, Greek Mithras), and gate of Mher near Van was named after him.Linguistically, Urartu’s were Hurrian speakers. Culturally, they were under a strong Assyrian influence and adopted an Assyrian cuneiform script. Their custume, armor, and weaponry were influenced by the Hittite. Most importantly, though, the Urartian-Hurrian language group had absolutely no affinity with the modern Hayik language. The Urartian deities were Anatolian: Haldi or Khaldi after whom Urartians were first called Chaldeans in 19th century. The Hittite god Siuni was adopted by the Hayik as Siwni, after which the princely lineage -Siwnik was named.Assyria and Urartu fought constantly. But Urartu was finally overrun by Scythians, and its territory was conquered by Medes. Medes were an Iranian people, settled in the Northwest Iran since about 836 BC. In 652, they passed under Scythian rule. In 612, Medes, Scythians, and Babylonians jointly attacked and took Niheveh, officially ending the Assyrian Empire. But before continuing any further, let us take a look at the Medes and other Aryan groups that inhabited the Persian Plateau during the first 2 millennia BC.
PERSIAN PLATEAU
The history of the region is told by the Middle Eastern expert Sandra Mackey , in her book 'The Iranians: Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation' (Plume Printing, NY, April 1998). The section below is adapted from Mackey (pp. 14- ): During the end of the 3rd millennium BC, the hunter-gatherers of Neolithic times gradually gave way to organized society. Among the most advanced of these societies was Elam, spreading over the lowlands east of the Tigris and Euphrates and climbing into the western Zagros Mountains. Drawing from the Sumerian culture of the Fertile Crescent and adding to it elements that were uniquely its own, Elam by the middle of the 11th c. BC had reached an extraordinarily high level of artistic achievement. Soon, successive groups of Aryans were migrating out of the steppelands of Central Asia, moving down the eastern side of the Caspian Sea, and into western Iran. The Medes came first, around 800s. To avoid confrontation with the mighty Assyria to the west, the Medes settled into the Zagros Mountains. Perhaps a century later, the leather-helmeted Persians riding horses hung with bronze ornaments followed. Eluding both the Assyrians and the Medes, they wandered south along a norrow route drawn by mountains to the West and deserts to the east. When they reached Fars, near the center of the Iranian Plateau, they stopped. There, in the dry plains and barren mountains of Fars, they planted the seeds of the Persian culture. During the 500s BC, the Persians, along with other societies on the Iranian Plateau, assumed more complex forms as they made the transition from nomadism to settlement. Among other things, they adopted Zoroastrianism as their religion and the local god, Ahura Mazda, as their principal deity. During the 1200 years between the founding of the of the Persian Empire and the arrival of Islam in the 7th century AD, Persian culture and Persian identity took form on the Iranian Plateau. It developed under the four dynasties of pre-Islamic Iran: The Achamenian, Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanian.
Achamenids:The great Persian Empire of the 500s to 200s BC was almost the by-product of the search for security by the Persians of Fars, in a quest for land, water, protection, order, leadership, and morality. In essence, the history of ancient Iran began when Cyrus of Fars deposed the king of Media to unite the Persians and the Medes. Cyrus, who ascended the Persian throne in 559 BC, was the son of Cambyses (grandson of the first Persian king, Achaemenis) and Mandane (daughter of Median king Astyages). In 550, capturing the Medean capital Ekbatana (now Hamadan), he united the Persians and the Medes who, by that time, were also ruling over the Elamites. In 547, he crossed the Tigris and laid siege to the Lydian capital Sardis of King Croesus, capturing the city before winter set in. He then built his capital, Pasargadae, in the southern reaches of the Persian heartland, 60 miles northeast of modern day Shiraz. Next, in 540, he conquered Babylon, liberating the Jews from their captivity since the time of Nebuchadnezzar. By the end of his reign, Cyrus had formed an empire, based on the Zoroastrian principles of toleration and justice, spanning the Nile, the Aegean, and the Indus, and stretching north to south from Africa to China. His efficiently administered empire generally lived in peace. The exception was a corner in northeast where the Massagetaes, a nomadic branch of the Scythians who ranged the steppes along the Jacartes River, continued to defy the Persian rule. Cyrus died in 530, in a battle against them. Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who pushed the Empire into Egypt. Upon his death in 521, Darius, the King's 28 year-old spear bearer assumed the throne and married Cambyses' widow and Cyrus' daughter. After crushing a rebellion, he drove his armies east to Punjab in India in 517 BC, then west to Libya and to the lower Danube in 512 BC. He also moved the capital of the Empire 50 miles from Pasargadae to Persepolis. Darius had the Behistun stone erected 486, packing it with instructions about his deeds in three languages: Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. The earliest recorded reference to Armenia occurs in the Behistun documents, among the regions subjected to Persian rule by the king. By the time he died in 486, a distinctive Persian culture had established itself.Xerxes, Darius' successor and the last of the great Achaemenian kings, took his army against the Greeks in 481 BC. Crossing the Hellespont (Dardanelles) and moving quickly through Macedonia, the Persian army met and defeated the Spartans in Thermopylae and swept on through Attica, burning towns and villages as it went. Taking Athens, the Persians stormed the Acropolis and set fire to the partially finished Parthenon. But stripped of much of its naval support by the battle of Salamis, the Persian infantry lost to the Greeks at Plataea. Returning to Persepolis in defeat, Xerxes spent much of his time seeking pleasure in his harem, until he was murdered in 465 by a palace conspirator. In 332 BC, 130 years after his death, Persia succumbed to the armies of Alexander the Macedonian, who burnt Persepolis to the ground.
Seleucids: For 42 years after the death of Alexander, his generals squabbled over possession of his legacy. In the end, the empire was divided. Egypt went to Ptolemy. The remainder, including Persia, was seized by Seleucis, whose Seleucid line ruled Persia between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC. But, while in the Seleucid territories of Syria and Asia Minor Hellenism flowered, in Iran it only remained an influence as the Persian majority (with the exception of the elite) held to their traditional culture and nursed their differences with their Greek masters. As early as 280 BC, Fars established its independence in an uprising against the Seleucids. Fars reverted to a series of tribal monarchies similar to those from which Cyrus had sprung. Seleucid rule was finally lifted from Persia after 160 years, by a tribe of nomadic Aryans, the Parthians.
Parthians: Advancing down the eastern side of the Caspian Sea about the time Alexander died, the Parthians settled in Iran, where they began to absorb the culture of Persia. In 163 BC, the Parthians severed the main artery connecting Persia to the rest of the Seleucid Empire, reuniting the northern and southern ends of the Iranian Plateau and giving birth again to Persia. The Parthians' single most important achievement was to fight and and check the Romans for 300 years, ensuring that Persia escaped the orbit of the West. In 53 BC, the Parthian army killed 20 thousand Romans in one battle. In 36 BC, in Azarbeijan, the mounted bowmen faced the famous general Mark Anthony. In one confrontation, Rome lost 35 thousand men out of a force of approximately 100 thousand. Mark Anthony fled to the arms of Cleopatra and Rome retreated west of the Tigris, surrendring its chance to further expand its empire eastward. The Parthians lasted a little less than 400 years, from 163 BC to 224 AD, because of the inability of any king to establish and maintain control over his kingdom.
Sassanids: One of the tribal dynasties in Fars ruled at a place called Istakhr, between Pasargadae and Persepolis, by a man called Papak, son of Sassanian, the keeper of the shrine of Anahita, the Zoroastrian provider of water. In 208 AD, Papak's son, Ardeshir, succeeded to his father's throne and, in 224, challenged the last Parthian king, Ardavan, to single combat for the title of King of Kings. His victory ushered the Sassanid epoch, which lasted until 637 AD, and constituted one of the notable ages of Iranian history in the form of a renaissance of Persian culture, the charisma of kingship, and the religion of Zoroastrianism. Ardeshir's successor, Shapour I, once more took Persia into war against Rome, repeatedly defeating the Roman army and capturing the Emperor Valerian. Between 560 and 579, Khosrow (Husrev) I, sat on the throne, moved his capital to Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia, and succeeded in reestablishing Persia as a military power. From 602 to 620, the Persians drove into Byzantine territories, capturing Antioch, Jerusalem, Sardis, Ephesus, Alexandria and Egypt. But in 626, Byzantium struck back and, in a brilliant flank attack, sailed across the Black Sea, positioned itself in the Caucasus, tore through Armenia and Azerbaijan and into Mesopotamia, capturing Ctesiphon, and paved the way for the fall of Iran to the Arabs in the following decade. Notes:Because of the Achamaenids, Persians are known as Acem in Turkish.Regarding the Haik during all this time: It is during the Median interlude that the Haik first appear as a distinct people.Xenophon mentions the word Armenian in his Cyropedia (Education of Cyrus).When the Persian Sassanids overthrew Parthian Arsacids in 224, the Arsacid king in Armenia he thought of himself as having become independent with the downfall of the Arsacids in Persia. But Sassanids, under Ardashid I overthrew him and appointed a Sassanid king in his place.
HAIK
According to Hewsen (Historical Introduction), Armenian history can be divided into ancient, medieval and modern eras. Although this account is highly biased toward the Haik view of historical distortion to make ancient civilizations appear as part of Haik legacy, it is useful to quote it here from a point of view of studying what the enemy thesis is. Below is an exact copy of Hewswen's account.
Ancient Armenian History:
Prehistoric Period (? - 9th c. BC): Old, Middle and New Stone Ages and the period of Nairi States,
The Urartian Period (9th c. - 6th c.BC)
Achaemenid Occupation (c. 550 BC - 330 BC)
Orontid-Artaxiad Period (c. 330 BC - 1st c. AD)
Pre-Christian Arsacid Period (1st c. - 4th c.)
Christian Arsacid Period (314 - 428)
Medieval Armenian History:
Post Arsacid Period and Period of Byzantine-Persian Wars (428-654)
Arab Period (564-885)
Bagratid Period (885-1064)
Seljuk Period (1064-1199)
Georgian Period (1199-1236)
Monghol/Ilkhanid Period (1236-1335)
Cilician Period (1080-1375)
Period of the Barony (1080-1198)
Period of the Kingdom (1198-1375)
Modern Armenian History:
Early Period: From the fall of the Cilician Kingdom (1375 AD) to the rise of the Armenian Question (1878), including as subdivisions:
Post-Ilkhanid Turkoman Period (1355-1478)
Ottoman-Safavid Period (1478-1722)
Period of Russian Expansion into Caucasia
Modern Period (1878-1991), subdivided into:
Period of the Armenian Question (1878-1920)
Soviet Era (1920-1991)
Contemporary History (1991-present)
Greeks first came in contact with Caucasian races (e.g. Persians) in late Urartu periods [Persian Koh-Kas Mount Kas, or Kas-pian Sea]. First Greek colonists named Black Sea Pontus Axeinos, after the Persian Aksaina-dark. The Haik had nothing to do with this interface.
The only time the Haik had their independence was under the
reign of … between … and …. [Click Here]. Other than that, they always
lived subjugated to other Empires.
Next: Treatment of Minorities by the Ottomans
