Arapgir (also
Arabkir or
Arabgir,
ArmenianThe Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
: , known as
Arabraces during
ByzantineThe Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on the capital of Constantinople, and ruled by Emperors in direct and de jure succession to the ancient Roman Emperors...
rule) is the name of a town and district of
Malatya ProvinceMalatya Province is a province of Turkey. It is part of a larger mountainous area. The capital of the province is Malatya , which has many residents. Malatya is famous for its apricots. The area of Malatya province is 12,313 km². Malatya Province has 923,248 inhabitants. The population was...
,
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
. As of 2000 it had a population of 17,070 people. It is situated in the confluence of the eastern and western
EuphratesThe Euphrates is the longest and historically one of the most important rivers of Southwest Asia. Together with the Tigris, the Euphrates is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...
river, but some miles from the right bank of the combined streams. Arapgir is connected with Sivas by a
chaussée, prolonged to the Euphrates river.
Arapgir (also
Arabkir or
Arabgir,
ArmenianThe Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
: , known as
Arabraces during
ByzantineThe Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on the capital of Constantinople, and ruled by Emperors in direct and de jure succession to the ancient Roman Emperors...
rule) is the name of a town and district of
Malatya ProvinceMalatya Province is a province of Turkey. It is part of a larger mountainous area. The capital of the province is Malatya , which has many residents. Malatya is famous for its apricots. The area of Malatya province is 12,313 km². Malatya Province has 923,248 inhabitants. The population was...
,
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
. As of 2000 it had a population of 17,070 people. It is situated in the confluence of the eastern and western
EuphratesThe Euphrates is the longest and historically one of the most important rivers of Southwest Asia. Together with the Tigris, the Euphrates is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...
river, but some miles from the right bank of the combined streams. Arapgir is connected with Sivas by a
chaussée, prolonged to the Euphrates river. The present town was built in the mid-19th century, but about 2 miles north-east is the old town, now called Eskişehir ("old city" in Turkish).
History
The history of the city goes to BC 852. The old town of Arapgir was founded by Seneqerim in 1021, who was the last king of the
ArmenianArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
Vaspurakan kingdomVaspurakan was first a province and then a kingdom of Greater Armenia during the Middle Ages centered around Lake Van. The region is considered to be the cradle of Armenian civilization...
. It remained under Armenian control and was a vassal of the Byzantine Empire until 1070, when the Seljuk dynasty conquered the city. In the 14th century the Ottoman Empire gained the city from the
Seljuk dynastyThe Seljuq were a Turco-Persian Sunni Muslim dynasty that ruled parts of Central Asia and the Middle East from the 11th to 14th centuries...
. Under
OttomanThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
rule, Arapgir was part of Mamuret-el-Aziz Province. The town was famous for the grapes and mulberries that grew in the area.
Arapgir was the site of a fascinating story of rising textile imports and
industrial growthAn industry is the manufacturing of a good or service within a category. Although industry is a broad term for any kind of economic production, in economics and urban planning industry is a synonym for the secondary sector, which is a type of economic activity involved in the manufacturing of raw...
as of the 1830s. In 1836, some 1,000 looms in Arapgir were weaving cotton goods from
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927...
yarn and by 1907, some 1,200. Durability and color fastness of locally made
manusa textile also retained its competitive position. The city grew larger than the province (vilayet) center of Harput and a municipal administration was established in 1883. In 1895 the town of Arabgir was destroyed in the massacres against the Armenians under
Abdul Hamid IIHis Imperial Majesty, The Sultan Abdülhamid II, Emperor of the Ottomans, Caliph of the Faithful, , was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire...
.
Population
According to a Cambridge University study, Arapgir in the 1880s held 4,800 Muslim and 1,200 Armenian homes, with a total population of about 29,000 persons. According to a
METUMetu is a market town in southwestern Ethiopia. Located in the Illubabor Zone of the Oromia Region along the Sor River, this town has a latitude and longitude of and an altitude of 1605 meters...
study citing Nejat Göyünç, the city population was about 20,000 in 1911, of which more than half of the population was
ArmenianThe Armenians are a nation and ethnic group which originated in the Caucasus and the Armenian Highland. It is estimated that there are 8 million Armenians around the world. There is a large concentration of Armenians in the Caucasus, especially in Armenia, and there is a significant presence in...
Christians and the rest were
Muslim:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...
. Differing sources present differing pictures for the respective shares of ethnicities within the weavers' community. The Armenian population is reported to have suffered severely during the
Hamidian massacresThe Hamidian massacres, also referred to as the Armenian Massacres of 1894-1896, refers to the massacring of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, with estimates of the dead ranging from 80,000 to 300,000, and at least 50,000 orphans as a result...
of 1895 although, in this regard, Donald Quataert notes, with textile exports back to normal levels a year after the turmoil, in 1896, either all weavers were Muslims after all, or few Armenian weavers were killed, displaced or disrupted during the troubles. In 1915 there were about 33,000 Armenians living in Arapgir . After 1915
Armenian GenocideThe Armenian Genocide , also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Calamity , was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...
, most of the Armenian population of Arapgir was killed or escaped to
ArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
. In 1922 the remaining 800 Armenians of Arapgir settled in Soviet Armenia. Most people that escaped the genocide settled in
YerevanYerevan is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously-inhabited cities. It is situated on the Hrazdan River, and is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country...
a district called
Arabkir DistrictArabkir District is a neighborhood that used to be a separate village in Yerevan, Armenia. At the census in 2001, it had a population of over 132,000. It is bordered by the Hrazdan River to the north and west, the Kentron to the south, and Kanaker-Zeytun to the east...
.
Churches, Mosques, Buildings
Armenians had 7 churches in the town, three of those churches were St. Hakob, St. Gevorg and St. Grigor. There were also more than 10 schools in the town. The biggest church which was able to house 3,000 people was attacked and looted and burnt in 1915. After the war the church was repaired and was used as a school. It was demolished in the late 1950s. Little is left of pre-war Arapgir, but there are still some old houses that have survived, which are Armenian origin. The town also contains the ruins of a castle, several Seljuk mosques, old cemetery and silver mines.
External links