Tales From Lostlandia

[Arpa]

Well, actually it is spelt "Handut" because that is how I have spelt it, and how the English translation of the 1878 report spelt it! The "h" is pronounced in a rough, hard way, like "kh". I doubt that it has ever been written down in any Turkish book. 

That may have been a europeanization. Even then the kemalization/conversion of KH to H did not happen overnight, I do remember some women whose names were Khatun or Khanum were called Hatun and Hanum respectively and this by people who had left their villages long before Kemalization, it was probably an Istanbul thing.

 

 

Back to Khandout/Khnadut one more cryptic reference from the Daredevils of Sassoun by Leon Surmelian. A footnote. Among others; ".... and Khnadut's father is an idependent chieftain, a prince of high rank in Iranian Azerbaijan. The Armenian bards present this Iranian princess as a perfection of all feminine virtues, even though she belongs to an enemy race. In some Variants she resides in Blue Rock, and her her nationality is not given."

 

Of course we also know that "Khandut" is a variation of "Khandukht"(much like Sandukht)which literally means the dokhter/daughter of khan(prince/king), in Armenian we rather use "dustr" to mean daughter.

There is not much to go about Khandut except the above. I may have failed to indicate that its mention leaves it open as to which derived from which.

 

 

But the name Kaput is interesting - I'm not actually sure that it is a corruption of the name Handut, if Handut is a real name as you suggest. Is the castle named after the river and valley, or is the the river and valley named after the castle? Kaput is similar to the Armenian word for "blue", isn't it? Which could describe the river. But if the castle's name actually comes from the Turkish word for cloak, which describes the castle's wall, then why is that name being used by Armenians as far back as the 13th century?

 

Steve

 

As to Kaput/Kapuyt you may have hit it on the head. Very good Steve.

 

"Kapuyt: Berd Mets hayki Ayrarat nahangi Eraskhadzor gavarum. Fortress in the Ayrarat region of Greater Hayk on top of the mountain of the same name..... skip...Some think it is the walled castle whose ruins lay near the one time village of Hrhet. According to S. Haykumi it may be one and the same as the ruins which lie on the rocky bank of Kaputa/Kapuyt River."

 

There seem to be several analyses of Sasuntsi Davit. I wonder if those living in Yerevan can shed some more light on those places.

Edited April 8, 2004 by Arpa

[bellthecat]

Didn't you encounter any difficulties with the authorities, bell?

Nothing more than that which I mentioned. But I also mentioned having to try and not to show too much curiosity about things, and I was not able to do things like make a sketch plan of the ruins for the same reason.

[Arpa]

Once a gain Steve, thank you for a fascinating story.

You seem to have a passion for archeology, is that a profession as well?

 

One thing that has fascinated me is the location of the Battle of Avarayr. Of all the historical sites it seems to be one with the most detailed description. According to eyewitnesses (Yeghishe et al) it is supposed to be located at the bank of Tghmut River, which btw literally means "muddy", hence probably a very small creek. According to some sources the field of Avarayr coincides with the NW Iranian town of GaraZiaEddin of today.

If you observe the map below it is directly west of Jugha/Julfa at the sothwest corner of Nakhijevan, next to that square at the top of highway 11. Move directly left from that point, at the intersection NS and EW highways is the town of GaraZiaEddin, about 2mm north of the highway sign(I think #32) designated with a white circle. It seems to be about 15 miles north of the largest city of the area, Khoy,at the bottom of the loop of route 11.

 

What has puzzled me is that the said location, having been the best described historical site, and in a relatively less hostile territory, has never been actually investigated, not to my knowledge anyway.

If the Battle of Avarayr did in fact happen and at that location one would be inclined to believe that there would be some traces and relics left be it animate(?) or inanimate.

Does anyone know if the site has ever ever searched?

How about it Steve? Will that be your next project?

 

Map NW Iran; Click at the northwesternmost "horn" of Iran to get a detailed map of the area.

http://www.arianews.com/iranmap/

[bellthecat]

The End of the Road

 

In the year 1021, Senekerim-Hovhannes Artsrouni of Vaspurakan ceded his kingdom around Lake Van to the Byzantine Empire. He was given the province of Sebastea in exchange; a region that probably already had a substantial Armenian minority. Senekerim and a large number of his subjects then moved to the city of Sebastea today called Sivas. His son was still ruling there when the Seljuk Turks captured Sivas in the early 1080s. That event ended the independence of Sivas’s Armenians, but they continued to live in the city, sometimes surviving periods of great hardship.

 

At the outbreak of the First World War Sivas still had about 15,000 Armenians out of a total population of 40,000, and many more Armenians lived in the surrounding villages. In 1915 they were almost all deported. About 1500 survivors managed to return to Sivas after the war. By the 1930s this population had grown to 3000, mostly due to immigration from the villages. But the population was not sustainable: the influx from the countryside was soon exhausted, the old died and the young moved away to Istanbul, to Soviet Armenia, to America. Today there are only about 40 Armenians left in Sivas. There is also still a scattering of Armenians, mostly elderly, in villages around Sivas. Many villages also have one or two people who will say that they had Armenian mothers or grandmothers (and probably many more who will not publicly admit it).

 

From Sivas’s former citadel, now just a park on a hill and devoid of historic interest, I compared the present day panorama with that on a pre-1915 photograph. The view was still impressive, but only a few of the old landmarks remained, such as the 13th century minaret of the Great Mosque and, perched at the highest point of a line of cliffs at the city’s eastern edge, the mostly 17th century Mosque of Abdulvehap (which tradition said was built on the site of an Armenian church). Almost nothing else was the same, all the old houses had been replaced by modern constructions. Today there are over 250,000 people living in Sivas and new suburbs of tall apartment blocks stretch far beyond the old boundaries of the city.

 

South of the citadel there used to be a big Armenian cemetery within a walled enclosure. There was also once a magnificent cathedral there, but that had been destroyed by Tamerlane in 1311. Dedicated to the 40 holy martyrs of Sebastea, it was said to have had 40 domes. The destruction of the graveyard occurred much later, sometime after 1915. A few of its gravestones may have ended up in the gardens of the town’s museum, where they lie hidden away in odd corners, often behind bushes. The fate of the rest can be guessed at - I spotted several gravestones re-used in a modern wall of the citadel park. Even those in the museum are not safe; at least one had vanished since my first visit in the early 1990s and another now lay face down.

 

I had arrived at Sivas on Turkey’s "Independence Day". That evening, along the main street, there was a short parade consisting of about 30 men dressed in the elaborate uniforms of the Ottoman army when the empire was at its height. They walked using the curious three-stepped march of that period. A group of young men following behind added a more contemporary message to the scene. Their arms were raised, their hands gesturing either with two fingers (the sign of the fascistic "Gray Wolves") or one finger (one indivisible country): a message for any Kurds who might be watching.

 

I had been told that there was a modern Armenian cemetery just outside Sivas, and I knew there was also a church in the same area, marooned within an army base. To reach the cemetery I had to walk across the city, passing through some districts where the town’s few remaining old houses survived. Many had once been grand mansions, but all were now neglected and decaying; many were derelict, or even in the process of being demolished. Soon there will be nothing left and Sivas will be just like any other modern Turkish city, a fact that its population is intensely proud of.

 

At the northern edge of Sivas I arrived at a landscape of barbed wire fences that guard the boundaries of several military bases that sprawl over the rising ground here.

 

The monastery of Surb Nishan, the most important Armenian sanctuary in Sivas, was in this area. The Turkish army appropriated the monastery after 1915 and its buildings were used as warehouses, a fate shared by many Armenian churches in Turkey in the years after the genocide. The last remnants of the church are said to have been demolished in the 1980s.

 

Leaving Sivas behind, I walked along a narrow dirt road at the base of a small valley. The high ground on both sides were military zones, sealed by fences topped with barbed wire. I continued walking with caution, and also with some trepidation, for another twenty minutes until I reached a half-demolished gateway that marked the entrance to a tree-lined graveyard.

 

I found it to be a sad and poignant place: the end of the road for Turkish Armenia. Not only was it the burial place of a community on the edge of extinction, it literally was a dead-end road: the graves were laid out along the remains of an abandoned track located right against the perimeter fence of a military base. All the graves were pathetic structures: the best were just coffin-shaped slabs of concrete, and many were marked only with piles of stones. On some graves the names and dates of the deceased had been crudely scrawled into the concrete. None of the dates were older than the 1940s, which probably indicates when the destruction of the Armenian cemetery near the citadel had occurred. A few had their names and dates inscribed onto small marble plaques set into the concrete, but these plaques had all been smashed. There were no Christian symbols on any of the graves; nor was there any Armenian lettering. I noticed that most of the concrete graves had niches in their sides, to contain burning incense or candles. I counted approximately 125 graves amongst the trees. 56 were unmarked, 13 had had their inscriptions destroyed.

 

Echoing around the valley came the eerily menacing sound of soldiers drilling - the marching, shouting and chanting of thousands of unseen men, the stomping of thousands of boots. On sections of the surrounding hillsides were huge Turkish flags marked out with stones painted white or red. On others hillsides stones spelt out words: trite little maxims like "Everything for the nation" or "Fortunate is the man who can say he is a Turk".

 

There was also an upper section to the cemetery, located away from the trees and out in the open. As I walked up to it some soldiers in a nearby watchtower eyed me suspiciously, so I lingered just long enough to glance at a few of the names on the graves. The grave of Biyon Karagoz, who was born in 1856 and died in 1945, was one of the oldest. His name was particularly meaningful for it is probably a corruption of the name Byron; poet, hero of the Greek war of independence and, during the 19th century, symbol of freedom and liberty in both political and personal life for small, oppressed nations everywhere. How unrealised those dreams were to be for Turkey’s Armenians.

 

The abandoned track continued beyond the graveyard, but the fence of the army base blocked it. However, a faint path ran alongside the fence. I decided to follow it, expecting at any moment to be challenged and turned back by a soldier. After walking for a few minutes I saw in the distance the unmistakable profile of the squat dome of a church. It lay within the perimeter of the fence, at the base of a steep slope. As I got closer I noticed a figure behind fence walking towards me. It was not a soldier but a civilian, a youth in his late teens that had been visiting some soldier friends inside the base. On hearing that I wanted to see the church he was kind enough to show me to a small gate in the fence, and shouted up to the guards in a sentry post overlooking the church. So I found myself able to approach a building that probably been barred to all visitors for many years. From a distance the chaos of broken and scattered clay tiles that covered its roof gave the church an antique look, but a closer inspection of its plain walls revealed very fresh-looking stonework - perhaps as little as a hundred years old. There were no inscriptions on those walls, and a modern, steel door sealed the only entrance. Peering through one of the windows revealed a bare and empty interior.

 

Above the church were several artificial caves that had doors and windows cut from the rock, but as I began to scramble up the slope towards them the soldiers in the sentry-post shouted at me to turn back. When I returned to the church they continued shouting and gesturing for me to go back to the gate: I had overstayed my welcome.

 

The identity of the church is a bit of a mystery; it may be all that remains of the monastery of Surp Anapat. This was located close to the Surp Nishan monastery and was under its jurisdiction. In 1877 its old wooden church was rebuilt in stone, which would fit with the apparent age of the church. The Surp Nishan monastery was named after a famous relic, a fragment of the True Cross, that the saints Gayane and Hrip'sime are said to have brought to the Van region. When they left Vaspurakan the relic was lost until the 7th century, when a monk miraculously found it on Varag mountain. It was taken to a hermitage that stood on the site of what was to become Varagavank monastery and the most important religious site in Vaspurakan. After King Senekerim had ceded his kingdom to the Byzantine Empire, he took the relic with him to Sivas, and had the monastery of Surp Nishan built to house it. Sometime later, after Senekerim's death, the relic was returned to Varagavank. At a later period it was kept at the church known as Surp Nishan, inside Van’s old walled city. It seems to have been lost during the siege and massacres of 1915.

 

 

Steve

[nairi]

It's like reading a dream... Like none of this actually exists and it's all part of Steve's imagination. I mean how can it exist if we have never seen it?

 

Reminds me of "Virtual Fatherlands", a documentary a Dutch woman made two years ago about young Armenians in the diaspora, each with their own ideal vision of Armenia.

 

Thanks for sharing all this Steve.

[bellthecat]

It's like reading a dream... Like none of this actually exists and it's all part of Steve's imagination. I mean how can it exist if we have never seen it?

Err .. I don't get what you mean? Or do you mean it's like the "does the tree fall in the forest if nobody actually sees it" situation?

[nairi]

I don't know. It all seems so far away in place and time, like none of it actually ever existed or exists. I don't know how to explain it, but it felt like reading a dream (as opposed to a nightmare). Maybe the want to realize it all? Bring it all back to life? Hope? I don't know.

[bellthecat]

Anyway, I'm happy you liked it Nairi. It having a strange effect is better than it having no effect at all.

 

Actually, it seems very far away in place and time for me too. It was in 1999 when I was there, and a few days ago I found some notes I had made at the time. So I thought I should expand on them.

 

I'm remembering other stuff I didn't write down - like some of the graves has been dug up, and bones scattered about. Presumably done by treasure hunters - though the mentality of anyone who could think there would be treasure in these miserable modern graves can only be guessed at.

 

And the half-demolished entrance had probably been pushed over by an army tank, its tread marks could still be seen in the soil.

 

And there are photos - I'll scan a few and post em.

 

A day later I got a taxi in Sivas whose driver was Armenian. We went to a big ruined Armenian church in a nearby village, which he did not know about. He was more grateful to me for showing it to him than I was for him driving me there! (though he still took the taxi fare ).

Edited June 2, 2004 by bellthecat

[Arpa]

I don't know. It all seems so far away in place and time, like none of it actually ever existed or exists.

Yes Nairi, it does seem so distant, as if it was during prehistoric times.

As I wrote under another topic (Language), I had to clear my eyes several times reading Steve's excellent and riveting account. Thank you again.

 

At the outbreak of the First World War Sivas still had about 15,000 Armenians out of a total population of 40,000, and many more Armenians lived in the surrounding villages. In 1915 they were almost all deported. About 1500 survivors managed to return to Sivas after the war. By the 1930s this population had grown to 3000, mostly due to immigration from the villages. But the population was not sustainable: the influx from the countryside was soon exhausted, the old died and the young moved away to Istanbul, to Soviet Armenia, to America. Today there are only about 40 Armenians left in Sivas. There is also still a scattering of Armenians, mostly elderly, in villages around Sivas. Many villages also have one or two people who will say that they had Armenian mothers or grandmothers (and probably many more who will not publicly admit it).

 

Even though it may seem so old and distant we all know some of the people mentioned above. For one Abp. Barsamian, the Arajnord was born in Sebastia. My brother in law although himself born in Istanbul relates his sojourn at Sivas during his stint in the Turkish forces where he says he met some Armenians (and some Turks for that) who remembered his family, with nostalgia. Both of his parents were born in Sebastea and were probably of those who moved to Istanbul and eventually to the U.S. In fact they still speak Armenian with a hint of the Sebastea dialect, i.e. placing the k@/g@ after the verb. My brother in law says that his father will place the k@ both before and after the verb as in "k@ berem k@".

[Azat]

Great story Steve and I for one would love to see the pictures that you took

 

Thank you

[bellthecat]

Here are some of the pictures But only itsy little ones coz of the 50k limit.

 

The partially destroyed entrance to the graveyard - the word in metal says "Ermeni" (Armenian). "Mezarlik" (graveyard) was on the fallen door. The top of the hill is inside a military zone (you can just make out some of the posts of the wire-mesh fence if you look carefully).

[bellthecat]

Inside the graveyard - as you can see it was once part of a roadway. The graves are laid out along its length.

[bellthecat]

Some of the graves. The nearest is inscribed "Ohanes Polatyan, born 1926 died 1962"

[bellthecat]

Another grave - inscribed "Karabet Güllüdere, born 1930, died 8-5-1992". There is another name, "Vartanus Güllüdere", painted onto the concrete. Notice the little niche for candles, etc.

[bellthecat]

The church.

The white paint on the walls indicate that there were once buildings built against it, which had been recently demolished. But I think they were modern, probably built by the army.

[bellthecat]

The roof of the church.