Armenians and the Holy Land

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Armenians in the Holy Land

Anush Babajanyan

I stayed well into a night at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem together with a friend. It was the Armenians’ turn to clean the tomb of Jesus. We watched the small groups clean the top of this tomb with care, refill the oil of lamps that burn over it. Priests did it with a certain habit, pilgrims did it with awe and tears. It looked like an incredibly special moment for these people to simply clean their part of the church, on this piece of land where it is believed that Jesus was crucified and buried.

A small nation with a large diaspora, Armenians share ownership of some of the most valued sites of Christian heritage in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other locations in the area. Some of such sites are the Holy Sepulcher, St. James Cathedral, the Church of the Nativity, and the Tomb of St. Mary. Armenians are one of the Christian groups with the largest share, together with the Catholics, Orthodox Greeks, and the Coptic. An agreement of Status Quo, initiated by the Ottoman Empire in 1852, sustains the relationships and actions between these and more groups.

Armenians have lived in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter for centuries. Unlike many other places around the world, they did not come here only after the 1915 Genocide, they had lived here long before. According to several historical accounts, they began settling here in the 4th century after officially converting to Christianity. The Armenian Quarter occupies one sixth of the area of Old City Jerusalem

Read More:https://hetq.am/en/article/86392

 

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