I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

[KanadaHye]

Re: I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

Factbox: The Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem

The ethnic Armenian community of Jerusalem is dwindling, through economic disadvantage as well as Israeli bureaucratic rules on residence, residents say.

Here are some facts about the community:

- Some 2,000 or so Armenian Christians live in Jerusalem, mostly in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City; under borders drawn by Ottoman rulers, it is the smallest of the quarters; the others are Muslim, xxxish and Christian. It covers about one sixth of the square kilometre (230 acres) inside the city walls.

- By tradition, Armenia was, in 301, the first kingdom to convert to Christianity as a state religion. Some 10 million people, including three million in ex-Soviet Armenia, follow the faith, which uses Armenia's distinctive Indo-European language with its own unique script. The Armenian Church is distinct from the much larger Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, which dominate Jerusalem's Christian Quarter and with which the Armenians have parity of rights at the city's Christian sites.

- Armenian monks and lay people settled in Jerusalem around 1,500 years ago, serving pilgrims. Armenian kings of Cilicia, in what is now Turkey, as well as other Armenian leaders in the region, allied with European Crusaders in the Middle Ages, and several Armenian princesses became Crusader queens in Jerusalem.

- The Armenian Quarter is dominated by a compound around the cathedral dedicated to two saints called James. The head of one is preserved there. The compound also contains a monastery, seminary and the palace of the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, as well as a school, libraries and other community buildings.

- Many Armenians fled Turkey from 1915, escaping what they call a genocide - a term Turkey rejects. Thousands, including many orphans, arrived in Jerusalem, which Britain had captured from Turkey in 1917. Local Armenians opened the pilgrimage compound to house them. By the time the British left in 1948 there were about 16,000 ethnic Armenians in Palestine, 5,000 of them in Jerusalem. Many left as a result of fighting. Numbers in the traditional community in Jerusalem's Old City have dwindled further under Israeli rule since 1967. There are about 2,000 in Jerusalem today and up to 3,000 elsewhere in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Some ethnic Armenians came to Israel among recent immigration from the former Soviet Union.

http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/factbox...usalem-3616898

[Davo88]

Re: I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

In Quarter of Jerusalem, Armenians fear for future

By Alastair Macdonald

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - In Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter, a library stores precious memoirs which are all that remain of hundreds of Armenian communities, erased from the map of Turkey a century ago in what many regard as genocide.

Now the Armenians in Jerusalem itself, many descended from refugees, fear their own 1,500-year-old Christian presence may disappear, too. Their society and extensive landholdings risk becoming collateral damage in a demographic conflict for land and power in the holy city between Israel and the Palestinians.

"It's a dying community. Only the church holds us together," lamented 97-year-old Arshalouys Zakarian, as she sat with family and friends in her garden near St. James's Armenian cathedral.

The church, with its distinctive rites and dozens of black clad singing monks, dominates a Quarter which the Armenians, now just 2,000 of them, have held since Ottoman times alongside the Old City's bigger Muslim, xxxish and Christian Quarters.

Over tea, Zakarian's guests, some living locally, others back on visits from overseas, joined in tales of children gone abroad in search of jobs and of struggles, often in vain, with Israeli bureaucracy to retain rights to come back home to live.

"For the first time in our history, we are not sure we can stay, after 1,500 years," concluded one man, now working for the Armenian church after a career spent in the United States. His daughter, born here, can visit, but may no longer live here.

Officials of the church, at the Armenian Patriarchate, share a view held by the mostly Muslim Palestinians -- that Israel's designation of the whole city as capital of the xxxish state means its control of residence and building permits is being used to press Arabs and other non-xxxs to give up and leave.

"The withdrawing of ID cards is becoming very serious," said historian George Hintlian, a former Patriarchate secretary. Five local-born Armenians lost residence rights last month, he added.

Non-xxxs, a third of today's 750,000 population in greater Jerusalem, have had residence rights but not citizenship since Israel seized the Arab east, including the Old City, from Jordan in 1967. Israel, which promotes xxxish immigration, says it is not obliged to grant re-entry to other residents who emigrate.

It says it respects the access of other faiths to Jerusalem and denies any policy to discriminate or to push non-xxxs out. But the Armenians see double standards and fear for their land.

SENSE OF SIEGE

In the library, Hintlian leafs through volumes of memoirs detailing names, families, anecdotes, plans and sketches of lost Armenian communities in Turkey, from where refugees came to Jerusalem after World War One, bolstering the local population.

"What remains of historical Armenia is these books. For a people who suffered genocide, it is very important," he said.

But while many xxxs had sympathy for a people whose history of dispersal and suffering has echoes of their own, Armenians are wary of the Israeli state: "For the private Israeli, we are full-time genocide survivors," Hintlian said. "But for the Israeli bureaucracy, we are full-time Palestinians."

Many fear territorial designs on their Quarter, which covers a sixth of the square kilometre (230 acres) inside the walls but houses only a small fraction of the Old City's 40,000 people. It lies next to the xxxish Quarter, ravaged under Jordanian rule after 1948. Israelis have rebuilt and expanded it since 1967.

A rash of spitting at clergy in the street by ultra-Orthodox xxxs in recent years add to a sense of siege among a community which traces its roots back to monks and pilgrims who settled in the 5th century. By the mid-1940s, the community numbered 16,000 across Jerusalem and other cities of British-ruled Palestine.

Many were refugees from Turkey who revived Armenian language among native compatriots assimilated in Arabic. They brought, too, colourful ceramic work which still fills their shops today.

Many left when British rule ended in 1948. More followed in 1967. Those who stayed on in the Old City under Israeli rule were cut off from 400,000 other Armenians in the Middle East -- in countries like Syria and Lebanon, at war with Israel.

They are part of a global diaspora of 10 million whose language and religious roots lie in a Caucasian kingdom that was the first to adopt Christianity as a state religion, in 301.

St. James's Cathedral is a serene xxxel, hung with precious lamps and treasures donated by Armenians scattered far and wide and infused with the haunting singing of its black-cowled monks.

DEMOGRAPHIC STRUGGLE

The Armenian Church has parity at Jerusalem's Christian holy places with the much bigger Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches, 6,000 of whose Palestinian Arab adherents live in the Christian Quarter. Its history, income from local rents and gifts from the diaspora, should assure the Church's future here.

But the lay community surrounding it does question whether future generations will be here; residents say Armenians feel disadvantaged in getting work with xxxish or Arab employers and so move abroad and then face Israeli refusal to allow them back.

"It's a demographic struggle," said Hintlian, as he strolled the quiet courtyards that distinguish the Quarter from the crowded lanes typical of the rest of the Old City. "The basic struggle is to have numbers," he added. "Diplomats say, 'Look, the Armenians have a lot of space and very few people...'."

Among Armenian fears is that Israel and Palestinian peace negotiators might revive an idea to divide sovereignty over the Old City by allotting the Muslim and Christian Quarters to a Palestinian state and handing the Armenian Quarter to Israel.

The end of Communism in Armenia has thrown a lifeline to the church, bringing a supply of novices from the ex-Soviet state, said Archbishop Nourhan Manoogian, who himself came from Syria just before the 1967 war. But having returned now from 20 years abroad, he too faces a problem renewing his residence permit.

"What kind of freedom of religion is there?" he asked.

Life can be uncomfortable beyond the walls of the monastery compound. Relations with Muslims have cooled, Manoogian said. There have been fights between Armenian and Greek clergy around Jesus's tomb. And some ultra-Orthodox xxxs are openly hostile.

But, consoled by a history that has seen Armenians survive bloodier sieges and regimes in Jerusalem down the centuries, Manoogian has confidence after four decades of Israeli rule:

"In another 40 years, we'll still be here," he said.

And for all the anxieties that tinge the nostalgia round the tea table in Arshalouys Zakarian's garden, there too there is a note of cheerful defiance: "The Armenians had a hard life," the retired schoolmistress concluded. "But they are survivors."

(Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE65R1QE20100628?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

[KanadaHye]

Re: I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

The Armenians claim a presence in Jerusalem since the first century when an Armenian battalion fought under the Roman emperor Titus. The Armenians adopted Christianity as their official religion in 286 C.E., even before the Romans and, for the last 1,700 years, have been ensconced in Jerusalem, frequently finding themselves between warring factions. The Armenian Quarter was established in the 14th century.

The Armenians are not Palestinians, but they generally sympathize with their political agenda (See Muhaha ), although the Armenians have not supported the idea of Palestinian control over the Old City. In fact, during the Camp David Summit, leaders of the Armenian church insisted the Christian and Armenian Quarters were inseparable and expressed their preference for international guarantees.

The Armenian section is almost a city within the city. The walled compound surrounds the Church of St. James, the Convent of the Olive Tree, the Armenian Patriarch residency, a monastery and a number of shops.

The St. James Monastery, which takes up about two-thirds of the quarter, houses gifts left by pilgrims over the last 1,000 years. It also includes a quiet residential area. The Gulbenkian Library is also inside the monastery. It holds more than 100,000 volumes, many dating back hundreds of years. The Mardigian Museum is nearby and it contains exhibits on Armenian art and culture and the genocide of 1915.

Oddly enough, only one Armenian church is in the Quarter, but four other denominations (Syrian, Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Anglican) have churches in this part of the city.

http://www.xxxishvirtuallibrary.org/....html#Armenian

[Davo88]

Re: I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

It must be because the Armenians of the Middle-East preferred to live together in their own agglomerations near their distinct church, whereas other Christians of Jerusalem mingled together regardless of their nationalities.

It may have also been a tactic used by Muslim rulers of Jerusalem to reduce the Christian presence by separating the Armenians from the rest.

This is from Wikipedia:

"One of the central reasons for the existence of an Armenian quarter is the religion and ethnicity of the Armenians. Armenians, unlike the majority of Christians in Israel, are not Arab, rather they are ethnically and religiously Armenian. The reason for their ethnicity does not need to be elaborated on except to say that they have remained a homogeneous group, intermarrying over the years and keeping their culture intact."

Who knows.

[Eddo211]

Re: I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

Getting back to the discussion at hand. I think its neat that Armenians have their own quarter. How come the Greek Orthodox, and the Catholics (among others) didn't get theirs.

I have never heard of any complaints by Armenians in Jerusalem except for several incidents which involved "ultra Orthodox xxxs" spitting at a priest. That happened several; years ago, it was condemned by all the xxxish denominations (including the ultra orthodox one) and hasn't recurred since. But back to my question...

The story of the claim to Armenian Quarter starts with King Tigranes II in 95 BC and ends with some upper room in a house on mount Zion that was used as a church in 301 AD, hence the valid claim...............where now St James Cathedral stands.
Armenian Quarter is known to be the oldest, but in decline.

[gunther]

Re: I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

Getting back to the discussion at hand. I think its neat that Armenians have their own quarter. How come the Greek Orthodox, and the Catholics (among others) didn't get theirs.

I have never heard of any complaints by Armenians in Jerusalem except for several incidents which involved "ultra Orthodox xxxs" spitting at a priest. That happened several; years ago, it was condemned by all the xxxish denominations (including the ultra orthodox one) and hasn't recurred since. But back to my question...

[Parskahay]

Re: I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

I have a friend from Old Jerusalem, he says:
I would have you know that the Israeli government has a university program to encourage Armenians (Israeli born) to study, and has scholarships for Armenians (recognizing their suffering in their holocaust).

so as you can see they are not very bad at all,Dont get me wrong, religious Jevvs are a pain in the butt and they suck in general, but going from there to what you said is a long way, also isolated incidents dont relfect on the whole population. Just like if in Spain people violated a synagogue I wouldent say Spain is antisemitic. Some people are just xxxxxxxs.

[Muhaha]

Re: I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

You can't change the topic of the discussion and completely destroy the original intent of the thread(Which was me trying to talk about Armenians in Jerusalem) and then at the same time complain about the other users and the OP.

[Muhaha]

Re: I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

What a childish discussion, KanadaHye as we have seen they can not bring any arguments and do not react on our posts, they just shout for themselves and have a wrong knowledge of especially Armenian history (so they ignore their mistakes, like ''maronites were good for the Armenians'').

I started this thread hoping to discuss the Armenian Quarter and the Anti-Israel users derailed it and turned it into just another "Israel" thread. Look at the first page, KanadaHye is the one who comes in with the silly/inappropriate/hypocritical comments.

http://forum.hyeclub.com/showthread.php?t=18598

http://forum.hyeclub.com/showpost.php?p=295189&postcount=5

Is this the thread where we discuss taking over Israel?

[Tigranakert]

Re: I never hear anything about the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem...

What a childish discussion, KanadaHye as we have seen they can not bring any arguments and do not react on our posts, they just shout for themselves and have a wrong knowledge of especially Armenian history (so they ignore their mistakes, like ''maronites were good for the Armenians'').