from them by the Ottomans 50 years later, and permanently incorporated into their empire. The northeastern portion of Armenia Major was taken from the Persians by Russia in 1828, who added to her possession in 1878 the Turkish country of Kars and Batum.
Armenia Minor for a long time had a history of its own. It was made a Roman province in A.D. 70; was conquered from the Byzantines by the Arabs about 633, and recovered by the Byzantines 120 years later. In 1080 Rhupen, a descendant of the Bagratids, made himself independent in Armenia Minor; his successors extended their power over Cilicia and Cappadocia, and aided the Crusaders against the Saracens. The house of Rhupen fell in 1393, and the land, after passing through the hands of the Egyptians and the Persians, came into the possession of the Turks in 1541.
Armenia, therefore, at the present is merely an historical conception. The ancient land is divided among the Turks, the Russians, and the Persians, and the Armenian people have been scattered over Asia Minor and a considerable territory in Europe. Aspirations toward national unity have not been wanting among the Armenians, especially those dwelling in Asiatic Turkey. After 1885 a revolutionary movement, inspired by the Russian Nihilist propaganda, attained to formidable dimensions. The Porte intrusted the pacification of the country to the Kurds, who constitute the national police. Sanguinary conflicts, marked by outrageous cruelty on both sides, occurred between the revolutionists and the police in the provinces of Trebizond, Bitlis, and Erzerum, and it was the news of the atrocities committed by Kurds, acting in their official capacity, that stirred Europe and America to horror in the years 1895 and 1896. Signs of anti-Armenian feeling had appeared throughout Asiatic Turkey as early as the spring of 1894. In August of that year a massacre of Armenians was perpetrated at Sassun, and the fever of murder spread all over Asiatic Turkey. All through the spring and summer of 1895 the slaughter of Armenian men, women, and children continued, until the representatives of England, France, and Russia, backed up by their assembled warships, wrested from the Sultan the promise of reparation and reforms. A commission was sent to the scene of conflict to investigate conditions there, and the Armenian Patriarch was summoned to Constantinople to state the demands of the Armenians, which included a share in the making of laws and the administration, and proportional representation in the national police. The Sultan's irade went forth, the commission labored, and the massacres continued. During the months of October and November Armenians were butchered at Trebizond, Erzerum, Akhissar, Bitlis, Zeitun, Swas, Kurun, and Marash. At Diarbekr a pitched battle was fought between Turks and Armenians, in which 5000 men perished. In the Provinces of Erzerum and Trebizond entire villages were devastated, famine and plague attacked the survivors of the massacres, and the Turkish Government was forced, only after the greatest reluctance, into permitting the work of relief organized by Clara Barton and the Red Cross Society to be carried on. The outrages subsided in 1896, but in August occurred a fearful carnage of Armenians in the streets of Constantinople, perpetrated by a mob at the instigation of the Government, in retaliation for the attack on the Ottoman Bank made by Armenian patriots, August 26-28. At least 4000 Armenians, and probably twice that number, were beaten to death in the streets and on the roofs by the clubs of hired ruffians. Nor could reparation be demanded of the Turkish Government, inasmuch as the Armenian revolutionists, by their riotous action, had put themselves and their innocent countrymen outside of the law. Since 1896 the sporadic slaughter of Armenians on a minor scale has continued to the present day; but the attention of the powers has been directed elsewhere, and no real guarantees for the safety of the unhappy people have been exacted from the Turkish Government.
Bibliography. The best modern work on Armenia is Lynch, Armenia (New York, 1901), which contains a good map and an exhaustive bibliography; Saint-Martin, Mémoires historiques et geographiques sur l'Arménie (Paris, 1818-19); Noguéres, Arménie; géographie, religion, mœurs, littérature, situation actuelle (Paris, 1897); Tchobanian, L'Arménie, son histoire, sa littérature, son rôle en Orient (Paris, 1897); Ozhderian, The Turk and the Land of Haig, or Turkey and Armenia, Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque (New York, 1898); Tiele, Western Asia, According to Most Recent Discoveries (London, 1893); Kolenati, Die Bereisung Hoch Armeniens (Dresden, 1858); Bryce, Trans-Caucasia and Ararat (London, 1896); Barkley, A Ride Through Asia Minor and Armenia (London, 1891); John Catholicos, Patriarch of Armenia, Histoire d'Arménie, translated by Saint-Martin (Paris, 1841); Issaverdentz, Armenia and the Armenians (Venice, 1888); Gregor, History of Armenia (London, 1897); Brasset, Voyage archéologique en Trans-Caucasie (Saint Petersburg, 1849-51); Langlois, Rapport sur l'exploration archéologique de Cilicie et de la Petite Arménie (Paris, 1854); Sayce, The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van (London, 1882-88-93-94); Hyvernat, L'histoire ancienne de l'Arménie et les inscriptions cunéiformes du bassin de Van (Paris, 1892); Belck, "Archäologische Forschungen in Armenien," in Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Anthropologie (Berlin, 1893); Deniker, Races of Man (London, 1900); Belck and Lehmann have published a number of valuable articles on Armenian Archæology and Ethnology in the Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Anthropologie (Berlin, 1900-01); Greene, The Armenian Crisis and the Rule of the Turk (New York, 1897); De Cursons, La Rebellion Arménienne (Paris, 1895); Lepsius, Armenia und Europa (Berlin, 1896); Gladstone, The Armenian Question (London, 1893); Nazarbek, Armenian Revolutionists Upon Armenian Problem (London, 1895); Woods, The Truth About Asia Minor (London, 1890).
ARME'NIAN ART. This art and that of Georgia are so closely related as to form but a single style, which might be called the art of the Caucasus. Its early antiquities are not very well known: they are related to those of the Sarmathians and Scythians of Turkestan and Siberia, and of the cities of Crimea and the Bosporus. In northern Armenia there are thousands of graves in the form of large mounds, and especially near Kaaban, there are many dolmens. It is from these tombs (e.g., Koban and Kamunta) that the objects have come which show us the condition of the arts here just before and after the Christian era. It was rather late when
