Die Armenier Fig. XCIV Armeniens

Title

Die Armenier Fig. XCIV Armeniens

Representation of an armenian couple.

ca. 1719

Artist

Mallet (1630-1706)

Alain Manesson Mallet (1630- 1706 ) was a French cartographer and engineer. He started his career as a soldier in the army of Louis XIV, became a Sergeant-Major in the artillery and an Inspector of Fortifications. He also served under the King of Portugal, before returning to France, and his appointment to the court of Louis XIV. His military engineering and mathematical background led to his position teaching mathematics at court. His major publications were Description de L'Univers (1683) in 5 volumes, and Les Travaux de Mars ou l'Art de la Guerre (1684) in 3 volumes. His Description de L'Universe contains a wide variety of information, including star maps, maps of the ancient and modern world, and a synopsis of the customs, religion and government of the many nations included in his text. It has been suggested that his background as a teacher led to his being concerned with entertaining his readers. This concern manifested itself in the charming harbor scenes and rural landscapes that he included beneath his description of astronomical concepts and diagrams. Mallet himself drew most of the figures that were engraved for this book.

Historical Description

Armenia is one of the oldest countries in the world, with a rich and complex history that dates back several millennia. As early as the 7th century, Christian Byzantines and Muslim Arabs competed for control of the region. In 1045, the Byzantines ended the Armenian kingdom by occupying Ani. In 1064, the Seljuks conquered Armenia, followed by the Mongols in the 13th century. In 1555, the country was divided between Persia and the Ottoman Empire, and again in 1639, when the Safavids gained control of roughly what is today the modern Armenian state, while the Turks retained the larger western part. In the Russo-Persian War, Persia lost the province of Armenia to the Russian Empire in 1828. During World War I, countless Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated during the Armenian Genocide, and the Armenian settlement area shrank significantly. Since then, the territory of the Republic of Armenia comprises only the northeastern part of what was once a much larger Armenian homeland—a region that, throughout its eventful history, rarely formed a unified state. The border between Turkey and the Russian sphere of influence was established in 1922. The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was part of the Soviet Union, gained independence in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR. The areas west of modern Armenia remained lost to the Armenian state.