Armeniennes d’Astrakan. Kabardinien. Kabardinienne. Tatar de Kazan. Femme Tatare de Kazan. Armeniens d’Astrakan.

Title

Armeniennes d’Astrakan. Kabardinien. Kabardinienne. Tatar de Kazan. Femme Tatare de Kazan. Armeniens d’Astrakan.

Decorativ view of eight armenian figures in original costumes.

ca. 1720

Artist

Anonymus

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.