- left to right: Artsvi Bakhchinyan, Bert Vaux,
Sebouh Aslanian, Anahid Keshishian, Vazken Ghougassian, Hrachik Mirzoyan,
Jemma Barnasyan, Consul General Gagik Kirakosyan, Richard Hovannisian,
Archbishop Goriun Babian, Shushanik Khachikyan, Ina Baghdiantz McCabe,
Amy Landau, Sayeh Laporte Eftekharian, Sylvie Merian, Vartan Matiossian,
John Carswell, Richard Elbrecht
- Not pictured: Very Reverend Shahan Sarkissian,
Leonardo Alishan, Armen Hakhnazarian, Raisa Amirbekyan, Murad Hasratyan,
Ashot Stepanyan
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- A record number of attendees enjoyed a three-day
conference, November 14-16, marking the 400th anniversary of the founding
of the Armenian city of New Julfa in central Iran.
- The conference, organized by Richard Hovannisian,
Holder of the Armenian Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Armenian
History at UCLA, was the thirteenth in the UCLA international conference
series titled "Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces" and was the first
to focus on a region outside the bounds of the Ottoman Empire and the
present Turkish state.
- Nearly a thousand persons attended the opening
Friday evening session, conducted in Armenian and co-sponsored by the
Armenian Society of Los Angeles (Iranahay Miutiun) in the Glendale Presbyterian
Church. Professor Hovannisian introduced New Julfa with a resume of
the Ottoman-Persian wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
that prompted Shah Abbas to implement a scorched-earth policy and deport
the Armenian inhabitants of the merchant community of Julfa on the Araxes
River and much of the plain of Ararat deep into Iran where in 1605-1606
they founded New Julfa, across the river from the Persian capital city
of Isfahan as well as many villages in the adjacent districts of Peria
and Charmaghal.
- Three participants from Armenia, Hrachik Mirzoyan
of Yerevan State University, Murad Hasratyan of the Institute of Arts,
and Jemma Barnasyan of the Institute of Linguistics, together with the
prelate of the Armenian Diocese of Isfahan/New Julfa, the Very Reverend
Shahan Sarkissian, then captivated the large audience with their presentations
on the unique characteristics, the architecture, and the dialect of
New Julfa and on the present state of the community after four centuries.
- The conference continued on the UCLA campus
on Saturday and Sunday, November 15-16, with sessions devoted to the
administrative and religious structure, art and architecture, merchants
and international commerce, and daily life and folklore of New Julfa.
After Richard Hovannisian's historical introduction, John Carswell of
Malaga, Spain, who in the 1960s published the first English-language
study and illustrations of Armenian New Julfa, began the Saturday session
with a visual journey to the churches and public and private edifices,
which he recently re-visited after four decades.
- Ina Baghdiantz McCabe of Tufts University and
Vazken Ghugassian of the Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Church concentrated
on the administrative aspects in seventeenth-century Safavid Iran, whereas
Amy Landau of Oxford University, Sylvie Merian of the Pierpont Morgan
Library in New York, and Sayeh Laporte-Eftekharian of the Free University
of Brussels gave illustrated talks on the art, illuminated manuscripts,
wall paintings, and prints of the New Julfa artists. Raisa Amirbekyan
of the Caucasian Center for Iranian Studies in Yerevan discussed New
Julfa as an Armenian-Iranian contact zone during the Qajar period in
the nineteenth century.
- New Julfa was famed for its merchants, who reached
as far as India, Singapore, Java, and the Philippines in the east, Moscow,
St. Petersburg, and Stockholm in the north, and Venice, Cadiz, Amsterdam,
and London in the west. Papers by Edmund Herzig of the University of
Manchester, Shushanik Khachikian of the Mashtots Matenadaran in Yerevan,
Sebouh Aslanian of Columbia University, and Vartan Matiossian of Buenos
Aires and the New Jersey Hovnanian School examined the role of these
merchants as traders, patrons, and cultural intermediaries during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
- The participants enjoyed an evening of socializing
and interacting with members of the Armenian Educational Foundation
on Saturday evening at a dinner-reception in Glendale hosted by Mr.
Vahe and Dr. Armine Hacopian.
- On Sunday there were both Armenian and English
sessions. From Yerevan, Artsvi Bakhchinyan discussed the archival records
and gave lively examples relating to the Scandinavian trade of the New
Julfa merchants. Ashot Stepanyan of the Institute of Oriental Studies
shifted away from the merchants to consider the largely nameless artisans
and craftsmen of New Julfa. Armen Hakhnazarian from Aachen, Germany,
offered a visual panorama of the special architecture features of New
Julfa, explaining the reasons for the modes of construction, styles,
and significance of the local Armenian forms. He also drew attention
to the recent destruction of the many hundreds of delicately-designed
"khach-kars" or funerary monuments in old Julfa, now located in the
Nakhichevan region of Azerbaijan.
- The final session turned into an ethnographic-cultural
happening. Archbishop Goriun Babian, who was the prelate of New Julfa
for nearly a quarter of a century, entertained the capacity audience
with his reminiscences and discussed the discovery of the printing plates
of Hovhannes Jughayetsi that served as models for wall paintings in
Holy Savior's Cathedral and Saint Bethlehem Church. Bert Vaux of the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee used a native speaker of the New Julfa
dialect to point out the characteristics of the local language, and
Anahid Keshishian enhanced the session with her analysis and recitation
of minstrel lyrics and verse, followed by a live "daoul-zurna" dance
performance by the Armenian Cultural Society of Peria. The gathering
was concluded with a creative dramatic presentation by Leonardo Alishan
of Salt Lake City, who combined his original poetry about New Julfa
with a showing of the watercolor paintings of the late New Julfa artist,
Smbat (Der-Kiureghian). The audience expressed its appreciation to the
participants with a sustained standing ovation.
- Following the conference, the participants
were hosted to a native New Julfa dinner by the Armenian Society of
Los Angeles in its Glendale Center, where Richard Hovannisian was honored
and received presentations from the Armenian Society, the Peria Cultural
Society, and Prelate Shahan Vardapet on behalf of the Diocese of Isfahan/New
Julfa.
- The three-day conference offered a multidimensional
overview of New Julfa during its four-hundred-year history. In particular,
the large Iranian-Armenian community of Southern California was transported
back to familiar territory with deep nostalgia and appreciation. The
colorful photographic exhibit mounted by Richard Elbrecht depicting
the churches and daily life in New Julfa, Peria, and Charmahal added
greatly to the effect..
- The fourteenth conference in this series will
be held in mid-May 2004 and feature the Iranian-Armenian communities
of Tabriz, Tehran, Maku, Salmast, Karadagh, and elsewhere from antiquity
to the present.
- Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA Page
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