Les Arméniens dans la région de Trébizonde (xie-xixe siècle)
The Armenians in the region of Trebizond (11th - 19th c.)

Author(s): Gérard Dédéyan
Subject(s): History, Geography, Regional studies, Human Geography, Regional Geography, Local History / Microhistory, Oral history, Middle Ages, Modern Age
Published by: Сдружение „Транспонтика“
Keywords: Gabras; Kekaumenos; Hayton; Laz; Armeniac; Chaldia; Georgia; Hamshen (Hemshin); Koloneia; Trabzon
Summary/Abstract: During the period studied, the regions bordering or close to the Black Sea, previously featured in our study on the Byzantine theme of Armeniacs (Dédéyan 2019), underwent successive shocks leading to modifications of the political borders or the administrative limits which characterised the Byzantine Empire until the mid-11th century. The Armenians were present, among others, in the Byzantine duchy of Trebizond, where Constantine Gabras, quite probably of Armenian stock, was almost independent from 1126 to 1140. This duchy stretched, under the dynasty of the Komnenoi (1081-1185), along the coast of the Black Sea, partially encompassing ancient Byzantine themes with an Armenian population (Armeniakon, Koloneia, Chaldia). The Armenians were still present in the Greek Empire of Trebizond (1204-1461), creation of the Grand Komnenoi, after the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins of the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204). The city of Trebizond itself experienced an increase in its Armenian community following the emigration, in 1239, of part of the population of Ani, driven out by the Mongol invasion. Granted by the Greek emperor, in the 14th century, a special district, the Armenians, enriched in the international trade, in potential relations with the Armenian and Genoese merchants of Crimea, provided themselves, in the 14th and 15th centuries, with several churches, while having in a relative proximity the monastery of Holy Saviour which became, in the 16th century, an active centre of copying of manuscripts: the creation of a prelature, in the same period, attests the importance of the Christians of Armenian confession. One Armenian entity deserves special attention, from a political and cultural point of view: Hamshen, a mountainous canton located largely to the east of Trebizond, of modest dimensions, extending from the northern slopes of the Pontic Alps to the port of Atina, on the Black Sea. The Hamshen dates back to the construction, from the end of the 8th century, by Prince Hamam, who had withdrawn into the Byzantine Empire due to the persecutions of the Arabs in Vaspurakan, of the fortress of Hamamashen (“built by Hamam”). Integrated into one of the subdivisions of the Armenian theme, then into the Duchy of Trebizond, finally into the Empire of Trebizond, the Hamshen nonetheless remained, in local reality, a small semi-independent Armenian principality, led by “barons”, as in Cilicia, (whose names, Armenian, rarely Turkish, are quite well known in the 15th century). Finally, the grim description that the Armenian-Cilician prince Hayton made at the beginning of the 14th century in his Flor des Estoires de la Terre d'Orient, widely distributed in Europe, gave the Hamshen a certain notoriety. Defeated by the Ottomans at the end of the 15th century, the Hamchentsi (Hamshenli in Turkish) nevertheless retained a form of self-administration, their derebey (“lord of the valleys” in Turkish) obstructing the interventions of the local Ottoman governor. Having an ecclesial and monastic network, still standing – but without priests – in the 19th century, the Armenians of Hamshen were, from the 18th century onwards, victims of violent persecutions, which led to numerous conversions to Islam, the relative partition between Muslim villages and Christian villages, and a migratory flow towards western Asia Minor or Abkhazia. Farmers, breeders, artisans, or professional soldiers in the service of their derebey, speaking a predominantly Turkish dialect in the West, and a predominantly Armenian one in the East, the Hamshentsi were designated by the Armenian sobriquet Kêskês, “half-and-half”, by reference to their – frequent – situation of crypto-Christians or, less probably, to the fact that they were introducing Turkish words into the Armenian language. In the 19th century the Armenians of Trebizond enjoyed a period of cultural and economic flourishment during the Tanzimat (1839-1876), a period which the Hamidian massacres in 1895 put to an end.

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