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Printed by G. SCHULZE,

13, Poland Street, Oxford Street.

OF

Bogdanov, Artemy
THE LIFE OF ARTEMI,

OF

Wagarschapat,

NEAR MOUNT ARARAT, IN ARMENIA:

FROM

THE ORIGINAL ARMENIAN WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

LONDON:

TREUTTEL & WÜRTZ, TREUTTEL, JUN. & RICHTER,

SOHO SQUARE;

PARIS AND STRASBURGH : TREUTTEL & WÜRTZ.

BEM AOBK

THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY

R

530455

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. 1911

10, 1911

INTRODUCTION.

A PIECE of auto-biography from the pen of an Asiatic is so rare a phenomenon, that it could scarcely fail, even without any peculiar recommendation, to excite some attention. The Memoirs contained in the following sheets pos sess, however, not merely that kind of interest which is derived from the personal history of the writer and the narrative of his vicissitudes, adventures, hardships, and sufferings, since they exhibit also a striking picture of the extreme degradation to which the relics of the once flourishing Armenian nation are now reduced in their native land. These professors of a Christianity, which manifestly consists in little more than the observance of certain external forms and ceremonies, are bound down by the double despotism of their Mahometan rulers, and that of their own ecclesiastics, and of such of their countrymen whose wealth and influence

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seem to give them a right to tyrannize over their humbler neighbours. The natural consequence of a state of society in which the poor experience from their fellow-men less tenderness and indulgence than brute beasts, is, that all who have opportunities seek abroad that quiet independence and prosperity which are not to be found by any exertion of talents and industry at home: hence the Armenians are closely assimilated with the Jews in their general condition and pursuits. With them they nearly monopolize the traffic of the East; and they have mercantile establishments in many cities of Europe, as London, Marseilles, Venice, and other places. Confining themselves almost exclusively to commerce, few of them, even in Russia, to which part of Armenia is now subject, embrace the military profession; still fewer enter into the civil service, or engage in mechanical trades. These circumstances produce so much the stronger a resemblance between the Armenians and the Jews, since it is the nature of commerce to beget in those who embark in it an indifference to their native

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