SUMMARYTHE DEMOGRAPHIC SITUATION IN YEREVANIN THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE XIX CENTURY

In recent decades, among the numerous distortions found in the Turkish-Azerbaijanian historiography concerning many key problems of the history of Armenia, a significant place is occupied by the issues of the history of Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, in particular, the problems of demography.

Meanwhile, new investigations confirm once again that the real demographic picture was as follows: at the beginning of the century, before the first Yerevan campaign of Russian troops, the city had at least 12 thousand inhabitants.

Further, in 1804-1808, as a result of emigration, deportation and death, the number fell sharply to 4-5 thousand people, possibly less. However, in subsequent years, as a result of the policy pursued by the Persian authorities, the number of the population increased sharply and in 1812-1813 again reached the pre-war number – about 12 thousand.

In the middle of the third decade of the century this number reached about 17-18 thousand, and as of September 1827 it was no more than 12-13 thousand, of which 10 thousand were Armenians. A couple of years later this number gradually increased by several thousand. The tendency of the constant growth of the number of Armenians of Yerevan over the next decades has become a characteristic direction of the demographic development of the city.

Both foreign and Armenian sources testify that the assertions of modern Azerbaijanian “scientists” are completely groundless that until 1828-1829 – the resettlement of Armenians from Parskahaik, the “Azerbaijanian”, that is, the Tatar population, was the majority in Yerevan.

The reality is that the number of Armenians exceeded both the Tatars separately and the entire Muslim population as a whole, including Kurds and Persians.

Ashot Melkonyan
Institute of History of NAS RA