Birth of Leo (April 26, 1860)

Leo was the pseudonym of an Armenian intellectual who produced an amazing output of historical and literary scholarship at the turn of the twentieth century.

Arakel Babakhanian was born on April 26, 1860, in the village of Karintak, near the town of Khankend (nowadays Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh). In 1878 he graduated from the diocesan school of Shushi. This was the extent of his formal studies, which he would complement with self-teaching. After graduation, he worked in Shushi and Baku as a scribe for notary work, telegrapher, and manager of the “Aror” printing house. 

He was still a student when he started collaborating with the influential daily Mshak of Tiflis in 1877. His views were shaped by the ideological tenets maintained by Raffi, the novelist, and Grigor Artzruni, the founding editor of Mshak. Over the years, he would contribute to a number of publications from the Caucasus to Europe. Initially, he wrote commentary and prose (short story and novel). His most notable literary work was The Daughter of the Melik (1898). He even wrote a historical play, Vartanank, published in 1916.

In 1895 he moved to Tiflis, becoming secretary and contributing editor of Mshak until 1906 . Afterwards, he gradually shifted to scholarship and produced hundreds of articles and dozens of books. First he entered the field of literary criticism, with essays about many contemporary writers, and condensed his views in his monograph The Literary of Russian Armenians from the Beginnings to Our Days (1904). On the other hand, he offered fresh interpretations of many historical issues. He produced a spat of book of history: Armenian Printing (2 vols., 1901-1902), Catholicos Hovsep Arghoutian (1902), Grigor Artzruni (3 vols., 1902-1905), Saint Mesrop (1904), The Armenian Question (1906). After a year of teaching at the Gevorgian Seminary of Holy Etchmiatzin (1906-1907), Leo returned to Tiflis and dedicated himself to scholarship. He produced new books: The Feast of the Armenian Book (1912), The Kingdom of Van (1915), The Documents of the Armenian Question (1915), and the posthumously published Ani (1946). His most ambitious work, which remained unfinished, was the three-volume History of the Armenians, of which he only saw the first volume published in 1916 (the other two volumes were posthumously published in 1946 and 1947). This work of almost 2,000 pages introduced Armenian history from prehistory until the end of the eighteenth century (excluding the 12 ^th -15 ^th centuries). While his views were both fresh and sometimes not exempt of controversy, Leo’s works were characterized by an encyclopedic use of Armenian and foreign sources, archaeological, epigraphic, linguistic, and philological materials, travelogues and memoirs, secondary sources, et cetera.

In 1924 Leo moved to Yerevan by invitation of the government of Soviet Armenia and became a lecturer of Armenian history at Yerevan State University until his death. His classes became the first university textbooks of Armenian history, toge

ther with those of professional historian Hakob Manandian. He was given the title of professor in 1925 and became a full member of the Institute of Science and Art of Soviet Armenia (renamed Institute of Sciences in 1930).

While in his pre-Soviet writings Leo gave primacy to the role of the individual and spiritual and geographical factors, in the 1920s he tried to accommodate himself to the new ruling ideology and reversed many of his positions. The genocide appeared to have crushed his views. His work From the Past (1925) offered a picture of the Armenian liberation movement that was completely at odds with his positive approach of his formative years. He repeated his negative evaluation in the two-volume The Ideology of the Turkish Armenian Revolution (1934). In his work The Khoja Capital (1934) he regarded the commercial capital as the moving force of Armenian modern history. 

Leo passed away in Yerevan on November 14, 1932, and was buried in the Yerevan Pantheon. A street and a school in the Armenian capital have been named after him. Leo’s bust has been placed at the central building of Yerevan State University.

Death of Andreas Arzruni (September 22, 1898)

Andreas Arzruni was a geologist who had a remarkable international career at a time when it was not common to find Armenian names in this scientific field.

 

Andreas Arzruni was born on November 27, 1847. He was the younger brother of Grigor Artzruni, the future founder of Mshak, the groundbreaking Armenian daily published in Tiflis for almost four decades (1872-1921). He studied in the universities of St. Petersburg, Dorpat (nowadays Tartu), and Heidelberg. He graduated from Heidelberg in 1871 with a doctorate degree in chemistry. After living intermittently in Tiflis from 1871-1875, he continued his academic career in Europe.

Arzruni first taught at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1877-1883, where he also was adjunct director of the Museum of Mineralogy of the University. After a one-year tenure as extraordinary professor at the University of Breslau (Wroclaw), from 1884-1898 he was professor, head of the chair of Mineralogy, and dean of the Polytechnic School of Aachen. After the death of his brother Grigor, he became the nominal publisher of Mshak from 1895-1898.

In the 1880s and 1890s, Arzruni organized a series of scientific expeditions to the Ural Mountains in Russia, the Caucasus, different European countries, as well as Chile, Guyana, Egypt, etcetera. He dedicated two important expeditions to the study of the geological structure and useful minerals of Armenia (1873-1875 and 1892). In 1894 he climbed to the top of Little Ararat and descended for the first time to the crater of the extinguished volcano. He rejected the theory of Humboldt and Abich that the Armenian volcanoes have a vertical orientation. He used geological factors to explain the oscillations in the level of the Lake Van, which was proven half a decade later. He also foresaw the future of Dilijan as a sanatorium.

Arzruni was the author of more than fifty papers published in scientific journals from 1871 onwards. His studies were related to geological chemistry, crystal chemistry, mineralogy, petrography, as well as economics, philosophy, ethnology, and literature. His book Physical Chemistry of Crystals (1893), in German, was later reprinted twice. He also participated in the sessions of the International Congress of Geology (1897) and co-authored the stratigraphic scheme of the Urals and the first geological maps of the Southern Urals.

He became corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Turin and the Academy of Sciences of Bavaria and St. Petersburg. He first described two minerals, groddeckite and utahite, and before his death he was investigating a new mineral from Chile, which was named arzrunite after him.



In the winter of 1895-1896, while on a visit of inspection to the gold fields of British Guyana, Andreas Arzruni had an attack of fever, and this, together with consumption, forced him to spend the last year or so of his life in sanatoria in Switzerland and on the Rhine. He passed away at the age of fifty-one in Hohenhonnef (Germany) on September 22, 1898. His bust was erected at the entrance of the Polytechnic School of Aachen.

Death of Grigor Artzruni - December 19, 1892

Grigor Artzruni was one of the most prominent names in Armenian journalism during the nineteenth century. He founded and edited the most important newspaper of Russian Armenians, Mshak. 

He was born in Moscow in 1845, but he moved to Tiflis during his childhood. After studying in the Russian gymnasium of the city, he went back to Russia to continue his higher education in Moscow and St. Petersburg. After graduation, in 1867 he was admitted to the University of Heidelberg (Germany), where two years later he graduated with a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Philosophy. Afterwards, he spent a year in Venice and Vienna, studying Armenian with the Mekhitarist Fathers. He taught in 1870-1871 at the Gayanian Girls Schools, and on January 1, 1872 published the inaugural issue of Mshak, which he would edit until his death.

His newspaper became the most important voice of Armenian progressive thought and a champion of political liberalism. He worked towards the introduction and the absorption of the ideas of European liberalism, adapting it to Armenian reality. He was an ideologue of freedom and justice, equality of rights, and democracy, at a time when the Russian Empire was going through political upheaval. Artzruni made an important effort to minimize the distances between Eastern and Western Armenians; among the prominent contributors to Mshak were the great Eastern Armenian novelist Raffi (1835-1888), who first published several of his masterpieces in the newspaper, and his Western Armenian colleague Arpiar Arpiarian (1854-1908).

Artzruni’s efforts also turned the cause of the liberation of Turkish Armenians a focus of the activities of Armenians in Russia. The internationalization of the Armenian Question after the Treaty of Berlin (1878) also resulted in the politicization of the Armenian youth and the subsequent creation of the Armenian political parties.

As the editor of Mshak, he played a role in the birth of all three parties: the Armenagan (1885), the Hunchakian (1887), and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (1890). Mshak’s circle,according to Kristapor Mikayelian, one of the founders of the ARF, had a central role in the creation of the Federation of Armenian Revolutionaries (Hay Heghapokhakanneri Dashnaktsutiun), a union of all revolutionary groups, which became the forerunner of the party. Novelist and playwright Shirvanzade (1858-1935), who was not a sympathizer of the ARF, wrote the following in his memoirs:

“The young group surrounding Artzruni set the foundations of the ARF. The main forces were Dr. Hovhannes Loris-Melikian, Kristapor Mikayelian, Simeon Zavarian, Martiros Shatirian, Kostandin Khatisian, Levon Sargsian, Gabriel Mirzoyan, and a few others, whose names I have forgotten. 

“. . . Those two [Mikayelian and Zavarian] came to visit Grigor Artzruni and exchanged information. That group, together with a few bourgeois, organized the twenty-fifth anniversary of Grigor Artzruni’s journalistic activities, and turned that celebration into a sort of prelude to the ARF.

“The ARF was organized with Grigor Artzruni’s knowledge and sponsorship, but without his immediate participation. Artzruni feared endangering the existence of Mshak, which was above everything else for him. Realizing that people wanted to use his popularity to raise money, he did not believe very much in the sincerity of their friendship.”

Grigor Artzruni died in Tiflis at the age of 47. His burial was a national event throughout the Caucasus. Russian authorities even tried to block the ceremonies. The police made an effort to contain the thousands in the funeral procession away from the main thoroughfares of Tiflis. After his internment (December 27, 1892), there were incidents with the police and dozens of Armenians were arrested and imprisoned.