#transcaucasia

[awidevastdominion]

/ Gianluca Pardelli

[zhar-ptak]

Pitsunda - a Black Sea beach in Georgia and Pyatigorsk - the oldest Caucasian spa; Kaukaz i Zakaukazie. Podręcznik turystyczny. 1981

[thejewellerybox]

Domra or mandolin brooch, c. 1910

'94 rose-cut diamonds all encrusted in silver carry you through this 14K red gold Russian Victorian brooch, starting from the stringed musical instrument’s head with miniature tuning pegs and via the draping strap over to the body embellished with a diamond rim and blue enamelled inlay frills.

Besides the diamond soundhole and bridge, it’s the eight cabochon cut rubies in the nut and the bridge pins and the two seed pearls next to the chords that make this mandolin reach its crescendo.'

[urartian]

hello!! it’s january 6. in case you didn’t know, today, armenians all around the world celebrate christmas (except armenians living in the holy land, who celebrate it on the 19th) :-) if you have any armenian friends, go and wish them a merry christmas!! :D

also, fun fact! “merry christmas” in armenian is շնորհավոր սուրբ ծնունդ “shnorhavor surb tsnund”, which literally means “congratulations [shnorhavor] on the holy [surb] birth [tsnund].”

by the way... that was eastern armenian. in western armenian, it’s pronounced like this: “shnorhavor surp dznunt.”

[latkejoon]

What’s Going On In Artsakh, for all my Odar (Non-Armenian) Friends <3

On September 27th, the Azerbaijani military shelled civilians in Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh, violating a ceasefire, and beginning one of the most concerning and biggest clashes in the conflict since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Why is there a conflict?

Armenians are an ethnic group from West Asia and the Caucasus. Historically, we’ve lived in a fairly large region in what’s known as the Armenian Highlands.

This map denotes areas Armenians have lived for thousands of years. There are a lot of maps whose borders are more conservative or liberal, but the important thing is that Armenian people lived and thrived in these areas for a very long time.

From 1915-1923, the Ottoman Empire (which occupied a lot of this territory) carried out a systematic attempt to cleanse Armenians from their ancestral homelands, and murdered an estimated 60-90% of the empire’s Armenian population, in what is known as the Armenian Genocide. When it ended, Armenians were to be granted much of what is now Eastern Turkey but Turkey took it. The Republic of Turkey has continued to deny the Armenian Genocide for the past century, and due to their alliance the United States has been reticent to even acknowledge the genocide until very recently. Anyway, Armenia was a small independent country for like at most a decade before the USSR took it over.

Basically, the wide swath of land that Armenians have called their home for thousands of years has been diminished by greater powers and cleansed of its Armenian heritage through genocide and imperialism.

^Armenians often call this region Artsakh, and its population is around 89% Armenian, but it’s recognized internationally as a part of Azerbaijan despite being functionally sovereign as of the nineteen-eighties.

Azerbaijan has never recognized Artsakh as a sovereign state, and espouses a lot of Armenophobia, through its governmental as well as popular behavior. A clash broke out earlier this summer, and Azeris marched through their capital chanting “death to the Armenian”, their defense ministry implied it planned to bomb Armenia’s super unstable Soviet era nuclear plants (yes, like Chernobyl), and the Azerbaijani government has led a huge campaign of cultural genocide (destroying UNESCO-protected Armenian cultural monuments and churches that have existed in historically Armenian lands for centuries or even millennia)

What makes this particular offensive so threatening?

Azerbaijan’s offensive (which, to be clear, is against a people and territory internationally recognized as under their jurisdiction) has been backed by wealthy, genocide-denying Turkey to a degree Turkey hasn’t really done before. This is really retraumatizing to a lot of Armenians, and we fear that Turkey and its allies are once again attempting to wipe the Armenian people off the map as they did one hundred years ago. Turkey and Azerbaijan have seen themselves as  "one nation with two states”  for much of the modern states’ histories, due to their shared Turkic ethnic identities, and often view Armenia, and Armenians, as an obstacle.

The conflict has been covered internationally as a “both sides claim the other started it” narrative despite the huge power imbalances between the two countries, and also the fact that the American consulate in Azerbaijan changed travel warnings two days before violence broke out, suggesting they knew that the conflict would become violent once again.

The internationally community more recently has begun to recognize the likelihood that Azerbaijan instigated the violence. It’s important to remember that the Armenian government has no reason to attack Armenians in Artsakh. From all evidence this conflict, which has begun to spread to targets within internationally-recognized Armenian borders, is a manifestation of the Turkish and Azerbaijani nationalist and capitalist interest in destroying Armenia and its people.

What can I do?

The most important thing is to spread awareness of the Armenian perspective on this conflict. Turkish and Azeri burner accounts are currently very actively harassing Armenians online and spreading hateful and false narratives about history in the region. It’s exhausting to try to spread awareness as Armenians and having our own legitimacy and trauma questioned by Azeri and Turkish genocide deniers and nationalists and it’s really helpful whenever we have odar allies.

Petitions:

Urge Congress to Stop Azerbaijan's Attack Against Artsakh

CONDEMN THE AGGRESSION OF TURKEY AND AZERBAIJAN AGAINST ARTSAKH, ARMENIA

The Venmo account @Anashe-Hakopiannik is donating supplies to Artsakh as they try to care for the wounded and maintain life under bombs. It is confirming supplies bought at Instagram account @anashay 

Thank you for reading!

[rvexillology]

The communist free Transcaucasia

from /r/vexillology Top comment: I dunno, it looks pretty communist to me.

[omniatlas]

Southern Asia 101 years ago today: German Caucasus Expedition (10 Jun 1918) https://buff.ly/2Z9Uxtw The collapse of the Transcaucasian Federation in the face of Ottoman invasion encouraged newly independent Georgia to seek German protection. Unwilling to see the Ottomans gain complete control of Transcaucasia, including the rich Baku oil fields, the Germans readily agreed. In early June they landed troops in Georgia, quickly taking charge across the country. #southernasia #history #welovehistory #map #1910s #1918 #caucasus #armenia #azerbaijan #sovietunion #ussr #georgiacountry #germanempire #russianrevolution #ottomanempire #june #june10 #britishempire #russiancivilwar #transcaucasia #worldwar1 #worldwari #maps #greatwar #ww100 #ww1 #wwi #todayinhistory #historytoday #historyteacher (at Tbilisi, Georgia) https://www.instagram.com/p/ByhbQgSA0cT/?igshid=1h7u9nl2zhl8p

[mostly-history]

Iron Age bronze bells (Transcaucasia or Iran, 1st millennium BC).

8.99cm

8.0cm

7.19cm

5.99cm