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Between 1578 and 1579, Sardar Lala Mustafa Pasha, the second vizier of Murad III and the commander-in-chief of the Ottoman troops in the East (in the Ottoman Empire, the term ‘sardar’ was used to refer to a military rank and a title of the army commander during wars), occupied Yerevan. Armenian journalist and researcher Aris Ghazinyan writes about it in his book “Yerevan: with a cross or on the cross,” which is an attempt of setting and considering an extremely diverse range of processes directly or indirectly forming the character of the development of the territory in question and predetermining the inevitability of turning Yerevan into the main center of the Eastern Armenia, and later on into the capital of the recovered Armenian state.

“Lala Pasha destroyed Yerevan and enslaved 60,000 Christians and Muslims,” Ghazinyan cites Zakaria Kanakertsi as writing.

However, Prince Hamza Mirza soon returned Yerevan to the governance of Persia, but Sardar Ferhad Pasha, the new commander-in-chief of the Ottoman troops, sieged Yerevan bastion in 1583. Ibrahim Pechevi writes the following about that period, “The Islamic troops moved from stop to stop and reached Revan okrug. Looted as a result of attacks since the times of Lala Mustafa Pasha, those places were remaining in ruins in those times. However, over the last one or two years, they became better-organised and the ruins were not almost visible. Every village in the okrug was turned into a settlement or little town consisting of 300 or 400 houses. The people spent their days in amusements and joy. At learning about yet another arrival of the Islamic troops, they dispersed and fell into low spirits.”
Ghazinyan points that the principle of the Ottoman narrations of historical events, which was established between 15th and 16th centuries, became the core of the formation of the Turkish historiography school, whose accents are remaining unchanged so far. First, it is the “moral grounds” of making wars as a way of “establishing justice.” For example, according to the official Turkish history (“Tarikh”), the Ottomans saved the world from “Byzantine despotism,” brought “justice” onto the Anatolian and Balkan lands, abolished the “laws of loot,” guaranteed the dignity and property of each of their nationals.

Accordance to the administrative division of the Safavid shahdom, Yerevan was “registered” in Azerbaijan oblast. “This circumstance is still mercilessly abused by the pan-Turkism apologetics. Meanwhile, it is must be kept in mind that the name of that historical land (Azerbaijan) is not connected with the official name of the present republic of the same name (it emerged only in 1918) and its ‘predominant nation,’ which was modelled in the 30s of the past century,” Ghazinyan points out.

In the early 80s of the 16th century, Yerevan was being ruined by the Ottoman Sardar Ferhad Pasha. Thousands of inhabitants of Yerevan were taken hostages. According Pechevi, Yerevan hostages “rose a question” over the lawfulness of their capturing. Mufti Kemal Pasha-zadeh answered them with fetwas “confirming the lawfulness of the actions.” Mufti said that “Sharia allows to take little children into captivity with their mothers.”

The administrative territory of Yerevan Beglerlegdom included Nakhijevan on the south, a part of Shirak region in the north together with “the Shuragil Fortress, one of the most necessary and important fortresses in Revan okrug.” In 1590, as a result of an agreement signed between the Ottomans and Safavids, the latter gave up the Caucasian and some Mesopotamian lands. As a result, the Ararat Plain and Yerevan passed under the Ottoman dominion. This was when Abbas I came to the historical arena.

For the ten years of the Ottoman rule in Yerevan, the new authorities tried “not to disturb the Armenians much.” There are facts that the Armenian part of the population of Yerevan that was captured by Ferhad Pasha soon returned to its everyday life, unlike the exiled Shias, Ghazinyan writes.

The existing relatively acceptable conditions for holding a national life were one of the most important factors gradually distinguishing Yerevan as the most optimal centre for the Armenian future. In this context, an early 17th-century report by Antonio de Gouvea, ambassador of the King of Spain and Portugal, Filip III, to the Safavid state, is very valuable. According to it, “Yerevan was entirely inhabited by Armenians.” Pater Filip, a Catholic missionary who visited Yerevan, also informs that “the inhabitants of the cities conquered by the Muslims and of the whole country are Christian Armenians.” 
In the very beginning of the 17th century, the 30-year-old Shah Abbas I started a war against the Ottomans and soon took Tabriz. In the spring of 1603, his army already rushed into Yerevan Beglerbegdom. In Yerevan, Abbas I saw well-ordered lands; the Armenian population of the Ararat Plain had managed to arrange their homes and recover the economic situation over the ten years of a comparatively soft regime. This greatly impressed the Safavid shah, and apparently, it was when he started working out plans of using the Armenian resource in the economic development of the country, Ghazinyan highlights.

“Shahanshah ordered the Persian troops to go to the Ararat Oblast and the neighbouring gavars, raise the men – called rayats – from everywhere, be they Christian, Muslim or from any other tribe, gather them and take them to the Persian countries,” Arakel Davrizhetsi writes. According to him, these men were supposed to take part in battles and help the Persian troops. During attacks, the Christians were pushed forward; they were set against fire and sword so that the Armenian people would be slaughtered from both sides – by Ottomans from the front and Persians from the back.

The Armenian population of Yerevan okrug and the northern lands of the Ararat Plain had started living in regime of martial law since the beginning of the siege of Yerevan (November 1603). The Ottoman authorities took up measures targeting agricultural and other preparations. The entire produced output (meat, grain, fruit and other) was “expropriated” up to the end, Ghazinyan writes. As a result, the Armenian population of the Ararat Plain found itself on the verge of an awful hunger; this forced a part of the inhabitants drive their livestock to cliffs that were difficult to reach. This part of the inhabitants of Yerevan hid themselves in caves and grottos near the foothills of the volcanic Gegham Mountains (in Garni District) and Aragatsotn plateau.

To be continued
Aris Ghazinyan’s “Yerevan: with a cross or on the cross” is a book about the social and political history of Yerevan and Yerevan district (as a habitat) since the declaration of Christianity to the beginning of XIX century. In addition to demonstrating historical facts based on archive documents and sources, the book also considers the fundamental theses of the Azerbaijani historiography and Pan-Turkic ideology aimed at appropriating the historical, cultural, and spiritual heritage of the Armenians and other nations of the region by falsifying their history.