Yerevan: population and a brief history of the city

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:44

The largest city in Armenia and one of the oldest cities in the world today has more than a million inhabitants. Its name was associated either with the tribe that once lived on these lands, or with the names of the rulers, or even with the legend of the flood. The legend says that the notorious Noah shouted: “Yerevats!”, Which means “She has appeared!”, barely seeing the land and the fact that the waters of the flood were receding. The event took place just at the place where the capital of Armenia is now located. Be that as it may, the population of Yerevan has been creating the history of the city for more than one thousand years.

Foundation of Erebuni Fortress

The foundation date of the fortress city of Erebuni on the left bank of the Ararat plain (along the Araks River) is 782 BC. The king of Urartu, an ancient state located within the borders of today's Armenia, eastern Turkey, the northwestern part of Iran and the autonomous republic of Azerbaijan, Argishti I, in the fifth year of his reign, founded a new settlement, which was later used as a springboard for trips to the area of Lake Sevan and protection of the Ararat plain. The ruins of the fortress, according to legend, which became the home of the biblical Noah and his family both before the flood andafter, were discovered in the southwestern part of the modern city called Yerevan.

The population of the fortress at the end of the eighth century BC were mostly prisoners (under another version - warriors) from the western regions of the Armenian Highlands, who, in fact, were engaged in work related to the founding of the city. A commemorative record of this was left in the stone on the hill and in the annals. The population of Yerevan at that time was 6600 people. After some time, the fortress was destroyed, after which there is no written evidence of the city. It is known that in the third century BC Yerevan, whose population then belonged to the Christian or Manichaean community, continued to exist under the rule of a certain "ruler".

Mentioned in the Book of Letters

Medieval Yerevan found itself in the zone of endless Iranian-Byzantine wars and became the site of periodic uprisings of the local population. At the same time, the first mention of the city is found in Armenian sources - the Book of Letters. In addition, it is known that in the fourteenth century the population of the city was about fifteen to twenty thousand people, and Yerevan itself was an important cultural center. True, after the defeat by Tamerlane, the local population was significantly reduced, and some buildings that today would become historical monuments were destroyed.

The arena of the Ottoman-Safavid wars

The devastating wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavids had a serious impact on the demographic situation in the region and the national composition of the population,as well as nomads, who were used by local rulers to sow enmity and weaken local residents. The Armenian population was significantly reduced, and in 1580 the Ottoman troops practically destroyed the city and took 60,000 Muslims and Christians prisoner.

The changing government either ordered the entire local population to be withdrawn to Persia, so that the Ottomans would come to a depopulated country, or simply burned everything in its path, or populated the territory with nomadic tribes. For example, in the sixteenth century, Yerevan (the population was made up of nomadic tribes), Karabakh and Ganja received fifty thousand families, and soon the number of inhabitants multiplied several times.

As a result of long wars and general instability in the region in 1804, only about six thousand people lived in the city. However, twenty years later, the population was already over twenty thousand people.

Erivan Governorate

The first documented data on the size and national composition of the population of Yerevan appeared in the first half of the nineteenth century, when the city became the capital of the Armenian region as part of the Russian Empire (Yerevan, or Erivan, province was formed with the center in the city of Yerevan). The population (the nationality of the current inhabitants of the city will be discussed below) then largely moved to Persia, so that the number of local residents decreased, amounting to 11.3 thousand people in 1833.

By ethnic composition, the population of the city (according to data for 1829) was divided as follows:

Armenians accounted for 36%local residents;
Azerbaijanis were almost 64% of the townspeople;
Russians, Yezidis and Kurds were not in the city at all.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the population of Yerevan had increased to almost thirty thousand inhabitants. The national composition has also changed significantly. In 1897, there were 43% of Armenians, 42% of Azerbaijanis, 9.5% of Russians, 0.22% of Yezidis and Kurds, and 4.5% of other nationalities.

As part of the Russian Empire and with the status of a provincial city, Yerevan retained the appearance of a provincial settlement. Production facilities were represented by several local factories, brick and cognac factories, and one- and two-story mud houses stretched along narrow streets.

Yerevan within the Soviet Union

With the establishment of Soviet power, Yerevan becomes the capital of the Republic of Armenia. A large-scale reconstruction of the city immediately began:

electricity, water supply and sewerage were installed;
almost all the buildings built earlier were destroyed;
new streets were laid and forest belts were organized, which protected the city from dust storms;
cultural facilities have been erected: theaters, a repository of ancient manuscripts, museums and monuments.

Yerevan was actively developing in those years. The population, whose number was growing rapidly, became nationally oriented. So, if at the beginning of the twentieth century Armenians made up 43% of the townspeople, by 1959 their number had increased to 93%. Thereinsame year, the total population of Yerevan was half a million people.

Current population

Relentless time failed to wipe the city off the face of the earth - today the capital of independent Armenia is Yerevan. The population of the largest city of the republic is more than a million people, which is one third of all residents of the state. More than 64% of Armenian citizens (the population of Armenia is about three million) live in large cities (Yerevan, Gyumri and Vanadzor), so the country has a high level of urbanization. Half of the urban population lives directly in Yerevan.