CHAPTER XIII.
OF THE HAÏKANIAN OR THE ARMENIAN RACE.
S ec tio n I.-—Name and Land of the Haïkani.
The Armenians term themselves Haïkani and their
country Haïkia from a traditions! patriarch of their race
named Haïk or Haig, who is said to have lived in a.rchnote
and an unknown period of antiquity.* The country of
which they are the aboriginal or immemorial inhabitants
is subject to the Russian, Turkish and Persian monarchies,
being situated in the region where these three great empires
approximate. It extends through the space bf three hundred
leagues in longitude, from the banks of the. Euphrates
to the mouth of the river Kur or Cyrus in the Caspian lake,
and in latitude two hundred and fifty leagues from Georgia
and Mount Caucasus on the north to the 'Southern limits of
Diarbekir. Through the whole of this region no other
language is in use but the Armenian, with the exception of
the Turkish, which is spoken by the Mohammedan inhabitants.
Even many of the Turks who live in rural tracts
* Haïk is said to have been son of Thaglath, who is identified with Togar-
mah, son of Japhet. This induces a suspicion, that, the story of Haïk is a
monkish legend. It is more probable however that the ecclesiastical writers
found a popular tradition respecting fee reputed patriarch of the Armenian
race, and fitted it to the biblical genealogies.
TTnïg lived, according to the Armenian historians cited by M. Saint Martin,
nearly twenty-two centuries before the Christian era. Hé came from Babylon
to avoid the tyranny of Belus. The story seems an imitation of the biblical
history of Abraham.— See Mémoires Historiques et Géographiques sur l’Arménie,
par J. Saint Martin, tom. 1, p. 281.
remote from. the towns have adopted the vulgar Armenian
dialect, whichüs the genuine Armenian with a slight admixture
of the Turkish,#^ idiom which n o w prevails through
all the pastern part of<;Lesser Asia, known under the name
of Little Armenia as well as in Cilicia and Shir wan.
The Armenian language? is not even confined within the
limits" of the countries above described- The people are
spread through many parts of Asia and of eastern Europe,
and have evpry wherehr^Ught with them their native idiom.
They form a considerable part of the population in all parts
of Anatolia, in the north o f1; Syria, in Mesopotamia, and
throughout Azerbaijan, which in ancient times was for the
most, part included in >the Armenian .province naiped.Vas-
bouragan,j%the Persian Irak, in Ghilan and Mazanderan, in .
the environs of Ispahan, in; Georgia, which has increased in
population from the ruin of Armenia, and evenin Circassia,
Astrakhan, bn, the banks of the. Don, in the Crimea, in
Poland, and indifferent parts^of European Turkey. In
these countries the Armenian^hjj^ve »hot only settled as
merchants^ a., great p ^portion of the Armenian.^pplonists
fill the empldyjm^ts^f artisaqs and, husbandmen. In the
merely mercantile prpfeggion they .found in great num-
| bergjthrough Egypt, §yria, Bagdad, in Persia, and even
in India.*,
The extent and limits of Armenia have been differently
estimated at;.different, periods, ^ tra b o described it as
bounded, towards-the south by jhefpdge of Mount Taurus*
which, as he says, -separates; it from Mesopotamia, towards
the north by Mount Caucasus, shutting in the Albanians
and Iberians, and likewise by the Parachoathrian mountains
hanging over the Caspian sea, a chain which by other
writers is termed Mount Cagpiusvfc< Ptolerny gives Armenia
a wide extent. He reckons among the mountains of that
country the Moschic chain, extending above the Cappadocian
Pontus and Mount Paryadres and the Gordyaean Hills, which
were inhabited by the Karduchi and are now the abode of
* Mémoires sur 1’Arménie, par M. J . Saint-Martin,
t Strabo, Geog. lib. 11, p. 527.—See also Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib.