Armenian Communities of Persia/Iran: History, Trade, Culture

Edited by Richard G. Hovannisian Armenian-Iranian interactions date back to the depths of antiquity. At times, Armenia and Iran were friends and allies, even sharing common dynasties, and at other times fierce and unrelenting adversaries. Whatever their political relationship may have been, their commonalities in pre-Christian and pre-Islamic social structures and cultural attributes, including linguistic affiliation, are striking. The boundaries between the Iranian and Armenian worlds were porous in many ways. The Armenian presence in Iran is attested from the Achaemenid centuries to the present. In fact, the northernmost reaches of Persian Azarbayjan were once included in the region known historically as Greater Armenia. During the Arsacid, Sasanian, Arab, Seljuk, Turkmen, Mongol, Safavid, Qajar, and Pahlavi periods of dominance, Armenians were to be found in Persia/Iran as peasants, merchants, and even officials and warriors, and often as forcibly uprooted exiles from their native l