Armenians in the Ottoman Empire

Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (or Ottoman Armenians) mostly belonged to either the Armenian Apostolic Church or the Armenian Catholic Church. They were part of the Armenian millet until the Tanzimat reforms in the nineteenth century equalized all Ottoman citizens before the law.

Background

The Ottomans introduced and developed a number of unique traits into the traditions of Islam. Islamic culture did not enact a separation between religious and secular matters. But the Ottomans visualized an idea that two separate "establishments" shared state power. Historians often label the Ottoman sociopolitical construct the "Ottoman System", as a system characterized by militarism and State power, sharing the responsibility of both governing a nation's citizens and its religious establishments. The Ottomans left civic control to the civic institutions. It should be noted though that the term "Ottoman System," however, conveys a sense of structural rigidity that probably was nonexistent throughout the Ottoman period. At first, the Sultan was the highest power in the land and had control over almost everything. The state organization began to take a more definite shape in the first half of the sixteenth century under Suleyman I, also known as "Lawgiver."

List of Ottoman Armenians

Armenians

Armenians (Armenian: հայեր, hayer [hɑˈjɛɾ]) are an ethnic group native to the Armenian Highlands.

Armenians constitute the main population of Armenia and the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. There is a wide-ranging diaspora of around 5 million people of full or partial Armenian ancestry living outside of modern Armenia. The largest Armenian populations today exist in Russia, the United States, France, Georgia, Iran, Ukraine, Lebanon, and Syria. With the exceptions of Iran and the former Soviet states, the present-day Armenian diaspora was formed mainly as a result of the Armenian Genocide.

Most Armenians adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church, a non-Chalcedonian church, which is also the world's oldest national church. Christianity began to spread in Armenia soon after Jesus' death, due to the efforts of two of his apostles, St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew. In the early 4th century, the Kingdom of Armenia became the first state to adopt Christianity as a state religion.