For this installment of the Treasures of NAASR's Mardigian Library, we have chosen examples and maps and atlases and a few related works from our holdings. They are not necessarily selected for their beauty (although some are indeed beautiful) nor for their age (though some are quite old) but because they tell an interesting story and reflect the diversity of approaches to mapping Armenia over the past 325 years, which is the time period reflected in the maps included in this feature.
The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) is proud to announce that it is a recipient of a Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in support of its efforts to safeguard the important and rare holdings in its Edward and Helen Mardigian Library. The grant will support a general preservation assessment and the purchase of rehousing supplies.
We offer this in tribute to all of those who keep the spirit of learning and the love of books alive, from the Mekhitarist Fathers of San Lazzaro to Vartan Gregorian.
In this feature we highlight a group, by no means exhaustive, of memoirs by survivors of the Armenian Genocide published in Armenian and English between the years 1918 and 1955. In these memoirs we hear the voices of women and men, clergymen and political activists, natives of the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire and of western Asia Minor, Protestant and Apostolic, intellectuals and “average” women and men, as well as one non-Armenian, an Assyrian whose people suffered largely the same fate as the Armenians.
He is a figure which steps straight out from the Old Testament with all the fire and all the poetry. H. F. B. Lynch (Travels and Studies in Armenia) In 1820 two prominent Armenians were born who devoted their lives to Armenia and the Armenian people and were venerated by their contemporaries. Khrimian Hayrik (1820-1907) was an Armenian Apostolic Church leader, educator, and publisher who became the Patriarch of Constantinople and later Catholicos of All Armenians. Ghevond Alishan (1820-1901) was a philologist, historian, geographer, translator, a member of the Mkhitarist Congregation in Venice.