Note 2 — Chapter XV · AT ERIVAN

Erivan does not possess any monuments of first-rate merit or of great antiquity. Her origin is obscure. Noah may quite well have lived here before the Deluge, as one of the earliest of modern European visitors was informed by his Armenian friends.2 The popular derivation of the name is from the Armenian verb erevel, and it is said to signify appearing. The place would, indeed, be about the first locality in the plain region to appear to the eyes of the patriarch of old.3 Hither may have been directed his steps and those of his family when the waters had receded from a world renewed. This may be the site of the original city of Noah, perhaps preserved beneath the soil upon which is built the present town. The more learned are inclined to a much later foundation, but do not yield in point of philological plausibility to the champions of the identification with Noah’s city. They say that the name has been shortened from Erovantavan, which they render the place where Erovant was defeated. Erovant or Ervand was an Armenian monarch of the first century who was vanquished in this region by the lawful heir to the throne of the Arsakids at the head of a Persian army. The event and the survival of the name Erovantavan are attested by Moses of Khorene.4 The Mohammedan derivation from Revan Kul, a prince of the reign of Shah Ismail (1502–1524),5 who is said to have fortified the place by his master’s order, cannot be reconciled with the fact that Erivan was already in existence certainly in the eleventh and probably in the seventh century.6 But it played no prominent part whether in ancient or mediæval history until the advent of the Ottoman Empire. From the sixteenth century into modern times it was continually disputed between the Sultans and their powerful neighbours on the east, the Persian Shahs. The enumeration of the sieges it sustained at the hands of Turks and Persians would be a tax upon my reader’s patience which I am not disposed to levy. When the Russians appeared on the scene it was in Persian possession; and an unsuccessful attempt on their part to capture the fortress in 1804 supplied the ground for the firm belief in its impregnability which was cherished by its Persian governors. This confidence was rudely shattered by Paskevich in October 1827. His shells wrought fearful havoc in the unsubstantial town, and one is said to have pierced the dome of the mosque in the citadel, whither thousands of the wretched inhabitants had fled for protection against the hail of the cannon. The Russian army entered the place without encountering any serious obstacle, and the Russian flag has waved there ever since.7