The largest city of Armenia and one of the oldestcities of the world today has more than a million inhabitants. Its name was associated with the tribe who once lived on these lands, then with the names of the rulers, and even completely with the legend of the flood. The legend says that the notorious Noah cried out: "Erevan!", Which means "She appeared!", Barely seeing the land and the fact that the flood waters are moving away. The event occurred just on the spot where the capital of Armenia is now. Whatever it was, the population of Yerevan has been creating the history of the city for more than a thousand years.
The date of foundation of the city-fortress Erebuni onthe left-bank part of the Ararat plain (along the Araks River) is considered to be 782 BC. The king of Urartu, an ancient state located within the borders of today's Armenia, eastern Turkey, northwestern Iran and the autonomous republic of Azerbaijan, Argishti I founded a new settlement in the fifth year of his reign, which was later used as a springboard for trips to Lake Sevan and protection of the Ararat plain. The ruins of the fortress, according to the legends that became the refuge of the biblical Noah and his family both before the flood and after, were discovered in the southwestern part of the modern city called Yerevan.
The population of the fortress at the end of the eighth century before ourThe eras consisted mainly of captives (under another version - soldiers) from the western regions of the Armenian highlands, which, in fact, were engaged in works connected with the founding of the city. A memorable record of this is left in the stone on the hill and in the annals. The population of Yerevan was then 6600 people. After a while, the fortress was defeated, after which there is no written evidence of the city. It is known that in the third century BC Yerevan, whose population belonged to the Christian or Manichaean community, continued to exist under the rule of a certain "ruler".
Medieval Yerevan was in the zone of endlessIran-Byzantine wars and became a place of periodic uprisings of the local population. At the same time, the first mention of the city in the Armenian sources - "The Book of Letters" - is found. In addition, it is known that in the fourteenth century the population of the city was about fifteen to twenty thousand people, while Yerevan itself was an important cultural center. However, after the defeat of Tamerlane, the local population has significantly decreased, and some buildings that today would have become historical monuments, were destroyed.
Serious impact on the demographic situation in theregion and the national composition of the population were the devastating wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavids, as well as the nomads that local rulers used to sow enmity and weaken the local inhabitants. The Armenian population significantly decreased, and in 1580 Ottoman troops practically destroyed the city and captured 60,000 Muslims and Christians.
The changing power then ordered the withdrawal of allthe local population in Persia, so that the Ottomans came to the depopulated country, it simply burned everything in its path, then inhabited the territory with tribes of nomads. For example, in the sixteenth century, Yerevan (the population was composed of nomadic tribes), Karabakh and Ganja received fifty thousand families, and soon the population multiplied several times.
As a result of protracted wars and a generalinstability in the region in 1804 in the city lived only about six thousand people. However, in twenty years the population was already over twenty thousand people.
The first documented data on the number andthe national composition of the population of Yerevan appeared in the first half of the nineteenth century, when the city became the capital of the Armenian region within the Russian Empire (Yerevan, or Erivan, a province centered in the city of Yerevan). The population (the nationality of the current residents of the city will be discussed below) was then largely moved to Persia, so the number of local residents decreased to 11,300 in 1833.
According to the national composition of the population of the city (according to data for 1829) was divided as follows:
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the population of Yerevanhas increased to almost thirty thousand inhabitants. Significantly changed and the national composition. In 1897, there were 43% of Armenians, 42% of Azerbaijanis, 9.5% of Russians, 0.22% of Yezidis and Kurds, and 4.5% of representatives of other nationalities.
As part of the Russian Empire and with statusthe provincial city of Yerevan preserved the appearance of a provincial settlement. The production capacities were represented by several local factories, brick and brandy factories, and one-and two-story clay houses stretched along narrow streets.
With the establishment of Soviet power, Yerevan becomes the capital of the Republic of Armenia. Immediately began a large-scale reconstruction of the city:
Inevitable time, it was not possible to erase the city fromface of the earth - today Yerevan is the capital of independent Armenia. The population of the largest city of the republic is more than one million people, which is one third of all residents of the state. More than 64% of Armenian citizens (the population of Armenia is about three million people) live in large cities (Yerevan, Gyumri and Vanadzor), so there is a high level of urbanization in the country. Half of the urban population lives directly in Yerevan.
According to the data of the 2001 Armenian population census (and this is the latest actual data), the national composition is represented by such groups:
Persians, Greeks, Georgians, Kurds and Assyrians also meet in Yerevan.
