The largest city in Armenia and one of the oldest cities in the world today has more than a million inhabitants. Its name was connected either with the tribe that once lived on these lands, then with the names of the rulers, or even with the legend about the flood. Legend has it that the notorious Noah cried out: “Yerevats!”, Which means “She appeared!”, Barely seeing the land and the flood waters leaving. The event happened just at the place where the capital of Armenia is now. Be that as it may, the population of Yerevan has been creating the history of the city for more than one thousand years.
The base of the fortress Erebuni
The date of foundation of the fortified city of Erebuni on the left bank of the Ararat plain (along the Araks river) is considered to be 782 BC. King Urartu, an ancient state located within the borders of today's Armenia, eastern Turkey, northwestern Iran and the autonomous republic of Azerbaijan, Argishti I in the fifth year of his reign founded a new settlement, which was later used as a springboard for trips to Lake Sevan and protect the Ararat plain. The ruins of the fortress, according to legend, which became the haven 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 BC was mainly made up of prisoners (under a different version - warriors) from the western regions of the Armenian Highlands, who, in fact, were engaged in work related to the founding of the city. A memorable record of this is left in stone on the hill and in the annals. The population of Yerevan at that time was 6, 600 people. After a while, the fortress was defeated, after which there are no written certificates of the city. It is known that in the third century BC, Yerevan, whose population then belonged to the Christian or Manichaean community, continued to exist under the rule of a certain “ruler”.
Mentioned in the Book of Letters
Medieval Yerevan found itself in a zone of endless Iranian-Byzantine wars and became the site of periodic uprisings of the local population. Then the first mention of the city in Armenian sources - the “Book of Letters” is discovered. In addition, it is known that in the fourteenth century the population of the city was about fifteen to twenty thousand people, and Yerevan itself was an important cultural center. True, after the defeat of Tamerlane, the local population decreased significantly, and some of the buildings that would today become historical monuments were destroyed.
Arena of the Ottoman-Safavid Wars
The devastating wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavids, as well as the nomads, whom the local rulers used to sow enmity and weaken the local inhabitants, had a serious impact on the demographic situation in the region and the national composition of the population. The Armenian population was significantly reduced, and in 1580 the Ottoman forces almost destroyed the city and captured 60, 000 Muslims and Christians.
The changing government then ordered the entire local population to be brought to Persia so that the Ottomans came to a depopulated country, then simply burned everything in their path, then populated the territory with nomadic tribes. For example, in the sixteenth century, Yerevan (the population was just nomadic tribes), Karabakh and Ganja adopted fifty thousand families, and soon the number of inhabitants increased several times.
As a result of long wars and general instability in the region in 1804, only about six thousand people lived in the city. However, after twenty years, the population was already more than twenty thousand people.
Erivan province
The first documented data on the size and 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 as part of the Russian Empire (the Yerevan or Erivan province was formed with the center in Yerevan). The population (the nationality of the current inhabitants of the city will be discussed below) then largely migrated to Persia, so that the number of local residents decreased, amounting to 11.3 thousand people in 1833.
According to the ethnic composition, the population of the city (according to the data for 1829) was divided as follows:
- Armenians accounted for 36% of the local population;
- Azerbaijanis were almost 64% of citizens;
- there were no Russians, Yezidis and Kurds in the city.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the population of Yerevan had increased to almost thirty thousand inhabitants. The national composition has also changed significantly. In 1897, Armenians accounted for 43%, Azerbaijanis - 42%, Russians - 9.5%, Yezidis and Kurds - 0.22%, representatives of other nationalities - 4.5%.
As part of the Russian Empire and with the status of a provincial city, Yerevan retained the appearance of a provincial village. The production facilities were represented by several local factories, brick and cognac factories, and along narrow streets stretched one- and two-story clay houses.
Yerevan as part of the Soviet Union
With the establishment of Soviet power, Yerevan becomes the capital of the Republic of Armenia. Immediately began a large-scale reconstruction of the city:
- electricity, plumbing and sewage systems were provided;
- almost all the buildings built earlier were destroyed;
- new streets were laid and forest belts organized that protected the city from dust storms;
- cultural objects were erected: theaters, a repository of ancient manuscripts, museums and monuments.
In those years, Yerevan was actively developing. The population, whose population was growing rapidly, became nationally oriented. So, if at the beginning of the twentieth century Armenians made up 43% of the townspeople, then by 1959 their number had increased to 93%. In the same year, the total population of Yerevan was half a million people.
Current population
Inexorable time failed to wipe the city off the face of the earth - today the capital of independent Armenia is Yerevan. The population of the largest city of the republic totals more than a 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 a high level of urbanization is noted in the country. Half of the urban population lives directly in Yerevan.
