Armenian geneology in Jerusalem's Old City
Wedged into an modest corner of the Old City behind high walls and locked gates and numbering some 1,500, Jerusalem's tiny and ancient Armenian community has weathered two full millennia amidst the chaos of one of the world's most historically turbulent cities. They've been squeezed by demographic pressure, buffeted by the will of invaders and conquerors, and borne witness to countless wars - but they're still here, still living and dying in the shadow of their venerable cathedral, St. James. And finally their long history and colorful traditions are being investigated and preserved for future generations by a special historical and genealogical study initiated by community members: The Kaghakatzi Family Tree Project.
The project focuses only on a distinct group within the greater Jerusalem Armenian population, the Kaghakatzis ("city dwellers"), whose roots stretch back 2000 years to the first Armenians in the city. The other subgroup of Old City Armenians, descendants of those Armenians who fled to Jerusalem during the Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Turks during World War I, are not included, apparently still considered newbies. According to a press release publicized last summer,
In
the process, the "Kaghakatzi Family Tree Project" will create a
permanent record of the wisdom, culture, history, arts and crafts, and
traditions of this community, the genealogical oddity whose every
single member is related to every other member, in an unbroken chain
stretching over the centuries.
....Over the centuries, the Kaghakatzi
enriched the city's multifaceted ethnic and social fabric with a
proliferation of talent, vision and hard work, creating a unique
culture and identity, unlike any other in the Armenian diaspora.
The efforts to preserve the Kaghakatzi history and
culture, the Kaghakatzi Armenian Family Tree project, are encapsulated
in a website, located at www.kaghakatzi.org.
The website houses copies of the Armenian Patriarchate registers, old pictures, family trees of the leading Kaghakatzi clans (numbering over 50), old photographs, personal reminiscences and mementoes, and snippets of their way of life, including their cuisine, traditions and wisdom.
The project's organizers have thankfully been
sharing their results with non-Armenian Jerusalemites, which should serve their community well. Even though
Armenians are an important part of the city's history, the Armenian Quarter is mostly closed off, with only a poorly-tended (if interesting) museum, a couple restaurants and some gift shops affording the average tourist a peek into Jerusalem's Little Armenia. And the project has been growing at a rapid clip since its launch, with over 3,000 names now included in the database, and new archives being incorporated all the time.
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