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They were granted a grand welcome and given land there. They built a temple for Hindu gods and goddesses in Ashtishat, a famous religious center in Armenia. Eventually, their society grew to 20 villages and was called Hindkastan, the Armenian name for India. At one time, there were over 15,000 Hindus living in Armenia. [26]
In the early fourth century, the Kingdom of Greater Armenia adopted Christianity as its state religion, becoming the first state to do so. The Arsacid king of Armenia at the time, Trdat, was converted by Gregory the Illuminator, who became the first head of the Armenian Church. The traditional date for the conversion of Armenia is 301, although ...
After the Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent Soviet occupation of Armenia, all functioning religious institutions in the NKAO were closed down and clergymen often either exiled or shot. [citation needed] After a while the Armenian Apostolic Church resumed its activities.
A small number of Muslims were resident in Armenia while it was a part of the Soviet Union, consisting mainly of Azeris and Kurds, the great majority of whom left in 1988 after the Sumgait Pogroms and the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, which caused the Armenian and Azeri communities of each country to have something of a population exchange, with ...
Armenians (Armenian: հայեր, romanized: hayer, ) are an ethnic group and nation native to the Armenian highlands of West Asia. [44] [45] [46] Armenians constitute the main population of Armenia and constituted the main population of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh until the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh and the subsequent flight of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. [47]
The first Armenian churches were built between the 4th and 7th centuries, beginning when the Armenian monarchy converted to Christianity and ending with the Arab invasion of Armenia. [7] The early churches were mostly simple basilicas, some with side apses. By the 5th century the typical cupola cone in the center had become widely used.
Despite the use of Aramaic and Greek in Armenia for centuries, the limited knowledge of these languages necessitated the translation of religious texts into Armenian. The invention of the Armenian alphabet by Mashtots‛ around 405 facilitated the development of a national literary tradition, drawing initially from Syriac and Greek sources before producing original works.
Armenia remained under Arab rule for approximately 200 years, formally starting in 645 CE. Through many years of Umayyad and Abbasid rule, the Armenian Christians benefited from political autonomy and relative religious freedom, but were considered second-class citizens (dhimmi status). This was, however, not the case in the beginning.