In the 8th century, Prince Hamam and his father Prince Shabuh Amadouni were forced to leave their lands in Ardaz(Vasburagan) under the pressure of the Arab Invasion. The 2 Princes along with their priests, people and soldiers moved to the Black Sea Region where they settled in the destroyed City of Tambur and its surrounding villages (currently Hemshin and ChamliHemshin). Prince Hamam rebuilt the city of Tambur and called it Hamamshen (which in Armenian means Hamam’s city) and over the years Hamamshen became Hamshen in Armenian and Hemshin in Turkish.
Mavi Boncuk |
Paternal lineage analysis supports an Armenian rather than a Central Asian genetic origin of the Hamshenis.[1]
Margaryan A1, Harutyunyan A, Khachatryan Z, Khudoyan A, Yepiskoposyan L. Author information
Abstract
The Hamshenis are an isolated geographic group of Armenians with a strong ethnic identity who, until the early decades of the twentieth century, inhabited the Pontus area on the southern coast of the Black Sea. Scholars hold alternative views on their origin, proposing Eastern Armenia, Western Armenia, and Central Asia, respectively, as their most likely homeland. To ascertain whether genetic data from the nonrecombining portion of the Y chromosome are supportive of any of these suggestions, we screened 82 Armenian males of Hamsheni descent for 12 biallelic and 6 microsatellite Y-chromosomal markers. These data were compared with the corresponding data set from the representative populations of the three candidate regions. Genetic difference between the Hamshenis and other groups is significant and backs up the hypothesis of the Armenian origin of the Hamshenis, indicating central historical Armenia as a homeland of the ancestral population. This inference is further strengthened by the results of admixture analysis, which does not support the Central-Asian hypothesis of the Hamshenis' origin. Genetic diversity values and patterns of genetic distances suggest a high degree of genetic isolation of the Hamshenis consistent with their retention of a distinct and ancient dialect of the Armenian language.
PMID: 23249315 DOI: 10.3378/027.084.0404
[1] The Hemshin people (Armenian: Համշենցիներ, Hamshentsiner; Turkish: Hemşinliler), also known as Hemshinli or Hamshenis or Homshetsi, are a diverse group of peoples who in the past or present have been affiliated with the Hemşin district in the province of Rize, Turkey. It is generally accepted that they were Armenian in origin, and were originally Christian and members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, but over the centuries evolved into a distinct ethnic group and some converted to Sunni Islam after the conquest of the Ottomans of the region during the second half of the 15th century.
The term "the Hemshin" is also used in some publications to refer to Hemshinli.
Hemşinli in Turkey
The "Turkey for the Turks" ideology, writes Neal Ascherson, "offered no security for minorities" with "the tiny Hemşinli group having especially compelling reasons to keep its head down" because "its members are the descendants of Armenians."[56] Beginning in the 1930s, a number of Turkish historians attempted to ascribe an entirely Turkish origin to the Hemshinli, the most prominent of them being M. Fahrettin Kırzıoğlu, whose theories have since gained wide currency among the community. His theories on the Hemshinli, however, have come under close scrutiny and have been roundly criticized.The German scholars Wolfgang Feurstein and Tucha Berdsena describe Kırzıoğlu's methodology as so:
At first Kırzıoğlu assaults the reader with a flow of historical peoples; he then searches for some kind of phonetic correspondence or similarity with an old Turkish tribe, flavors this alleged historical outpouring with a pinch of "Islam," and presents himself as a competent researcher of Turkishness. Probably never before has a single person in Turkey falsified history so massively!
The filmmaker Özcan Alper, an eastern Hemshinli, made the first motion picture in Homshetsi, Momi (Grandma), released in 2000. As a result, Alper was accused in the Court for State Security of producing material intended to destroy the unity of the state, under article 8 of Turkey's anti-terror law. This law was repealed in 2003 after EU pressure, and Alper's trial did not go ahead. Hamsheni singer Gökhan Birben (from the Western group) and Laz singer Kâzım Koyuncu had also sung in Homshetsi. In 2005, the first music album exclusively of anonymous Hamshen folk songs and sung mostly in Homshetsi, Vova - Hamşetsu Ğhağ was released.
Older generations of Turkish Hemshinli see the reference "Ermeni" (often used by their Laz neighbours) as an insult.
Mesut Yılmaz, a former Prime Minister of Turkey, was born in Istanbul to a family with partial Hamsheni (Western group) origins. Ahmet Tevfik İleri (who was born in Yaltkaya (Gomno) village of Hemşin), a Deputy Prime Minister and before that, a Minister of Education in Turkey within successive Adnan Menderes governments between 1950 and 1960, as well as Damat Mehmet Ali Pasha, the Ottoman Grand Vizier on the eve of the Crimean War in 1853 were also of Hamshenis descent. The community issued other important names in Turkish history and society such as Murat Karayalçın, current leader of SHP and a former Deputy Prime Minister and mayor of Ankara who is from Şenyuva (Çinçiva) village of Çamlıhemşin.
There are two ongoing projects involving Turkish NGOs and EuropeAid, European Commission's external aid instrument, that touch their issues. The more recently (2007) launched "Ecodialogue Project" ("Ekodiyalog", web site pending) has set itself as goal raising environment consciousness of the region's enterprises and improving the poor levels and quality of the information relayed by local guides, many of whom are self-styled and unlicensed[66] The other project, started 2004 and involving also the World Conservation Union, aims to raise the profile and awareness of the grouse, particularly black grouse, who visit the region, also with focus on enterprises and guides.
Mavi Boncuk |
Paternal lineage analysis supports an Armenian rather than a Central Asian genetic origin of the Hamshenis.[1]
Margaryan A1, Harutyunyan A, Khachatryan Z, Khudoyan A, Yepiskoposyan L. Author information
Abstract
The Hamshenis are an isolated geographic group of Armenians with a strong ethnic identity who, until the early decades of the twentieth century, inhabited the Pontus area on the southern coast of the Black Sea. Scholars hold alternative views on their origin, proposing Eastern Armenia, Western Armenia, and Central Asia, respectively, as their most likely homeland. To ascertain whether genetic data from the nonrecombining portion of the Y chromosome are supportive of any of these suggestions, we screened 82 Armenian males of Hamsheni descent for 12 biallelic and 6 microsatellite Y-chromosomal markers. These data were compared with the corresponding data set from the representative populations of the three candidate regions. Genetic difference between the Hamshenis and other groups is significant and backs up the hypothesis of the Armenian origin of the Hamshenis, indicating central historical Armenia as a homeland of the ancestral population. This inference is further strengthened by the results of admixture analysis, which does not support the Central-Asian hypothesis of the Hamshenis' origin. Genetic diversity values and patterns of genetic distances suggest a high degree of genetic isolation of the Hamshenis consistent with their retention of a distinct and ancient dialect of the Armenian language.
PMID: 23249315 DOI: 10.3378/027.084.0404
[1] The Hemshin people (Armenian: Համշենցիներ, Hamshentsiner; Turkish: Hemşinliler), also known as Hemshinli or Hamshenis or Homshetsi, are a diverse group of peoples who in the past or present have been affiliated with the Hemşin district in the province of Rize, Turkey. It is generally accepted that they were Armenian in origin, and were originally Christian and members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, but over the centuries evolved into a distinct ethnic group and some converted to Sunni Islam after the conquest of the Ottomans of the region during the second half of the 15th century.
The term "the Hemshin" is also used in some publications to refer to Hemshinli.
Hemşinli in Turkey
The "Turkey for the Turks" ideology, writes Neal Ascherson, "offered no security for minorities" with "the tiny Hemşinli group having especially compelling reasons to keep its head down" because "its members are the descendants of Armenians."[56] Beginning in the 1930s, a number of Turkish historians attempted to ascribe an entirely Turkish origin to the Hemshinli, the most prominent of them being M. Fahrettin Kırzıoğlu, whose theories have since gained wide currency among the community. His theories on the Hemshinli, however, have come under close scrutiny and have been roundly criticized.The German scholars Wolfgang Feurstein and Tucha Berdsena describe Kırzıoğlu's methodology as so:
At first Kırzıoğlu assaults the reader with a flow of historical peoples; he then searches for some kind of phonetic correspondence or similarity with an old Turkish tribe, flavors this alleged historical outpouring with a pinch of "Islam," and presents himself as a competent researcher of Turkishness. Probably never before has a single person in Turkey falsified history so massively!
The filmmaker Özcan Alper, an eastern Hemshinli, made the first motion picture in Homshetsi, Momi (Grandma), released in 2000. As a result, Alper was accused in the Court for State Security of producing material intended to destroy the unity of the state, under article 8 of Turkey's anti-terror law. This law was repealed in 2003 after EU pressure, and Alper's trial did not go ahead. Hamsheni singer Gökhan Birben (from the Western group) and Laz singer Kâzım Koyuncu had also sung in Homshetsi. In 2005, the first music album exclusively of anonymous Hamshen folk songs and sung mostly in Homshetsi, Vova - Hamşetsu Ğhağ was released.
Older generations of Turkish Hemshinli see the reference "Ermeni" (often used by their Laz neighbours) as an insult.
Mesut Yılmaz, a former Prime Minister of Turkey, was born in Istanbul to a family with partial Hamsheni (Western group) origins. Ahmet Tevfik İleri (who was born in Yaltkaya (Gomno) village of Hemşin), a Deputy Prime Minister and before that, a Minister of Education in Turkey within successive Adnan Menderes governments between 1950 and 1960, as well as Damat Mehmet Ali Pasha, the Ottoman Grand Vizier on the eve of the Crimean War in 1853 were also of Hamshenis descent. The community issued other important names in Turkish history and society such as Murat Karayalçın, current leader of SHP and a former Deputy Prime Minister and mayor of Ankara who is from Şenyuva (Çinçiva) village of Çamlıhemşin.
There are two ongoing projects involving Turkish NGOs and EuropeAid, European Commission's external aid instrument, that touch their issues. The more recently (2007) launched "Ecodialogue Project" ("Ekodiyalog", web site pending) has set itself as goal raising environment consciousness of the region's enterprises and improving the poor levels and quality of the information relayed by local guides, many of whom are self-styled and unlicensed[66] The other project, started 2004 and involving also the World Conservation Union, aims to raise the profile and awareness of the grouse, particularly black grouse, who visit the region, also with focus on enterprises and guides.