A significant minority of the Armenian community has been resident in the
Levant for centuries.
Classical-era Recorded Armenian presence in Israel dates back to the 1st century BCE, when the Armenian king
Tigranes the Great made much of
Judea a vassal of the
Kingdom of Armenia.
4th–18th century The first recorded Armenian pilgrimage to the Holy Land was an Armenian delegation of priests in the early 4th century AD. The visit is alluded to in an Armenian translation of a Greek letter written by Patriarch
Macarius of Jerusalem to his contemporary,
St. Vrtanes (ruled 333–341). The
Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem was founded in 638. The central figure in this development was the leading cleric
Esayee Garabedian, who were to become
Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1864–65, and who started photographing in 1857 and established a photography workshop within the
St. James monastic compound. There he set up a school for photography,
Garabed Krikorian (1847–1920) and his brother Kevork counting among his students. Another one of his students, Abraham Guiragossian, worked for the famous
Maison Bonfils studio of Beirut and eventually bought it up (see there). Elia Kahvedjian (1910-1999), a refugee of the Armenian genocide, was one of the leading photographers in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 20th century.
Kegham Djeghalian (1915–1981), another Armenian genocide refugee survivor, opened
Gaza's first photography studio in 1944.
Ceramicists Many Armenians from
Kütahya, a city in Turkey, were known for their hand-painted ceramic wares and tiles. In 1919, several master craftsmen were brought to Jerusalem to renovate the tiles covering the facade of the Dome of the Rock. They remained in Jerusalem and developed the art of Armenian ceramics.
Demographics under British rule The
1922 census of Palestine lists 3,210 Christians as members of Armenian churches, 271 being
Armenian Catholic (176 in Jerusalem-Jaffa, 10 in Samaria, and 85 in Northern) and 2,939 being
Armenian Apostolic (11 in Southern, 2,800 in Jerusalem-Jaffa, eight in Samaria, and 120 in Northern) along with 2,970 Armenian speakers, including 2,906 in municipal areas (2,442 in Jerusalem, 216 in
Jaffa, 101 in
Haifa, four in
Gaza, 13 in
Nablus, one in
Safad, 20 in Nazareth, 13 in
Ramleh, one in
Tiberias, 37 in Bethlehem, 25 in
Acre, four in
Tulkarem, 21 in
Ramallah, six in
Jenin, one in
Beersheba, and one in
Baisan).
Israeli–Palestinian conflict 1948–1967 After the
1948 Arab–Israeli War and the establishment of the State of Israel, a number of Armenians residing in what had been the British Mandate of Palestine took up Israeli citizenship, whereas other Armenian residents of
Old City of Jerusalem and the territory captured by
Jordan received Jordanian nationality. Two groups of Armenians emerged: Armenians with Israeli citizenship living within the borders of the state and Armenians with Jordanian nationality in Jerusalem's
Armenian Quarter and the rest of
Jordanian West Bank.
After 1967 After the 1967
Six-Day War, the Armenian population, especially in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, experienced a decrease in its numbers because of emigration. Armenians of Jerusalem were provided with Israeli resident status and some applied for citizenship. , about 2,000 Armenians were residents but not citizens of Israeli-controlled territory and were
stateless persons. Violence erupted in June 1986, when a group of Armenian Patriarch Derderian's supporters attacked another Armenian family, which was well known for its anti-Patriarch views and as a result one man was killed and six others were injured in a street battle that church representatives dubbed "a fight between two families." ==Demographics==