Madras a.k.a Chennai was established in 1639 as a trading outpost by the English East India Company, and very soon attracted the attention of the Armenian Mercantile community. But who exactly were the Armenian Merchants? Why did they become so successful? What legacy did they leave behind in Madras, and what influence have they had on present day Armenia? This article picks three street names of present-day Chennai and answers these questions.
Street 1 – The Armenian Street
For the longest time, the Armenian street was called “Aranmanai” street in Tamil, meaning “Palace” street in Tamil. There is no evidence of a palace having existed in this street, however, but the Armenian Church that does exist there is a powerful reminder of the influence that the Armenian Merchants wielded at one point in time. But exactly who were Armenian Merchants? As the name suggests, there is a definite link between the Armenian Merchants and the present-day country of Armenia, and understanding the rise of the Armenian Merchants requires a brief understanding of the history of the Armenians.
The Armenians
The Armenians are an ethnic group that traces ancestry to the Armenian highlands in central Asia. A shared culture and heritage unite the Armenian people: the unique Armenian script was developed in the 5th century CE, and the Armenian Apostolic Church – which is independent of the Roman Catholic Church – is the world’s oldest national church. Throughout medieval history, the Armenian people lived beyond the present-day borders of Armenia: in present-day Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and a host of other countries. In fact, Armenia as a country itself did not exist from the 11th century till the 20th century, with the region being ruled by the Ottomans, the Persians, and the Russians through different times in history.
The Armenian highlands connect Europe and Asia. This strategic location has historically been of considerable economic advantage to Armenians, as the Silk Route and its thriving trade passed through the region. However, what set the Armenians apart was their “trade diaspora”, their network of merchants who were present across the world.
How did this Armenian trade diaspora come about?
According to Aslanian (Aslanian, 2004), in the 11th century, the collapse of the last Armenian Kingdom led to a series of migrations of the Armenians from Armenia to Crimea. From there, the Armenians set up trade diasporas in Southern Poland by the 13th century and spread overland to Northern and Western Europe. When Ottomans captured Crimea in the late 15th century, Armenian refugees also moved and settled in Eastern and Central Europe (Aslanian, 2004). In the Armenian highlands in meanwhile, a number of towns prospered as they acted as brokers between European consumers and the silk-producing regions of Persia (Aslanian, 2004). The region between the borders of the Ottoman and the Safavid empires became especially prosperous, and a series of towns emerged there, with Old Julfa being one of the most prominent of them. In late 1605, however, the Safavid ruler Shah Abbas I forcibly resettled Armenians from Old Julfa to Iran as he adopted a scorched earth policy while retreating against the Ottomans (Ghougassian S., 2012). The mercantile community of Old Julfa was forcibly resettled near Isfahan, the Safavid capital, and there, the community enjoyed significant prosperity and established what they called New Julfa. New Julfa emerged as a significant center of Armenian Merchants, as the New Julfa merchants went about establishing a vast trade network stretching from Amsterdam in the West to Manila in the East (Aslanian, 2004).
The Armenian presence in India, especially present-day Madras, however, predates the establishment of New Julfa. The first references to Armenian Merchants in India appear to be in Portuguese sources dating to the first quarter of the 16th century (Aslanian, 2012), wherein the Armenian Merchants living in Pulicat led Portuguese traders to a church with the tomb of the Apostle St. Thomas in San Thome / Mylapore, today a locality in Madras. In North India, Akbar invited Armenian Merchants to settle in Agra, and the first Armenian Church was built there in 1562. Armenians occupied prominent roles in Akbar’s court, with one Mirza Du’l-Qarnayn even appointed the Governor of Bengal (Aslanian, 2012). From their new base in New Julfa, the presence of Armenian Merchants spread rapidly through India (Aslanian, 2012). Armenian Merchants were present in Hoogly, Patna, Calcutta, Golconda, and Masulipatnam, and Aslanian claims that Armenians had settled in Calcutta 50 years before the English established their first ‘factory’ in 1690 (Aslanian, 2012).
The Armenians played a crucial role as trading partners and interpreters for the English East India Company. The presence of Armenians in the Indian hinterland, and their ability to navigate difficult circumstances led to the English East India Company recognising the importance of trade with the Armenian Merchants, and multiple trade concessions were extended to them (Hussain, 2012). In 1665, the President of the English East India Company invited Armenians to come and settle in Bombay (Hussain, 2012); in 1673, “the Court of Directors of the English Company in 1673 specifically ordered its writers in Persian to board with the Armenians, learn their language and acquire their method of conducting business” (Hussain, 2012). Ruquia Hussain further highlights the role played by Armenians such as Iskandar and Khwaja Sarhad in the English
East India Company’s interactions with the Mughals (Hussain, 2012), with Khwaja1 Sarhad playing a crucial role as interpreter resulted in the Mughal Emperor Farrukh Siyar issuing the Farman of 1717 that gave the Company the right to duty-free and tax-free trade in Bengal (Akhtar, 2021).
The English didn’t limit themselves to trade concessions when wooing the Armenians. In 1688, “the company’s court of directors approached an eminent Armenian merchant, Khoja Panos Calendar (Ghalandarian), a native of New Julfa then residing in London, with terms for a treaty of cooperation” (Aslanian, 2004). The English wanted the Armenians to abandon the overland route via the Ottoman Empire that they used to trade between Mughal India and Europe, and instead use the ships of the English East India Company. In return, the Armenians were:
…promised “liberty to live in any of the Company’s Cities, Garrisons, or Towns in India, and to buy, sell, and purchase Land or Houses, and be capable of all Civil Offices and preferments in the same manner as if they were Englishmen born,” and to “always have the free undisturbed liberty of the exercise of their religion” (Ferrier, “Agreement” 439) (Aslanian, 2004)
Further, Panos Calendar signed two more parallel treaties with the English. The first “granted the sole monopoly of the garnet trade to Phanoos Kalantar and his family, at the rate of 10 per cent on custom duties in London” (Hussain, 2012). The second “promised to build a Church, give an allowance of fifty pounds per annum for the maintenance of a priest till seven years, in all the settlements that had a population of over forty Armenians” (Hussain, 2012).
What is interesting about the treaty is that Khoja Panos Calendar, the New Julfan Armenian Merchant who signed the treaty, did so on “behalf of the Armenian Nation” (Aslanian, 2004). This shared sense of community, as mentioned earlier, was a key strength of the Armenian Merchants, and we shall come back to this later in this article.
While there is debate over whether the Armenian Merchants truly abandoned the overland route (Hussain, 2012), there is evidence that the English kept their word. In Madras, the growth of the Armenian population led the Company to sponsor the building of a wooden Armenian Church. In 1712, the wooden structure was strengthened, and the Armenian Church that this article started with was built. The Armenian population, by then, had settled on the street near the Church, which was subsequently called Armenian Street, a name that continues to date.
Street 2 – The Arathoon Road
What does the Arathoon Road in Royapuram, Madras have to do with the Armenian Press Day that is celebrated by Armenia on October 16 every year? Historically speaking, nothing. Yet, there is a connection that deserves to be remembered and cherished.
Arathoon is supposedly a corruption of the word Harathun, a common enough name amongst Armenians (Sriram, 2024). What connects Madras and the Armenian Press Day is Rev. Harathun Shimavonian. Born in 1750 in Shiraz, Iran, Rev. Harathun was the priest in charge of the Armenian Church of Madras from 1784 to 1824 (Muthiah, 2011). Rev. Harathun’s shift to Madras stemmed from a personal tragedy: he lost both his sons within the span of a week, and after spending seven years with Persian holy men in a self-imposed exile, he was requested by the Armenian Church to shift to Madras (Muthiah, 2011). This period of exile was to be fortuitous, for in that time, he learnt Persian and Arabic – languages that came to help him establish Madras’ second Armenian Printing Press in 1789. Rev. Harathun’s printing press had a distinct identity, “because he also printed and published books in Arabic and Persian, permission being granted to him for this by Nawab Muhammad Wallajah of the Carnatic, in whose eyes he had found favour through his scholarship…” (Muthiah, 2011). In August 1794, Rev. Shimavonian decided to start the Azdarar:
In it, he promised readers, there would be “the principal events of the month, taken either from the different gazettes or from different books, with important subjects and pleasant news; and at the end of the pamphlet there will be a calendar for the month following, containing the festivals of saints and the dates of the new and full moon, etc.” (Muthiah, 2011)
The Azdarar became the first Armenian periodical ever published in October 1794, and in honour of this event, the Armenian Government decided to celebrate October 16 as the Armenian Press Day from 2004 onwards (National Library of Armenia, 2024).
The Armenian Church & Armenian Nationalism
Readers with a keen eye would have noticed that Rev. Harathun started the second Armenian Printing Press of Madras. Who started the first, and how is their story connected with Armenian nationalism?
The Armenian Church.
That the Armenian Merchants felt Armenians to be a nation was recalled earlier, when Khoja Panos Calendar signed a treaty with the English East India Company in 1688 on behalf of the “Armenian Nation”. This feeling of nationalism seems to have been especially strong amongst the Armenian elites of Madras in the 18th century, who were led by one Mr. Shahamir Shahmirian. Who was Shahmir Shahmirian?
To answer this, we start with the story of Coja Sultan David and a heartbreaking romantic tale. Coja Sultan David inherited the wealth of Coja Nazar Jacob Jan, his brother-in-law (Aslanian, 2015), who lived in Madras from 1702 to 1740. Coja Nazar, according to S. Muthiah, “is the first Armenian settler in the city to be identified with a history” (Muthiah, 1992), and upon his death in 1740, much of his wealth in New Julfa and Madras passed onto Coja Sultan David. Coja Sultan David sent his wife Anem a.k.a Annam and his son Shahmir Shahmirian to New Julfa claim the property left to him, but “the Mayor of New Julfa seized them and had them “inhumanely beaten” until they denounced Jacob Jan’s will” (Muthiah, 1992). Sultan David’s protest led to suitable action being taken and justice being done, but by the time his wife and son could return, Sultan David died under circumstances that is a story in itself, but the short story is that he was forcibly resettled by the French to Pondicherry (where he died in 1754) when Madras came under the control of the French between 1746 and 1749 (Aslanian, 2017). David’s wife Anem does not seem to have known his whereabouts, and a letter that she wrote to him dated 9th August 1747 – attached with a lock of her hair – does not seem to have reached him as the English seized the ship Santa Catharina on which the letter was travelling due to outbreak of hostilities with the French.
It was under these circumstances that Shahmir Shahmirian, Coja Sultan David’s son, came to his own. Wealthy beyond measure due to his inheritance from his father and uncle, Shahmir Shahmirian (Aslanian, 2004) a.k.a Agha Shahamir Sultanoom (Muthiah, 1992) a.k.a Aga Shawmier Sultan (Muthiah, 2011) a.k.a Aga Shawmier Soothanoomian (Muthiah, 1992) emerged as a remarkable Merchant himself, making his money “on trade in several entrepots between Manila and the Persian Gulf” (Muthiah, 2011). His son Aga Jacob Shawmier, set up the first Armenian Printing Press in India (Muthiah, 2011), and wrote, along with Shahmir and his friend Movses Baghramian the “Nor tetrak or koči yordorak, A New Book Called Exhortation”, a book that explained the loss of Armenian statehood and called for armed rebellion against the Ottoman and Persian empires (Wikipedia). Shahmir Shahmirian himself authored “Girk anvanyal Vorogayt Parats, A Book Called Snare of Glory”, a republican constitution for Armenia in 1787 (Aslanian, 2004), more than 130 years before the first Armenian state was formed.
Shahmir Shahmirian did a lot for the Armenian Community of Madras. The present-day Armenian Church was built in 1772 (after the French had razed the earlier Church) on the ancestral land that Shahmir Shahmirian had donated. There is a “Shamier’s Room” in the church today, built to remember Shahmir’s wife who died in 1765 (Muthiah, 1992), and of the Armenian Church’s six huge bells, two were donated by Aga Shawmier Soothanoomian in 1790, in the memory of his son Eliazar Shawmier, who died when he was 19 (Muthiah, 2011). Shahmir Shahmirian died in 1797, and is today buried next to his wife in the Armenian Church.
Street 3 – The Marmalong Bridge on the River Adyar
Christians world over believe that St. Thomas, the Apostle, spent 20 years in India and died in what is today called San Thome, in Madras. As stated earlier, it was the Armenian Merchants who led the Portuguese to the Church, and one of the greatest Armenian Merchants of Madras’ history also happened to be a devout believer of St. Thomas. Coja Petrus di Uscan, made Madras his home in 1723, and continued to live in Madras until his dealth in 1751, at the age of 70 (Muthiah, 1992). In that time, Coja Petrus Uscan endeared himself to both the Christian community as well the English East India Company thanks to his generous philanthropic donations and his water-tight loyalty to the English. S Muthiah describes the latter in his book Madras Discovered. Apparently, when the French captured Madras in 1746, they carried away all of Coja Petrus’ wealth to Pondicherry while Petrus escaped to the Dutch-controlled Tranquebar. Dupleix, the legendary French Governor of Pondicherry, reached out to Coja Petrus with an offer promising to restore his wealth to him if he decided to resettle to Pondicherry. Coja Petrus replied that “the Armenian tradition was to remain loyal to one’s benefactors, in this instance, the British on whose territory he’d earned his wealth” (Muthiah, 1992). This loyalty earned him gratitude from the British, and when Madras was restored to the British in 1749, Coja Petrus was the only Armenian Merchant who was allowed to continue staying within Fort St. George.
Coja Petrus Uscan’s was from a family that traded between India and the Spanish controlled Manila, and this trade was an Armenian monopoly at that time (Muthiah, 1992). Legend has it that soon after Uscan first arrived in Madras, the Nawab visited the town, and Uscan threw a lavish welcome for him. Pleased with Uscan, the Nawab granted Uscan his wish to have a monopoly over import trade, as well as a monopoly into the hinterland of the imported items (Muthiah, 1992). Uscan’s wealth grew rapidly after this, and he generously donated the same to various charitable causes.
What set Coja Petrus Uscan apart from his fellow Armenian Merchants was the fact that he was a Roman Catholic Christian. He built the first ever bridge across the Adyar River near Saidapet in 1726 so as to make it easier for people to access St. Thomas Mount, where it is believed that St. Thomas was martyred. Further, he also constructed “160 broad-stone steps” to lead to the St. Thomas Mount (Muthiah, 2011) (Muthiah, 1992). Apart from these, he generously contributed to the building of the Armenian St. Rita’s Church in 1729, where a plaque proclaims even today that the church was built “in memory of the Armenian Nation” (Muthiah, 2011). His generous contributions to charity were well regarded by everyone, and despite the losses he faced against the French, he left Rs 7,00,000 at the time of his death in cash alone to his wife, who continued his charitable activities (Muthiah, 1992). Born in New Julfa, it is believed that his heart was taken in a golden box to New Julfa, and buried in the yard of the All Saviour’s Cathedral (Muthiah, 1992).
What happened to the Armenians of Madras?
The Armenian presence in Madras started to die out in the 19th century, as many Armenian Merchants moved to Calcutta or left India altogether as the stranglehold of the English East India Company increased. The English monopoly diminished the economic opportunities available to Armenians, and the influx of Armenians stopped because of this. The Armenian Genocide in the late 19th and early 20th centuries further reduced the Armenian population, as survivors preferred travelling to Western countries. That said, a small Armenian population continues to live today in Calcutta, continuing to celebrate Christmas on the 6th of January as per the Armenian Orthodox Church’s calendar. But the population in Chennai has now more or less vanished, with The Print reporting that less than 5 Armenians live in Chennai today (The Print, 2023). Despite this, the Armenian Church in Chennai continues to be maintained thanks to generous contributions from the Armenian community worldwide.
References
Akhtar, S. (2021, June 17). Farrukh Siyar’s Farman. Retrieved from Banglapedia – National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh: https://en.banglapedia.org/index.php/Farrukh_Siyar%E2%80%99s_Farman
Aslanian, S. (2004). Trade Diaspora versus Colonial State: Armenian Merchants, the English East India Company, and the High Court of Admiralty in London, 1748-1752. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies,13(1), 37-100.
Aslanian, S. (2012, December 30). Julfa v. Armenians in India. Retrieved from Encyclopaedia Iranica: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/julfa-v-armenians-in-india
Aslanian, S. (2015, May 10). A Lock of Hair. Retrieved from UCLA History: Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History: https://modernarmenianhistory.history.ucla.edu/2020/01/31/blog-6/
Aslanian, S. (2017, February 11). An Armenian Tombstone in the South China Seas. Retrieved from UCLA History: Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History: https://modernarmenianhistory.history.ucla.edu/2020/01/30/blog-5/
Ghougassian S., V. (2012, 12 30). JULFA i. SAFAVID PERIOD. Retrieved from Encyclopaedia Iranica: https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/julfa-i-safavid-period
Hussain, R. (2012). The Armenians and the English East India Company. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 2012, Vol. 73 (2012) (pp. 327-334). Mumbai: Indian History Congress.
Muthiah, S. (1992). Madras Discovered: A Historical Guide to Looking Around, Supplemented with Tales of ‘Once Upon a City’. Chennai: Affiliated East-West Press.
Muthiah, S. (2011, December 13). A Madras Miscellany: A Decade of People, Places & Potpurri. Chennai: EastWest.
National Library of Armenia. (2024, October 23). Armenian Press Day. Retrieved from National Library of Armenia: https://nla.am/en_US/blog/hay-mamuli-ory
Sriram, V. (2024, May 22). #ChennaiStreetHistory 34 – Arathoon Road – the second of the streets bearing Armenian names. Retrieved from Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/originalmadrasmobile/reel/C7QUr2LN22R/
The Print. (2023, February 7). 251-year-old Armenian church reopens, brings together the Armenian community in Chennai. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et_uxhhSjOI
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Shahamir Shahamirian. Retrieved from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahamir_Shahamirian