Armenia

The first state to adopt Christianity, and a nation shaped more by survival than by territory. Armenia converted in 301, before Rome, and the alphabet Mesrop Mashtots devised around 405 remains in use - a distinct script and church being what held the identity together through centuries without a state. The kingdom sat between Rome and Persia and later between Ottomans and Safavids, and was repeatedly partitioned between them. The genocide of 1915 and after, in which the Ottoman government deported and killed around a million and a half Armenians, destroyed the population of the historic eastern Anatolian homeland and created the diaspora that now outnumbers the republic several times over. Turkey continues to reject the term. A short-lived republic from 1918 was sovietised in 1920. Independence in 1991 came with war over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority enclave inside Soviet Azerbaijan, which Armenian forces won and held for nearly thirty years. Azerbaijan retook most of it in 2020 and the remainder in September 2023, after which essentially the entire Armenian population left. Borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan are closed, leaving the country dependent on Georgia and Iran. Mount Ararat is visible from Yerevan and lies in Turkey. Etchmiadzin is the seat of the Armenian Church. Yerevan is the capital and among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The country is landlocked and mountainous. Its diaspora is concentrated in Russia, the United States, France and the Middle East. Khachkars, carved cross-stones, are a distinctive medieval art form. Lake Sevan, high in the mountains, holds most of the country's fresh water.

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