Historical Armenian population

Accurate or reliable data for historical populations of Armenians is scarce, but scholars and institutions have proposed estimates for different periods.

For most recent data on Armenian populations, see Armenian population by country.

Ancient

Tadevos Hakobyan, Elizabeth Redgate, and David Marshall Lang all estimate that historical Armenia's population never exceeded 5 or 6 million, citing factors such as army size, tax records, and the region's largely uninhabitable terrain.

Based on historical records, Igor M. Diakonoff estimated the population of Urartu as having "certainly exceeded one million and may have reached two or three million". He also found 6 to 7 million a "plausible figure." For around 585 BC, John M. Douglas proposed an approximate population of 3 million for Urartu and 2 million for Proto-Armenians.

Ruben L. Manaseryan estimated the population of the short-lived empire of Tigranes the Great (r. 95 – 55 BC) at 10 million. Sedrak Krkyasharyan estimated over 10.5 million people in his empire, including around 4 million Armenians. Earlier estimates by non-historians such as Jacques de Morgan, Isaac Don Levine and Bodil Biørn put it considerably higher, at 25 and 30 million. Hakob Manandian posited that the population of Armenia during the reigns of Artaxias I and Tigranes II was "much larger than that of later centuries."

Agathangelos wrote that during the Christianization of Armenia in the early fourth century more than 4,000,000 men, women and children and more than 150,000 soldiers (a total of 4,150,000) were baptized by Gregory the Illuminator. Malachia Ormanian accepted the figure, while Edmond Schütz found the figure for the population of Greater Armenia “obviously exaggerated.” Suren Yeremian proposed 4 million as the population of both Arsacid Armenia and of Armenians.

Medieval

Based on tax records, Arsen Shahinyan estimated the population of Arminiya, an administrative unit of the Abbasid Caliphate, in the 8th and 9th centuries at 1.5 million, including 750,000 in Arminiya I (Greater Armenia), around 650,000 in Arminiya II (Arran, i.e. Caucasian Albania), and around 100,000 in Arminiya III (Jurzan, i.e. Eastern Georgia).

Serob Poghosyan estimated Armenia's population in the 9th–11th centuries, when much of it was ruled by the Bagratids, at 5 to 6 million. Mikayel Malkhasyan estimated Vaspurakan's population in the same period at no less than a million people.

Tadevos Hakobyan suggested that Armenia's population reached 5 to 6 million only in the 13th century, prior to the Mongol invasion, when he estimated 4.5 million people in rural areas and around 500,000 in cities. Others have estimated Armenia's population in the mid-13th century at 4 million. Based on tax records, Manandian estimated the combined population of eastern Armenia, Kars and eastern Georgia (Kartli and Kakheti) in the mid-13th century at 4 to 5 million.

Modern Armenian scholars believe that the medieval Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia had a population of around one million, most of whom were Armenians.

19th and early 20th century

August von Haxthausen quoted Catholicos Nerses V (then archbishop) as having told him in 1843 that he can assert with confidence the existence of more than eight million Armenians worldwide, including 30,000 Catholic Armenians in the Russian Caucasus.

In 1847 John Wilson estimated the total Armenian population at 2.5 million, with 1 million in the Russian Empire, 1 million in the Ottoman Empire and 0.5 million in Persia and "other distant lands." He quoted the figures provided by Lucas Balthazar, the "intelligent editor" of the Smyrna-based Armenian newspaper The Dawn of Ararat, who estimated 5 million Armenians overall, with 2 million in Russia, 2 million in Turkey and 1 million in Persia, India and elsewhere.

The 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1875) cited Édouard Dulaurier's estimates c. 1850: approximately four millions Armenians in the world, including 2,500,000 in the Ottoman Empire, 1,200,000 in the Russian Empire, 25,000 in the Austrian Empire, 150,000 in Persia and Azerbaijan, 25,000 in continental India and the Archipelago of Asia, and the remainder of 100,000 scattered in various countries.

Richard Robert Madden wrote in 1862 that the Armenian population worldwide is estimated at 4 million, of whom an estimated 2,400,000 in the Ottoman Empire ("an approximate computation, and probably below the truth"), 900,000 in the Russian Empire, 600,000 in Persia, 40,000 in India and "other realms of Asia", and 60,000 in "various European countries."

In 1876 John Buchan Telfer, quoted the figures provided by Garabed Ghazarosian in his 1873 The Universal Year Book, which estimated a total of 4.2 million Armenians worldwide, including 2.5 million in Turkish dominions, 1.5 million in Russia, 34,000 in Persia, 14,600 in Austria, 15,000 in England, India and other British possessions, 8,400 in Romania, 8,000 in Egypt, and 120,000 in other countries. In 1891, Telfer reported to the Royal Society of Arts that "most authorities" appear to agree that the total Armenian population worldwide amounts to around 5 million, with most "scattered in their own land and in adjoining territories" and nearly half a million "settled in distant parts."

In 1891 Élisée Reclus wrote that while "usually estimated at three and even four millions," the total number of Armenians "would seem scarcely to exceed two millions." He estimated the "probable" number of Armenians as follows: 840,000 in Caucasia and European Russia, 760,000 in Asiatic Turkey, and 250,000 in European Turkey, 150,000 in Persia, and 60,000 elsewhere, with the total at 2,060,000. He estimated no less than 200,000 Armenians in Constantinople and noted that Tiflis held the second largest Armenian population of any city.

At the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions, Armenian activist Minas Tcheraz claimed that there were 5.1 million Armenians in total, including 80,000 Catholics and 20,000 Protestants.

In his 1896 book Story of Turkey and Armenia Reverend James Wilson Pierce estimated 2.4 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1.25 million in the Russian Empire, 150,000 in Persia, 100,000 in Europe and 5,000 in the United States.

Adrian Fortescue wrote in 1916: "There are said to be about three and a half or four million Armenians in the world—1,300,000 in Turkey, 1,200,000 in Russia, 50,000 in Persia, and the rest dispersed throughout the world. Of these about three quarters belong to the Monophysite ("Gregorian") Church."

Ottoman Empire

Russian Empire

According to the Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia, what is now Armenia (historically known as Eastern Armenia) that came under Russian rule in 1828, had a population of 161,700 in 1831, which rose to reach 1.01 million by 1913.

According to the Russian Empire Census of 1897, there were 1,173,096 native speakers of Armenian in the empire. The religious statistics indicated there to be 1,179,241 Armenian Apostolics and 38,840 Catholic Armenians, amounting to a total of 1,218,081.

Estimates by John Foster Fraser (1907) and Richard G. Hovannisian (2005) put the number of Armenians within the Russian Empire in the early 20th century at around 2 million. According to official estimates for 1916, published in the Kavkazskiy kalendar, 1,859,663 Armenians lived in Russia's Caucasus Viceroyalty alone.

20th century

1911

Malachia Ormanian, a scholar and former Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, estimated the population of Christian Armenians by the dioceses of the Armenian Apostolic Church in his 1911 book The Church of Armenia. It is the most detailed population distribution estimates available prior to the Armenian genocide. Robert Hewsen wrote that "Ormanian's figures appear moderate and reasonable, although this does not necessarily make them precise." Levon Marashlian notes that "the purpose of Ormanian's book was not to provide comprehensive population statistics" and that "his numbers for [Armenian] Protestants and Catholics may be even more incomplete" than for Armenian Apostolics.

21st century

2012

Armenia Encyclopedia, 2012

Previous censuses

By country

Soviet statistics from 1926 to 1989 for the former Soviet republics are given below and not repeated in this table.

Former countries and territories

Soviet republics (1926–1989)

Precise figures are available for the number of Armenians in the Soviet Union and its constituent republics because all censuses in the USSR enumerated people by ethnicity.

By city

Default sorted by Armenian population size

1932

source:

Russian Empire (1897 & 1916)

Soviet Union

1979 census: Select cities

References

Notes

Citations