The groundbreaking new book ‘Historic Armenia After 100 Years: Ani, Kars, and the Six Provinces of Western Armenia’ will be released by the Stone Garden Press on February 15, 2015.
This new book by author Matthew Karanian is the first-ever guide to cultural sites of the vast and ancient Armenian homeland that is located [...]

One hundred years after the Medz Yeghern, the Armenian homeland remains unknown to many Armenians and non-Armenians alike. The new book ‘Historic Armenia After 100 Years’ by Matthew Karanian (Stone Garden Press, Pub. February 15, 2015) seeks to change this.
There are many reasons that the Armenian homeland has remained off the map for travelers during [...]

‘Historic Armenia After 100 Years’ uses the name Western Armenia to refer to the six Armenian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The book uses the name Eastern Armenia to refer to the lands of Ani and Kars.
Since both of these regions are historically part of Greater Armenia, and since the book features both areas, [...]

BY MATTHEW KARANIAN
Ani is the fabled city of one thousand-and-one churches and the capital of a once-mighty Armenian kingdom. The city flourished during an Armenian silver age that lasted for about a century beginning in AD 961.
For the past three hundred fifty years, however, the city has been largely abandoned, and it has been [...]

BY MATTHEW KARANIAN
Van is the heartland of historic Armenia, and the region of Van is paired with the plains of Ararat as two of the cradles of Armenian civilization.
For hundreds of years, and continuing through the beginning of the twentieth century, the population of Armenians here often exceeded that of any other national group. [...]

BY MATTHEW KARANIAN
Kharpert is the Voski Dasht, the Golden Plain, of the Armenian Plateau.
This area, which is the site of historic Armenian settlement of Tsopk, and which is known in today’s Turkey as Harpoot, is also one of the oldest areas of Armenian habitation. Some scholars believe that Kharpert may even be the cradle of [...]

BY MATTHEW KARANIAN
The village of Chunkush was home to about 10,000 Armenians, and hardly anyone else, until 1915.
That’s when the Armenians were driven out, and were marched for two hours to a ravine known as the Dudan Gorge. Once they arrived at the ravine, they were herded by the force of batons and [...]

One of the kindest men I have ever known passed away last year, on October 26, 2013. We knew him as Baron Ananian, our math and science teacher at Ferrahian high school, where he taught for over 20 years.

Dr. Hrair Atikian, beloved husband, father, grandfather, brother, and uncle, passed away on Tuesday, August 19, 2014 in Burbank, California, due to complications caused by cancer. He was 74.

During the first week of July I anxiously sat on my 16-hour flight to Yerevan casually flipping through my Armenian-English dictionary with intentions of picking up a few words and phrases before arrival time.

From the different regions we volunteered in this summer, Proshyan stood out to me. Proshyan is a small village on the outskirts of Yerevan where the AYF has held summer camps for several years now.

I attended Rose and Alex Pilibos my entire life, so you can only imagine my excitement on our first day of jampar in Askeran, Artsakh, when a young boy came to camp in a Pilibos polo shirt, the same one I had worn for 15 years.

If you were to tell me at the beginning of this year that I would have to spend almost all of my summer in a developing country, traveling on rocky dirt roads to remote villages where there was a lack of plumbing and running water, with a group of 13 strangers all under the same roof, I would say you’re crazy and “no, thank you.”

Six weeks passed and here I am sitting in my living room in Los Angeles. Previously I would have called this place “home,” but this summer with AYF Youth Corps has changed a lot of my opinions.