Garegin Srvandztiants

Garegin or Karekin Srvandztiants (Armenian: Գարեգին Սրուանձտեանց or Սրուանձտեան; November 17, 1840 – November 17, 1892) was an Armenian philologist, folklorist,ethnographer, and ecclesiastic.

Karekin Srvandztiants was born in Van in the Ottoman Empire in 1840. He was the uncle of military commander Hamazasp Srvandztyan. Srvandztiants was educated at the seminary of Varagavank monastery under the mentorship of Mkrtich Khrimian, well-known Armenian religious figure. Under his tutelage, Srvandztiants toured Eastern Armenian (also known as Russian Armenia) where he surveyed the living condition and cultural characteristics of the local population. In 1862 he moved with Khrimian to the Surb Karapet Monastery near Mush, where he edited the journal The eaglet of Taron. Srvandztiants was ordained a celibate priest in 1864 in the city of Erzurum (known to the Armenians as Garin). In 1866, two years after being ordained, Srvandztiants moved to Constantinople where he continued to be a priest and a community figure. A year later, he moved back to Erzurum where he supervised Armenian schools in the area. Thereafter, Srvandztiants was entrusted with the task of carrying out the reforms of the newly drafted Armenian National Constitution. He was made the head of Surb Karapet Monastery where he would serve for several years. After the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), the rights of Armenians were guaranteed under Article 16 of the Treaty of San Stefano, stipulating that the Russian forces occupying the Armenian-populated provinces in the eastern Ottoman Empire would withdraw only with the full implementation of reforms. Srvandztiants was then tasked to collect data and information of the Armenian population in the eastern provinces and report to the Patriarch of Constantinople. Meanwhile, however, Srvandztiants also documented many Armenian oral histories and collected many examples of epic folklore which had been passed down orally for generations.

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