Khachatur Abovian

Khachatur Abovian
Portrait of Khachatur Abovian, by Ludwig von Maydell (1831)
Born	October 15 [O.S. October 3] 1809 Kanaker, Erivan Khanate, Persian Empire (modern-day Yerevan, Armenia)
Died	April 14, 1848(1848-04-14) (aged 38) (disappeared)
Occupation	novelist, playwright, teacher, poet
Ethnicity	Armenian
Period	Romanticism
Spouse	Emilia Looze (German-Swedish)
Children	2 children

Khachatur Abovian (or Abovyan;Armenian: Խաչատուր Աբովյան; October 15 [O.S. October 3] 1809 – April 14 [O.S. April 2] 1848 (disappeared)) was an Armenian writer and national public figure of the early 19th century who mysteriously vanished in 1848 and eventually presumed dead. He was an educator, poet and an advocate of modernization. Reputed as the father of modern Armenian literature, he is best remembered for his novel Wounds of Armenia. Written in 1841 and published posthumously in 1858, it was the first novel published in the modern Armenian language using Eastern Armenian based on the Yerevan dialect instead of Classical Armenian.

Abovian was far ahead of his time and virtually none of his works was published during his lifetime. Only after the establishment of the Armenian SSR was Abovian accorded the recognition and stature he merited. Abovian is regarded as one of the foremost figures not just in Armenian literature but Armenian history at large. Abovian's influence on Western Armenian literature was not as strong as it was on Eastern Armenian, particularly in its formative years.

Abovian was born in 1809 in the village of Kanaker, then part of the Qajar Persian Empire, and now a district of Yerevan, Armenia. Abovian's family were descendants of the Beglaryan melik family in Gulistan, one of five Armenian families who ruled around the current day region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Abovian family held the position of tanuter (a hereditary lordship) in Kanaker; Abovian's uncle was the last tanuter of Kanaker. His aunt was the wife of Sahak Aghamalian, the last melik of Yerevan at the time of the Russian annexation in 1828. His social origins and descent imbued him at an early age with a sense of responsibility to his people. He was born six years after his parents, Avetik and Takuhi, married. He had a brother, Garabed, who died at the age of three.