Catalogue of the Armenian Library in Csíkszépvíz / Frumoasa Books printed before 1851 and manuscripts

The Settlement of Armenians in Transylvania The history of the Armenians in Transylvania, like several other Central-Eastern European ethnic communities, goes back to the eleventh century when Armenia lost its political independence. The military campaigns of the Seljuk Turks and the Mongols in the following centuries accelerated the exodus of the native Armenians in great number. A significant part of the Armenian refugees fled to the Crimea and to the Russian principalities, on one hand, while another part found new home in Asia Minor, on the Balkans as well as on the coast of Levant. At this last area they founded the independent Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. The migration of the Armenians was reinforced by the fact that the feudal state of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia became a part of the Mamluk Empire in 1375 when a huge proportion of the local population fled to Eastern Europe and thus enlarged the size of the Armenian communities which had already lived there. The exodus from the mother country had also been non-stop since the end of the fourteenth century when the army of Timur Lenk (Tamerlan) (1380–1405) destroyed Armenians. A decisive change occurred in the life of the Armenian community, that had lived in the Crimea for at least four centuries by then, when the Ottoman Turks occupied the city of Kaffa in 1475 and the Crimean Khanate became a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians of this region then fled in part to Poland, in part to Moldavia. In the same period Armenian refugees coming from the mother country also immigrated to Moldavia and settled down mainly in the towns of Iaşi, Suçeava, Focşani és Botoşani, thus enlarging the population of the Armenian communities that had been living there.

ARMENIANS IN CSÍKSZÉPVÍZ – AN INTRODUCTION BY KORNÉL NAGY