Obrazy Jiných v arménských historických pramenech 16.-18. století

• Authors: Petra Kohoutková

Title variants

EN

Image of other in Armenian historical sources of 16th-18th century

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

Article concentrates mainly on the period before the Armenian genocide of 1915–1916, when the negative stereotype of the Turk as an ancestral enemy had not yet been so firmly ingrained as today. I am operating on the assumption that this stereotype, today presented as at least 900 years old and vigorously supported by Armenian propaganda, dates in reality from the early 20th century, probably originally concerning the category of Muslims in general and later the ethnic category of Kurds. I am looking for support for my hypothesis about the originally non-ethnically motivated image of the Muslim or of the economically defined category of the Kurd (nomad) with respect to the perception of Armenian authors in the texts of Armenian chronicles from the 16th till 18th centuries from the region of Van. Armenians there constituted the most populous minority in the Ottoman Empire while living in an extremely multicultural environment. The chronicles show a great variety of attitudes towards the category of Muslims and Heretics generally depending on the author, and they also provide an interesting anthropological excursion into the life of the local population.

Keywords

EN

ethnic stereotype; image of the other; enemy image; Turks; Armenians; Kurds; Muslim; Heretic

Discipline

• ETHNOLOGY: ETHNOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Český lid: etnologický časopis (Český lid: Ethnological journal)
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 96
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 113-130
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Petra Kohoutková

• Český lid, redakce, Etnologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic