Arab invasions and Armenian revolts

The Muslim Arabs first invaded Armenia in 640. Prince Theodoros Rshtuni led the Armenian defense. In about 652, a peace agreement was made, allowing Armenians freedom of religion. Prince Theodoros traveled to Damascus, where he was recognized by the Arabs as the ruler of Armenia, Georgia and Albania.[2] By the end of the seventh century, the Caliphate's policy toward Armenia and the Christian faith hardened because of various reasons. Special representatives of Caliph called ostigans were sent to govern Armenia. The ostigans made the city of Dvin their residence. Before Dvin was the residence of Armenian Catholicos. [2]

Although declared domain of Caliph, most of Armenia though not all remained faithful to the Christian religion. The Arabs failed in several attempts to convert the Armenians to Islam. The Armenian obstinacy exasperated caliph Abd al-Malik. In 705, he gave to one of the ostikans an unprecedented order to murder all Armenian Nakharars. More than 400 Armenian noblemen were entrapped to one of Nakhichevan churches, then the doors were closed and the church was set in fire. Later, the Arab historians termed that time as The Year of Great Burning. Quoting Pope John VI, "...ocean of tears flooded Armenia". A number of unsuccessful insurrections followed that tragic event during the 8th century.[2]

The Qur'an

There were Qur'an (Armenian: Ղուրան, Ghuran) manuscripts translated into Classical Armenian, Grabar. However first printed version of Qur'an translated into Armenian language from Arabic appeared in 1910. In 1912 a translation from a French version was published. Both of them were in the Western Armenian dialect. A new translation of the Qur'an in Eastern Armenian dialect was started with the help of the Islamic Republic of Iran embassy in Yerevan. The translation was done by Edvard Hakhverdyan from Persian in three years[3]. A group of Arabologists have been helping with the translation. Each of the 30 parts of Qur'an have been read and approved by the Tehran Center of Qur'anic Studies[4]. The publication of 1000 copies of the translated work was done in 2007. The big interest towards the volume pushed the embassy to order another 3000 additional copies.