Arakel of Tabriz

Arakel Davrizhetsi or Arakel of Tabriz - Առաքել Դավրիժեցի (1590s, Tabriz - 1670, Echmiadzin) was a 17th-century Armenian historian, born in Tabriz, in the province of Persian Azerbaijan of Safavid Iran. In 1636 he was the custodian of the Hovhannavank Monastery, which he left to go to Echmiadzin. The adjective Davrizhetsi points to Davrezh, Armenian for Tabriz.

Background

He spent most of his life in Echmiadzin, the monastic fraternity to which he belonged. Here he was, according to himself, "raised and trained", here he began to work, here he arrived in old age, hoping "to find rest". Within his life he was already called "the Historian Arakel" and had a reputation of being a very competent and inquisitive person. He wrote the "book of histories", a unique work on the history of Armenia and adjacent countries and peoples in the seventeenth century. He witnessed many events and described them in the book. Arakel Davrizhetsi was the first Armenian historian whose work was printed. In 1669, the "book of the histories" of the Vardapet Arakel Davrizhetsi was published in Amsterdam. Arakel Davrizhetsi died in 1670 and was buried, as he desired, in the cemetery of Echmiadzin's Gayane monastery.

The Armenian chronicle of Arakel of Tabriz, and the chronicle of the Carmelite missionaries describe in great detail how the persecution of Iranian Jews started in Isfahan and spread to all the major towns of the kingdom.