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This book is part of a series on historic Armenian cities and provinces. The modern Turkish names are commonly known, and therefore rendering them here in Ottoman Turkish is questionable. Diarbekir might have been rendered as Diyar-i Bekr (or Diyarbakir) to fit standard transliteration that appears in Western scholarly works.
The theme of the book, and editor R. G. Hovannisian's purpose in compiling eighteen articles, is to prove a continuing Armenian sovereignty in the province of Diyarbakir. This is misleading in many respects, including facts and figures. Literature on important issues is either totally absent or inadequately cited, especially in regard to early history; for the 19th and 20th centuries it is limited to the writings of missionaries, consuls, and other Western officers. Only pre- and post-Muslim conquest of the province in the 7th-century and the 19th-century Ottoman period is covered. The intermediate and, in particular, the classical Ottoman periods are almost totally ignored.
Works that might have contributed to the essays by A. E. Dostourian and C. Maranci include the Turkish translation of Matthew of Edessa, Urfali Mateos Vekayinamesi (1962) and O. C. Tuncer's Diyarbakir Kiliseleri (2002). The latest publications by the general directorate of Ottoman archives as well as individual studies on the Armenian question could have contributed to the articles by C. Mouradian, R. H. Kevorkian, S. Payaslian, D. Gaunt, Y. Ternon, H. L. Kieser, C. Bedrossian, V. Tachjian, and D. Calonne, particularly in regard to demographic change. Some articles in the book, especially Hovannisian's introduction, rely heavily on myth and Christian tradition regarding the gates and towers of the city walls and the supposed origin of Diyarbakir as a province named after a Kurdish chieftain (pp. 2-4).
An analysis of a number of important issues may suffice for comprehending the theme of the book as well as the uniformity and diversity of the articles included.
Recognizing Diyarbakir as the place where Tigran built his city, Tigranakert, is no longer considered accurate by modern scholars. Hovannisian is not clear on the boundaries of Tigranakert as an Armenian region or on the origins of the Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, and Greeks who settled there. According to Avdoyan and Kaegi, the possible locations for Tigranakert are Tell-Armen near Mardin,...