OverviewAny discussion of Armenian women must take
into consideration that they have been part of a
large minority dispersed in the Ottoman Empire
and Iran, concentrated in Anatolia, Iranian Azer-
baijan, and Isfahan, and after the First World War
in Arab lands. The study of Armenian women is
fairly new and therefore limited, suffering from un-
evenness in scholarship and leading at times to gen-
eralizations, especially but not exclusively about
the premodern period. While these communities
share much with each other and the Muslim major-
ity populations, attention must be paid to historical
and regional variations when discussing women in
Armenian religious doctrine and practices and
Armenian women’s lives within the larger Muslim
communities.
The Armenian Apostolic Church does not allow
the ecclesiastical ministry of women, yet there have
been throughout history expressions of lay spiritu-
ality in the form of women saints and martyred vir-
gins, scribes, members of women’s guilds, parish
councils, and diocesan delegations as well as nuns
and deaconesses. According to church history,
saints such as the fourth-century Sandukht, Gayane,
and Hripsime (whose martyrdom ultimately led to
the conversion of the Armenian king in the early
fourth century) were among the first Armenian
martyrs. Scribes, some of whom were virgins, while
others such as the seventeenth-century Margarit
were “the captive soul beset by sin, tossed about by
life and perishing in the depths of iniquity, full of
evil in spirit” (Oghlukian 1994, 27), have been
responsible in small or large part for the preserva-
tion of several dozen manuscripts (Tsovakan 1954,
133–5).
Nuns and deaconesses
Nuns within the Armenian church existed
throughout the medieval period up to the twentieth
century in places such as Jerusalem, New Julfa, and
Istanbul (Ervine 1999, 129). The history of the
female deaconate goes at least as far back as the
tenth century, possibly earlier. In the nineteenth
century, deaconesses were present in Armenian
convents such as St. Catherine’s convent in New
Julfa and the Galfayan convent in Istanbul, with
the last deaconess being ordained in 1982. St.
Armenian Women
Catherine’s convent is a great example of the strong
social consciousness of women’s lay activity in see-
ing to orphanages, hospitals, and so forth (Arat
2000, 153–89). Although canonical books of the
fourth to the eight centuries remark on women,
direct mention of deaconesses is made only in man-
uscript ritual books (mashtots) from the ninth to
the eleventh centuries; after the twelfth century, rit-
ual and other books appear with ordination rights
for deaconesses (Arat 2000, 90–1, 98, 100–1,
Thomson 2000, 278). Based on eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century sources, it becomes clear that
the duties of the deaconess were limited to con-
ducting the liturgy of hours in the convent, pro-
claiming the Gospel, singing, bringing the chalice,
and using incense during Holy Mass (Arat 2000,
110). Some medieval clerical writers rejected the
female deaconate altogether, even prohibiting the
testimony in court of women and “crushing grapes
for the production of wine for the Holy Mass”
(Arat 2000, 106). The opposition of medieval cler-
ics seems to draw its justification from the convic-
tion that women were “impure” (Arat 2000, 107,
Oghlukian 1994, 42).Use of Muslim courts
Medieval “de-scriptiveand pre-scriptivetexts”
(Thomson 2000, 15) such as the Lawcode of
Mkhitar Gosh, whose main purpose was to prevent
Christian Armenians from resorting to Muslim
courts, shed light on ecclesiastical laws regulating
women’s behavior in marriage and divorce as well
as providing a view into the social lives of medieval
Armenian women (Thomson 2000, 47, 52). The
issue of the use of Muslim courts is an interesting
one; recent studies show that non-Muslim minori-
ties, including women, used Sharì≠a courts in almost
all cities of the Ottoman Empire, including
Damascus and Istanbul (al-Qattan 1999, 429).
According to eighteenth-century court records of
the Galata region of Istanbul, a large number of
Armenian and Greek women resorted to the courts
because of their dissatisfaction with their commu-
nities’ inheritance practices (Göçek and Baer 1996,
57). Similarily, in Damascus, while minorities at
times appeared at courts out of necessity, most
often they went to seek the court’s favor in cases
involving marriage, divorce, child custody, and
inheritance (al-Qattan 1999, 430). Sharì≠a courts