Arevelyan Mamul (Mateos Mamurian, 1875)
Name/Title
Arevelyan Mamul (Mateos Mamurian, 1875)Secondary Title
The Eastern PressDescription
Mateos Mamourian (1830–1901) was a prominent Armenian intellectual born in Smyrna (now Izmir). Educated in Paris, he returned to the Ottoman Empire, contributing significantly to Armenian education and journalism. In 1871, he founded the journal Arevelian Mamoul (“The Eastern Press”), which he edited for thirty years, playing a pivotal role in the intellectual life of Western Armenians. Mamourian was also a prolific author and translator, bringing works by Voltaire, Goethe, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, and Leo Tolstoy into the Armenian literary sphere. His son, Hrant Mamourian, continued the publication of Arevelian Mamoul until 1910, and it resumed as a newspaper from 1919 until 1922, when the Great Fire of Smyrna ended the Armenian presence in the city. The publication includes a stamp from the S. Ghougasian School, which was founded in 1846-1847. Mardiros Papazian—originally from the village of Ardamed in Van—served as its first headmaster. He later took the name Father Mesrob, first as a novitiate and then as a priest. Between 1854 and 1870, the school’s principal was Dikran Amirdjanian. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Armenians gradually moved to safer districts with larger Armenian populations, enrollment at the S. Ghougasian School declined. By 1915, it had the smallest enrollment and faculty of all Armenian parochial schools in Van. In its inaugural year, the school had 150 pupils, but enrollment steadily dropped to 110 students in 1884, 60 students and two teachers in 1901-1902, and finally, by 1909, only 40 students and three teachers. The S. Ghougasian School also operated on the smallest budget among Van’s Armenian parochial schools. In the 1901-1902 school year, its monthly expenses and income totaled 225 kurus—200 of which came from the neighborhood council, while 25 came from tuition fees. By the early 1910s, the provincial educational department (Mearif) took over the school’s financial responsibilities. According to contemporary reports in the Armenian press of Van, the province’s 1913 educational budget allocated 6,300 kurus each to the Haygian School of Haygavank and the S. Ghougasian School of the S. Hagop neighborhood, which was enough to cover most of their financial needs.Category
Books