By Arthur Hagopian
JERUSALEM — The Gulbenkian Foundation, one of the world’s leading philanthropic organizations, has provided the “Armenian Jerusalem” heritage preservation website project with a new grant, enabling organizers to carry out necessary hardware upgrades and software updates.
The grant reaffirms the foundation’s keen interest in the project and cements its support for what is hoped will help preserve the history, culture and traditions of the Armenians of Jerusalem, rescuing their saga from oblivion.
The project, launched in 2007, is the brainchild of Arthur Hagopian, former press officer of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and involves the creation of a website that will host a compendium of archival material chronicling the story of a community that has its roots in the city even before the advent of the Christian era.
The website was originally located at http://www.kaghakatzi.org, but has now moved to a permanent address at http://armenian-jerusalem.org. One of its primary objectives was the creation of an all-in-one family tree that highlights the inter-relationship and inter-connectivity of the kaghakatsi residents of the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.