YEREVAN — Recently, the republication of Zadig Khanzadian’s Atlas of the Historical Cartography of Armenia, upon the initiative of the Tekeyan Cultural Association of Armenia and with the patronage of Ruben Grigoryan, was celebrated at the Tekeyan Center of Yerevan. This work contains over 300 maps.
Old maps, historical works of a geographical nature and other written sources, as direct evidence of the past, are of unique value in historical research and the information fight against falsification.
The discovery and description of cartographic materials from libraries, archives and private collections is of great importance.
The first collection of old maps of Armenia known to us, Report on the Geographical Unity of Armenia: Historical Atlas, was published in 1920 in Paris by French-Armenian geographer and cartographer Zadig Khanzadian.
Commander Khanzadian (April 3, 1886, Manisa, Ottoman Empire – January 23, 1980, Paris, France), a prominent French-Armenian cartographer, geographer, researcher and public figure, was also a participant in the French Resistance during World War II. He earned a doctorate in geographical sciences in 1912, and received several honors, including the French Legion of Honor, Honorary Member of the Armenian (Armenian SSR) Geographical Society (1961) and External Member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences (1967).
He authored or co-authored a number of atlases in addition to the aforementioned Report, including Atlas of the Economic Geography of Turkey (1924), Economic Geographic Atlas of Syria and Lebanon (1926), Atlas of Economic Geography of the Air Department (1928), Atlas of Historical Geography of Algeria (1930), Atlas of General Geography of Palestine: Historical, Political, Economic (1932), and Atlas of the Historical Cartography of Armenia (1960).
