For me, Isfahan is now also the Armenian neighborhood - Julfa. In contemporary lexicon, Julfa would be what we would call “the old city” despite the insistence of some that Julfa is rather the Champs Elysees of Isfahan and Isfahan is half the world.

The architect of this melting pot was Shah Abbas. Around 400 years ago he built a new capital for his empire right in the center of the country and populated it with Armenians from Jugha.* These Armenians were farmers, merchants of the Silk Road and advisers to the Shah himself. Armenians still live there, though not as many as before.

A Stroll in the Armenian Neighborhoods of Julfa 

After the not so velvet revolution in 1979, relations between Iran and the United States deteriorated and the two countries are not on good terms.  Despite this, there are some within the Armenian community of Isfahan who “love” President Donald Trump like Rima Simonian, the vice principal of the Kananian School. She half jokingly explains, “He stopped migration out of Julfa, closed the doors and did well in doing so. We stopped leaving.”

There are about 4500 Armenians who have still not left Isfahan. Simonian is sure, they will be able to overcome the financial crisis in the country. She believes the 400-year-old community cannot vanish. She herself has lived in Europe, in other cities in Iran but will not exchange any of them with Julfa.

The Only Mixed-Gender School in Iran is an Armenian One

Armenian children in Julfa study at the Armenian national educational complex. The complex is home to five institutions where approximately 380 children receive an education - a kindergarten, a pre-school, the “Armen” elementary school, the Katarinian all-boys’ and the Kananian all-girls’ school.

I visited the complex and found out that only Armenians study here. A student, Lilit Gevorgian said that they study all the same things as in Iranian schools save the Quran.

Incidentally, for just over a year now, the educational complex has become a mixed-gender school. It is important to understand, this is an exception in this country where even at a hotel the male and female rooms are in different wings and where men and women do not sit next to one another on public transport unless they know each other. The mixed-gender school is the result of the efforts of the school’s administration but as such, Armenian schools here are not new, they have been around since the 17th century.  

The old buildings of these schools are still standing though out of safety concerns, they have not hosted students for almost eight years now. But the feet of those who seek will take them to those buildings and their eyes will not have enough and their mouths will fall ajar in astonishment. The story is the building itself, the interior, the wooden ceiling, the courtyard, the bread oven in the courtyard. A friend, after seeing the photos, said the place looked like a “cinematic set.” My whole trip was a cinematic experience.

The Last Station: Friendship

Now, you must promise me that if your feet ever take you to Isfahan, you’ll go to Julfa and once there, you’ll visit the Ararat Club. It is a mini-Armenia where the entire community gathers for sporting and cultural events.   

Women don’t wear headscarves inside its walls. It was unbelievably enjoyable, that same feeling of walking down the middle of a large boulevarde instead of along the sidewalk. I felt a limitless sense of permissiveness surrounded by all that abstention.

The Armenian community here still does not have the answer to the question: was it good that 400 years ago in the face of such difficulties, they were moved here or would it have been better had they stayed in Jugha? Though the situation there was not better … there was Ottoman Turkey, the constraints ... had they stayed they could have integrated or maybe not, who knows.   

*Jugha, located today in Nakhichevan, Azerbaijan, was historically part of the province of Yerndjak, which was one of the famous settlements of old Armenia. In the 15th to 17th centuries it was an outstanding trade center in Armenia. In 1603, Shah Abbas captured the entire province of Nakhichevan form Ottoman Turkey. In 1605 and again in 1606, Shah Abbas, before retreating from the area, moved the Armenina population of Jugha to Persia. The town later (from 1840 to 1847) became part of the Armenian oblast, and then (1847 to 1917) part of the Erevan Gubernia of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, and as a result of the Treaty of Kars, Jugha became part of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922, which itself became part of the Azerbaijan SSR in 1936.