Jerusalem trivia for 500: The Old City has four quarters. Three of them make perfect sense: Jewish, Christian, Muslim.

Who possesses the fourth?

The answer, which tends to surprise people, is: the Armenians.

The Armenians? Who even are the Armenians? And how did this tiny minority manage to secure an entire quarter in a place where every stone is argued over, claimed, reclaimed, and fought for?

That question propelled me to investigate this for an upcoming episode of The Jerusalem Files. I’ll deal with the history and politics of it there. But before doing that, I want to tell a different story. Because the real reason the Armenian Quarter exists has less to do with politics and more to do with the people who live there.

If you’ve walked through the Old City, you’ve seen Armenian ceramics. Plates, bowls, tiles, hanging in nearly every gift shop. Blue and red patterns. Floral designs. Jerusalem scenes. They’re so common that most of us stop noticing them. You know, this stuff:

I went to see where they come from.

That’s how I ended up in a small shop on Greek Orthodox Patriarch Street, sitting across from Hagop Karakashian. He’s quiet, polite, and warm. He’s definitely not a salesman. From Hagop, you will never hear: “My friend, come inside, I make you a deal, my friend.” His shop isn’t trying to pull you in. It’s there if you want it.

Hagop’s grandfather, Megerditch Karakashian, was a master painter from Kütahya, in what is now Turkey. In 1919, he was invited to Jerusalem by the British to take part in a project to create 40,000 hand-painted ceramic tiles of the Dome of the Rock. That project never happened, but his family stayed, making their new home in Jerusalem. (Interestingly, the project was derailed because the Muslim authorities refused to allow Armenians, who are Christians, to create the materials for their holy site.)

Leaving Turkey meant leaving persecution behind. It meant distance from the Armenian genocide, which would eventually claim the lives of a million and a half Armenians. He brought his family here slowly. In 1922, together with a partner, he opened a small workshop and began producing tiles, work rooted in a deep tradition that had traveled with him.

His son, Stepan Karakashian, continued developing the craft.

If you are wondering, yes, Karakashian sounds a lot like Kardashian. The Kardashians are by far the most famous Armenian family ever. Cher, the Goddess of Pop, is........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)