Joseph Emin
Armenian prose writer, public figure (1726-1809)
Emin Joseph Emin (Armenian: Յովսէփ Էմին, Hovsep Emin; 1726 – 2 August 1809) was an Indo-Armenian traveler, writer and patriot who sought to achieve the liberation of Armenia from Persian and Ottoman rule. He wrote an autobiography titled The Life and Adventures of Joseph Emin the Armenian Written in English by Himself, which was first published in London in 1792.
Born in Hamadan and raised in Calcutta, he traveled to London as a young man, received a military education there, and fought in the Seven Years' War. In 1759-1760, he traveled to Armenia for the first time, preaching his ideas of liberation to Armenian villagers along the way. He then went to Russia to seek support for his program for the liberation of Armenia. In 1763 he left Russia for Georgia with a group of supporters and was received by the Georgian king Heraclius II. Emin established contacts in Ottoman Armenia, hoping to eventually raise a rebellion with Heraclius's support. However, in 1764 the Georgian king exiled Emin, who then unsuccessfully attempted to gather support for his plans among the Armenian meliks (princes) of Karabakh. Emin eventually returned to India, where he became a close collaborator of the Armenia writer Shahamir Shahamirian. From 1777 to 1783, Emin lived New Julfa, Iran and unsuccessfully tried to return to Armenia and resume his revolutionary activities. He returned to India for the last time in 1783 and spent the rest of his life there.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Emin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.