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This study examines the participation of Cilician Armenians in the Mongol Ilkhanate's Syrian invasions in 1259–1260. Drawing upon data from mediaeval sources and various perspectives in scholarly literature, this paper addresses the following key questions: 1. Where were the troops of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia and their allied countries consolidated? 2. To what extent did the troops of the Armenian King Het'um I join forces with the Mongols? The inquiry also presents the specific details of the capture of Syrian cities and explores the likelihood of Armenian troops' involvement in these operations. In the final section, the paper delves into the events surrounding the famous Battle of Ain-Jalut and examines the potential participation of Armenians in this pivotal conflict, in which the allies suffered defeat and were subsequently compelled to retreat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the petitions, letters, opinion pieces and scholarly works that Armenian intellectuals generated to convince French decision-makers to carve an Armenian nation-state out of Cilicia (present-day southern Turkey). This colonial encounter took place within the process by which European powers dismembered the defeated Ottoman state following the First World War. These "geo-texts"—textual representations of territory and population—were strategic attempts at adjusting the parameters of French imperialism, and thus tapped into French notions of history and ethnology to make a case for an Armenian state. First, I show how Armenians adopted and inflected French epistemologies to depict their ancient homeland. Then, I trace the shift from a representation based on historical commonalities between the Armenians and French to one that stressed the ethnological specificities of Armenian nation and territory. Finally, I argue that the static notions of territory, text and population that lobbyists produced continue to fuel scholarly debate over the confessional and ethnic make-up of Cilicia. This study on "geo-texts" provides insights into how, at a certain historical moment, differences and similarities among people, both within a society and between societies, are established in text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]