(Re)Discovering Garabed Kapikian: A Portrait of an Armenian Intellectual in the late Ottoman Empire
Promise Armenian Institute
UCLA Campus, Los Angeles, CA
Lecture by Robert Sukiasyan, Promise Armenian Institute postdoctoral fellow, as part of the Promise Armenian Institute's 2026 commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.
The lecture and accompanying exclusive exhibition examine the life and intellectual legacy of Garabed Kapikian (1864–1925), a prominent Armenian pedagogue, botanist, lexicographer, ethnographer, politician, and public intellectual from Sebastia (Sivas). The presentation first addresses Kapikian's scholarly formation, pedagogical career, and political life and struggles, including his engagement as a key member of the Social Democratic Hunchakian Party, situating his work within the Late Ottoman intellectual milieu. Emphasis is placed on his pioneering contributions to Armenian natural history and linguistics, especially his botanical research and lexicographic documentation of the Sepastia dialect, which remain foundational sources in Armenian studies.
Central to the lecture is Kapikian's role as one of the earliest scholar-witnesses of the Armenian Genocide. Uniquely equipped with scholarly training and methodological rigor, and having personally endured the 1915 deportations, Kapikian produced some of the earliest systematic studies of the genocide based on direct observation, survivor testimony, and documentary collection. His post-genocide research, including his collaboration with Aram Andonian, represents a critical early effort to record and analyze the destruction of Ottoman Armenians as a subject of historical and scholarly inquiry.
The accompanying exhibition features selected panels from his scholarship on Armenian flora, historical photographs, maps tracing Kapikian's movements from Sepastia to Aleppo and Jerusalem, as well as personal belongings and hand-written manuscripts that survived the genocide. Kapikian's grandson, Garo Kapikian, will be present at the event, offering personal reflections on his grandfather's legacy.
Sponsors: The Promise Armenian Institute, Center for Near Eastern Studies, The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law, Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair of Modern Armenian History at UCLA, Narekatsi Chair in Armenian Studies, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research NAASR, Ararat-Eskijian Museum
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