Buildings Can Be Restored, But Reviving a Migrated Community Is Far More Difficult

Maragheh’s historic Hovhannes Church was restored after years of renovation and with expenditure exceeding 100 billion rials, yet behind the news of reviving this Christian structure lies a harsher reality: a church that once served as a place of worship and life for the city’s Armenian community now stands in a city where virtually no Christians remain, and the heritage of an ancient community has become more a monument to the past than a living center of religious life.

After several years of restoration work, the reconstruction of the historic Hovhannes Church in Maragheh has been completed—a structure considered one of the most important monuments to the historical Armenian presence in the city and a significant Christian artifact in Iranian Azerbaijan.

According to published reports, more than 100 billion rials were spent on restoring and organizing this complex. The project has been pursued in several phases since 1396, with various parts of the structure, grounds, and facilities undergoing restoration and organization.

Hovhannes Church is registered in the list of Iran’s national monuments and holds special significance from the perspectives of architecture, the history of Christianity in the region, and the historical presence of Armenians in Maragheh. Available sources about the history of this site offer varying accounts; some Persian sources trace its roots to the fifth and sixth centuries CE, while other historical sources refer to a church from the sixteenth century, with the current structure itself attributed to 1840 CE.

For this reason, the significance of Hovhannes is not limited to the age of a single building. This church is part of centuries-long history of the Armenian community in Iran—a community that throughout the ages inhabited cities such as Maragheh, Tabriz, Khoy, Salmas, and Isfahan, and played a role in shaping Iranian culture, education, commerce, and social life.

The Hovhannes structure is not merely a simple place of worship. This historic complex consists of sections for worship, a school, and episcopal residence, and its architecture possesses features that distinguish it from many other religious structures in the region.

The building’s entrance is situated beneath a barrel vault, and a pyramidal dome with a bell tower are located in this section. The worship space is located in the eastern part of the building and consists of three arcaded sections with arched vaults. The central arcade is larger and features windows with colored glass panes.

These architectural details gain their true meaning and function when understood as part of a living Christian community. The school, place of worship, and clergy residence stood side by side, and the church was effectively one of the focal points of Armenian social and religious life in Maragheh. Today, however, this social function has largely disappeared.

One of the most important aspects of the Hovhannes story is not the building itself, but the community that no longer surrounds it.

A report published in 2012 by the Armenian media outlet Hetq about the restoration of Hovhannes Church noted that Maragheh was once a region with a significant Armenian population. According to this report, in the 1960s approximately 60 Armenian families lived in the city and an Armenian school was also active in Maragheh; however, by the time that report was published, no Armenians remained in the city, having mostly migrated to Tabriz.

This fact makes the news of church restoration two-sided. On one hand, the preservation and restoration of a historic Christian structure is a positive development and can signal the importance of Armenian heritage in Iran’s history. On the other hand, when a church that once served as a place of worship and education for a living community now remains without a local Christian population, its restoration alone cannot represent preservation of that community’s heritage.

The building remains, but the community for which the building was constructed is no longer present in that city. Hovhannes has now become more a historical monument and tourist attraction than a venue for regular Christian religious ceremonies.

This shift in function is the fate of many historic churches in regions of Iran that have experienced a decline in Armenian population in recent decades. Churches, schools, cemeteries, and other markers of Armenian life remain in parts of various cities, but the community that gave them meaning has either shrunk or migrated to other cities and even outside Iran.

An Armenian report about Hovhannes restoration in 2012 also alluded to this very contradiction: “The Iranian government was spending money to preserve a historic church, while no Armenians remained in Maragheh.”

This situation raises an important question: Is preserving a religious structure without preserving the community that kept it alive sufficient?

The departure of Armenians from Maragheh cannot be attributed to a single factor. Historical research into Armenian migration from Iran shows this process has had diverse political, economic, and social roots and intensified in various periods.

A study published in Armenia’s university digital library describes Armenian migration from Iran in the second half of the twentieth century as an important political and social transformation for the Armenian community and Armenia, and points to the complex political and economic conditions following World War II and in the 1960s.

Other studies view migration factors more broadly, ranging from the 1979 Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War to economic conditions, sanctions, and social restrictions. According to research on the Armenian community in Iran also indexed in UN sources, the Armenian population in Iran in the 1960s and 1970s was significantly larger than today, and after the Islamic Revolution, another wave of migration occurred.

Consequently, the emptying of Maragheh of its Armenian population should not be reduced merely to individual decisions or simple economic migration. This event is part of a larger process of shrinking and displacement of some historic Armenian communities in Iran.

Hovhannes Church is now restored; its walls, ceiling, and historic sections have been preserved, and the structure can again occupy an important place in the region’s tourism map. However, cultural heritage is not merely bricks, stone, domes, and windows.

A community’s heritage is its language, its rituals, its schools, its families, its memories, and the generations who pass these elements to the next. When a community leaves a city, preserving the remaining buildings, though necessary, preserves only part of the story.

In the case of Hovhannes, this contradiction is symbolically evident: a Christian church is restored with considerable public funding, yet the community that once worshipped there, maintained a school, and lived in the same city has been almost entirely removed from Maragheh’s social landscape—much like St. Peter’s Church on “Thirty-Tir” Street in Tehran.

This contradiction raises a broader question about the policy of preserving the heritage of religious minorities in Iran. The preservation of historical monuments will be more complete when, alongside buildings, the possibility of presence, activity, and continuity of historic communities is also provided.

Hovhannes Church can be seen as an example of a larger reality: Iran is not only the home of pre-Islamic ancient artifacts; churches, monasteries, and other Christian structures are also part of this land’s history.

Even official Armenian institutions have registered Maragheh’s Hovhannes among structures belonging to the Armenian ecclesiastical heritage of Azerbaijan. Therefore, the restoration of Hovhannes should be considered a positive event for preserving Christian heritage in Iran. However, the true value of this measure will increase when such preservation efforts are not limited merely to rebuilding the walls of a historic structure and the issue of sustaining the cultural and religious life of Iran’s Christian communities also receives attention.

Today Hovhannes stands, but the sound of its bell is no longer a normal part of the daily life of Maragheh’s Armenian community. Perhaps this very image is the most eloquent narrative of the fate of part of Iran’s Christian heritage: “Buildings can be restored, but reviving a migrated community is far more difficult.”