strange place" unbelievable unless seen by one's own eyes, dark and without roads. Signs of human settlement are that "People in those parts say that one frequently hears the sounds of men bellowing, of cocks crowing, of horses neighing in the forest," Those people are described by Hayton, leaning upon Georgian and Armenian Histories, to be the descendants of the men of the "wicked" Iranian Emperor Shaworeos who had chased and harassed Christian people. The referenced translation suggests this Emperor could be Shapur II (309–379 AD). Simonian considers the so described difficulty in access not to imply total isolation. On the contrary, he reports, Hamshen served sometimes as a transit route between the coastal regions and the Armenian Highlands. In his analysis of the literary and non-literary sources from the 8th through the 19th centuries, combined with excursions into Hamšēn during the 1980s to identify the surviving Armenian architecture, Dr. Robert W. Edwards has defined the geographical perimeters of that region and assessed the historical impact of its extreme isolation. Sources of the ruling powers in the region, (Byzantine, Trapezuntine, Georgian, Armenian and Turkish) are silent about Hemshin; until the conquest by the Ottomans. It is deduced that Hemşin has been governed by local lords under the umbrella of the greater regional powers changing by the time namely the Bagratid Armenian kingdom, the Byzantine Empire, its successor the Empire of Trebizond, the Kingdom of Georgia, the Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu Turkmen Confederations until it was annexed by the Ottoman Empire which collapsed as a result of the World War I and gave birth to the Republic of Turkey. The Ottoman conquest of Hemshin occurred sometime in the 1480s: an Ottoman register dated around 1486 calls it Hemshin and mentions it as being an Ottoman possession. Turkish dominance and division Turkish influence was firmly established in the region after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, after which the Seljuk Turks and other Turkish tribes gained a strong foothold in Central Anatolia and Western Armenian Highlands, often referred to as Eastern Anatolia, bringing the local population in contact with the religion of Islam. In the 15th century, the region of Hamshen was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. During the Turkish rule, two most important developments are human migrations and conversions. Most sources agree that prior to Ottoman era majority of the residents of Hemshin were Christian and members of the Armenian