| Sanasarian College | |
| Established: | 1881 |
The Sanasarian College (hy|Սանասարեան վարժարան, tr|Sanasaryan Koleji) was an Armenian-language educational institution in the city of Erzurum (called Karin by Armenians), Ottoman Empire founded in 1881[1] by an Armenian merchant, Mkrtich Sanasarian.[2] Its students were children of primary and secondary school age. It also had a pedagogical department for the training of Armenian teachers and a trade school.
It was a school of high grade which consisted of teachers who were mostly educated in Germany. The college had a nine-year course, with a high grade education that was taught.[3] The school lasted until the Armenian genocide, when most of the teachers were killed and the building was ruined. Sanasarian college was a foremost institution for Armenian culture and education in the eastern provinces during the decades before World War I.[4]
English explorer, writer, and natural historian Isabella Bird (1831–1904) described the college as follows:
After the Armenian genocide, and when the property was abandoned, the Sanasarian College was chosen as the location for the Erzurum Congress.[5] [6]
In 2012, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople appealed to a court in Ankara for the return of the properties owned by the Sanasarian College.[7] These properties include nine plots of land in Erzurum, a garden house and vast farmland in the village of Aghveren, two plots in the village of Gez, and a large commercial property known as Sanasarian Han in the Sirkeci district of Istanbul. The court proceedings are still pending.