Yeghishe Tourian of Jerusalem

Yeghische I. Tourian (Armenian Եղիշե Դուրյան, Turkish İstanbullu I. Yeğişe Turyan; * 1860 in Constantine Opel, Ottoman Empire, † 1930) was the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem and served from 1921 to 1929 as head of the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate of Jerusalem. He took over the position after the position of the patriarch eleven years (1910-1921) had remained vacant.

Born as Mihran Tourian in Constantinople Opel (now Istanbul), he was the younger brother of the famous Western Armenian poet and playwright Bedros Tourian. In Constantinople, Opel, he published from 1880 to 1885 a series of textbooks of the Armenian language. In 1909 he published his first poems and contributed regularly to armenologischen studies in various publications.

From 1909 to 1910 he was the Armenian Apostolic Patriarch of Constantinople Opel. He then moved to Jerusalem, where he was ordained in 1921 as a successor to Harutiun Vehabedian patriarch. He was involved in 1925 in various educational reforms, and founded in 1929 a United primary school. He modernized the curriculum of the Armenian Seminary and recruited teachers among the survivors of the Armenian genocide of 1915. By selecting different locations, including the girls' school St. Gayane, the new elementary school for the most important institution of the Armenian coeducational teaching in the Holy Land. It was later renamed the " School of the Holy Translators " ( Armenian " Serpots Tarkmantchats Varjaran ").

From 1927 published Tourian Sion ( Սիոն ), the official organ of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Its collections and writings were published in Jerusalem in a multi-volume series called " Matenashar Tourian ". These included some of his poems under the title Srpazan Knar ( Սրբազան քնար ).

He was succeeded by a patriarch Torkom Koushagian (1929-1939), of a comprehensive study of the inheritance of Tourian wrote in the Egyptian- Armenian newspaper Arev, which was later published separately in Jerusalem.