Author · Armenia
Raffi
Died in 1888
Raffi is the pen name of Hakob Melik-Hakobian, born in 1835 in Payajuk, in the province of Salmast, in Persia, the eldest of the thirteen children of a rich merchant. A pupil at his village school, then at a boarding school in Tiflis from the age of twelve, he later had to assist his father and travelled on business in Russia and Persia. In 1857 and 1858, he travelled through the Armenian provinces of Persia and of the Ottoman Empire. He died in Tiflis in 1888, and his funeral drew a very large crowd.