Re-posted from Bangladesh Unlocked (bangladeshunlocked.blogspot.com)
Armenian
Christians, with a closer affinity to the Orthodox Church of the East,
than the Catholic Christians who arrived in Bangladesh with Portuguese
traders some hundred or so years earlier, arrived in the mid 18th Century, before the fall of the Nawabs of Bengal and the east India Company takeover.
Needless
to say, they were welcomed by both administrations as great and
internationally connected masters of trade and commerce. The Moghuls may
well also have found a use for their skills in their administrative
organisations. One of the means of ensuring less corruption was to
employ outsiders in the sentive areas of finance.
In
1781, the fine, distinctively Eastern styled Armenian Church, and its
cemetery were dedicated, and have been arresting place and house of
worship until today.
The
uniqueness of its outward appearance is matched by the richness of its
interior decor, of which a magnificent, unusual, mahogany spiral
stairway to the loft is not the least of its appeals.
Admission
is not hard; the caretaker is always willing to open the gateway to
welcome visitors, expecting nothing more than a donation to the church.
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