The Saint James monastery stands in the Anti-Taurus mountains at 37° 59' N and 36° 05' E, at an altitude of 1,300 m, at the foot of a mountain that bears its name (Surp Hagop). A bridge of the same name, west of Hajën [Sayimbeyli], which spans the Chatakh [Obruk Çay] River, a sub-tributary of the Sihun [Seyhan], links it to this town.
If one disregards an uncertain attribution in the 11th century, the monastery is first attested in the 16th century on the occasion of a restoration completed in 1554 by Bishop Kachadur. Its rise is probably tied to that of the city of Hajël, or Hajën, whose development is situated in the 15th century after the fall of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia (1375), thus associating it with the progressive withdrawal of several Armenian seigneuries to the high valleys north of Sis [Kozan], where they managed to establish themselves as autonomous entities. The name Hajën itself has been connected with Harkan or Hargan, a locality identified as lying downriver from the present-day town and an episcopal see in the 12th-13th centuries. It is no doubt this see that was replaced by that of Hajën, whose occupants most often resided in the monastery of Saint James.
After restoration of the catholicosate of Edchmiadzin in 1441, but without leaving vacant that of Sis, in Cilicia (see n° 9, 73), it would not be until the 18th century that the Cilician see would be occupied by catholicoi from Hajën. John V of Hajën (Hovhannes Hajëntsi, 1705-1721) occupied the see of Sis but was obliged to retire in 1708 to his own town, in all likelihood to the Saint James monastery, after having accepted to share his title with Peter II of Berea [Halep] (Bedros Periatsi, 1708-1710), soon to be removed. Some twenty years later, the death of Gregory III of Caesarea [Kayseri] (Krikor Guessaratsi) at Amasia enabled a relative of John V, the priest Der Atam, to occupy the catholicossal seat under the name of John VI. But the imperial decision to reserve the see of Cilicia for the Adshabahian family of Sis, a prerogative they were to keep until 1865, forced him to cede the catholicosate in 1733 to Luke I (Ghugas Adshabahian). John VI returned to Hajën and its monastery, where we find him still in residence in 1742. A copyist workshop is attested at the monastery in 1774.
Diocesan primate of Hajën and superior of the Saint James monastery, Archbishop Bedros Der Melkonian (1853-1885) completed restoration of the monastery in 1885. Previously he had been locum tenens of the see of Sis after the death of the last of the Adshabahians in 1865; and in 1882 he had accommodated at the monastery a seminary that Catholicos Mgrditch I Kefsizian had first attempted to establish at Aïntab [Antep]. In 1900 more work was done in view of providing the seminary with a building adapted to its needs and able to receive orphans. During the Cilician massacres in 1909, the monastery was attacked and burned. From 1910, it was Bedros Sarajian who rebuilt the destroyed buildings and established a new orphanage as well as a small factory. Deported in 1915 with the Armenian population, he escaped death and returned to Hajën, but was again forced to leave by the Kemalists; in 1920 their attacks ended with the taking of the city, which the French troops had not tried to free, and the massacre of those Armenians who had returned after their initial escape. After having devoted himself to the construction of the Melkonian Armenian educational institution in Nicosia, in 1921, Mgr. Bedros Sarajian would be made patriarchal vicar and then catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, in 1940, in Antelias, Lebanon.
The Saint James monastery of Hajën includes:
• The church of Saint James, a tri-apsidial edifice some 19 m long with a dome atop a polygonal drum, and a crypt built or restored in the 16th century. It was preceded on the west side by a porch with three arches in front and two on the sides, of which the upper level, which was part of the church, had been made into a tribune. This group of buildings had been covered with a four-sided tile roof.
• A sacristy built against the south absidiole.
• The bishop’s residence, rebuilt after 1909 to the north of the church.
• The orphanage, a large three-story building rebuilt to the south of the church after 1909.
• Other outbuildings.
• A fountain.
• A walled yard.
The monastery owned lands. A nocturnal pilgrimage took place at Saint James.
Confiscated after the Great War and the retrocession of Cilicia, the Saint James monastery at Hajën was largely destroyed. In the 1980s, all outbuildings had disappeared. The only remaining parts of the church were the apse and a few sections of wall on the north and west sides. The whole south part was occupied from east to west by a vast dwelling built with stones taken from the church. The crypt was used as a septic tank. Since then the ruins have deteriorated considerably.
Boghossian, 1942, 105-139, 148-150, 348-370. Oskian, 1957, 260-261. Edwards, 1983, 125-128, [153-157]. Gulessérian, 1990, 448-479. Kévorkian & al, 2012, 80-81.