Khojah Martiros

Khojah Martiros was a prominent Armenian merchant in Agra whose mausoleum served as chapel for Armenian community. He gave away all his wealth to the poor.

Father Joao de Valasco, a Jesuit priest, in his “Annual Report” to Rome in 1612, describes the circumstances of the chapel’s construction.

“Lately this cemetery was adorned with a Chapel, erected with the alms of a pious Armenian, who free from the bonds of wedlock after the death of his wife, went to Rome and Jerusalem on a pilgrimage to the Holy places of our Redemption,” Father Valasco wrote. In the concluding lines of his report, Father Valasco said Khojah Martiros gave away all his wealth to the poor because he believed that “these goods were no longer his, but the Lord Jesus’s.”