Armenia 59Armenia The geographical position of Armenia on the
Armenian plateau beyond the Euphrates River and of
Greater Armenia, between the Greco-Roman Mediter-
ranean world and the Iranian and later Islam, gave the
region a turbulent and unstable history. Armenia had real
autonomy only when there was a balance of power
among its powerful neighbors. This situation, however,
favored Armenia on the cultural level. It was open to
numerous fruitful influences from which it created a cul-
ture based on social, religious, and intellectual institu-
tions independent of its variable political identity. The
urban networks characteristic of the Greco-Roman politi-
cal system always remained marginal to this decentralized
and rural society.
A kingdom of Christian Armenia was partitioned
between Rome and Persia in about 387, destroyed in 428,
but revived at the end of the ninth century. From the fifth
to the seventh century, Armenia was governed by Persian
viceroys residing at Duin, several of whom belonged to
the local nobility. The efforts of the Sassanids to reimpose
Mazdaism on an already Christian Armenia in 450/451
provoked a violent revolt; Armenia rose again against
power in 481 and 571–572.
On the social level, through most of the Middle Ages
Armenia preserved an aristocratic structure categorically
opposed to the Greco-Roman tradition of elective magis-
trates. In this noble system called naxarar,the great fami-
lies entrenched in their inaccessible strongholds held not
just principalities but also hereditary offices that could
not be revoked. This more-or-less feudal tradition of
hereditary offices extended to the office of patriarch, or
catholicos,in clear violation of the canons of the other
Christian churches.
CONVERSIONThe most important event that turned this Iranian society
toward the West was its conversion to Christianity. Saint
Gregory the Illuminator (ca. 240–ca. 323) traveled from
Caesarea in Cappadocia to convert the court and people
of Greater Armenia early in the fourth century. There was
a distancing of this Armenian Church from Constantino-
ple after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, whose doc-
trine it condemned early in the seventh century as
NESTORIAN. The church came to be a rallying point of
Armenian ethnic loyalties. It resisted all Byzantine
attempts to force acceptance of doctrine in the sixth and
seventh centuries. At the same time there developed an
alphabet for the spread of the Bible and liturgy in the
early fifth century.
POLITICAL LIFE AND SURVIVALPeaceful coexistence with Muslims from the seventh cen-
tury was brutally affected in the eighth century, especially
after the accession of the ABBASIDSin 750. The Armenian
nobility was essentially destroyed at the battle of Bagre-
wand in 775. However, the gradual decline of the Abbasid
caliphate and the recovery of Byzantium from a defensive
to an offensive role in Anatolia again led to a temporary
equilibrium on the frontiers of Armenia. A campaign for
the Abbasid caliphate by a Turkish general, Bugha the
Elder, in 852, devastated Armenia. It ended with the cap-
tivity of all the Armenian lords, including members of the
prominent Bagratid dynasty, at the Abbasid capital of
Samarra, where they converted to escape death.
The assassination of the caliph in 861 and a Byzan-
tine recovery under the emperor BASILI allowed Armenia
to regain some autonomy. King Ashot I the Great
(r. 884–890) resumed reconstituted the country. In 884,
he had himself crowned king by the patriarch with the
consent of the Byzantine emperor and the Abbasid caliph.
This began a peaceful era lasted for a century and a half
and inaugurated a brilliant period for Armenian culture
in literature and architecture.DECLINE
The centrifugal tradition of the system of nobles, whose
loyalty rarely extended beyond the interests of their
house, hampered all attempts at control or centralization.
Armenia in the 10th and 11th centuries was fractured
into small states, leaving it incapable of defending itself
in the mid-11th century against the Byzantine Empire
and later the SELJUKTurks. The ensuing massive migra-
tion of the Armenian nobility into Cappadocia and Cili-
cia, then into Crimea and the Balkans, enriching the
Byzantine Empire but impoverishing the homeland, put
an end to any dream of possible political autonomy.
Northern Armenia flourished briefly in the 13th
century under the Christianized Kurdish dynasty of the
Zakarids. They tried to reestablish the naxararsystem
on the basis of old and new noble families and to
renew intellectual luster by encouraging new monastic
foundations. In 1236, the last Zakarids strategically
accepted MONGOLrule. After that the return of a patri-
arch to the see of Ejmiacin in 1441, the growth of
monastic centers, and a diaspora of people preserved
some idea of Armenian identity. The plateau of Armenia
was invaded by the TIMURIDSand by Turkoman tribes.
It was then conquered by the OTTOMANS, who parti-
tioned it with the Safavids of Persia at the start of the
16th century.
Further reading:Matthew of Edessa, Armenia and the
Crusades, Tenth to Twelfth Centuries: The Chronicle of
Matthew of Edessa,trans. Ara Edmond Dostourian (Bel-
mont, Mass.: National Association for Armenian Studies
and Research, 1993); Thomas S. R. Boase, ed. The Cilician
Kingdom of Armenia (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic
Press, 1978); James Etmekjian, History of Armenian Liter-
ature: Fifth to Thirteenth Centuries(New York: St. Vartan
Press, 1985); Nina G. Garsoïan, Church and Culture in
Early Medieval Armenia (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum,
1999); Agop J. Hacikyan, ed., The Heritage of Armenian
Literature(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000);