634
ARMENIA
and after the defeat of Antiochns the Great by the Romans, 190 b.c., Artaxias (Ardashes), and Zadriades, the governors of Armenia Major and Armenia Minor, became independent kings, with the concurrence of Rome. Artaxias established his capital at Artaxata on the Araxes, and his most celebrated successor was Tigranes (Dikran), 94-56 b.c., the son-in-law of Mithradates. Tigranes founded a new capital, Tigranocerta, in Northern Mesopotamia, which he modelled on Nineveh and Babylon, and peopled with Greek and other captives. Here, and at Antioch, he played the part of “great-king” in Asia until his refusal to surrender his father-in-law involved him in war with Rome. Defeated, 69 b.c., by Lucullus beneath the walls of his capital, he surrendered his conquests to Pompey, 66 b.c., who had driven Mithradates across the Phasis, and was permitted to hold Armenia as a vassal state of Rome. The campaigns of Lucullus and Pompey brought Rome into delicate relations with Parthia. Armenia, although politically dependent upon Rome, was connected with Parthia by geographical position, a common language and faith, intermarriage, and similarity of arms and dress. It had never been Hellenized, as the provinces of Asia Minor had been; the Roman provincial system was never applied to it; and the policy of Rome towards it was never consistent. The country became the field upon which the East and the West contended for mastery, and the struggle ended for a time in the partition of Armenia, a.i). 387, between Rome and Persia. The Roman portion was soon added to the Diocesis Pontica. The Persian portion, Pers-Armenia, remained a vassal state under an Arsacid prince until 428. It was afterwards governed by Persian and Armenian noblemen selected by the “greatking,” and entitled marzbans. Before the partition, Tiridates, converted by St. Gregory, “ the Illuminator,” had established Christianity as the religion of the state, and set an example followed later by Constantine. After the partition, the invention of the Armenian alphabet, and the translation of the Bible into the vernacular, 410, di'ew the Armenians together, and the discontinuance of Greek in the Holy Offices relaxed the ecclesiastical dependence on Constantinople, which ceased entirely when the Patriarch, 491, refused to accept the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon. The rule of the marzbans was marked by relentless persecution of the Christians, forced conversions to Magism, frequent insurrections, and the rise to importance of the great families founded by men of Assyrian, Parthian, Persian, Syrian, and Jewish origin, and in some cases of royal blood, who had been governors of districts, or holders of fiefs under the Arsacids. Amongst the marzbans were Jewish Bagratids and Persian Mamegonians; and one of the latter family, Yartan, made himself independent (571-578), with Byzantine aid. In 632 the victories of Heraclius restored Armenia to the Byzantines; but the war that followed the Arab invasion, 636, left the country in the hands of the khalffs, who set over it Arab and Armenian governors (pstikans). One of the governors, the Bagratid Ashod I., was crowned king of Armenia by the khalff Mutamid, 885, and founded a dynasty which ended with Kagig II. in 1079. A little later the Ardzrunian Kagig, governor of Vaspuragan or Van, was crowned king of that province by the khalff Muktadir, 908, and his descendants ruled at Van and Sivas until 1080. The Bagratids founded dynasties at Kars, 962-1080, and in Georgia, which they held until its absorption, 1801, by Russia. From 984 to 1085 the country from Diarbekr to Melasgerd was ruled, under the suzerainty first of Arabs, then of Byzantines and Seljuks, by the Mervanid dynasty of Kurds, called princes of Abahuni (’ATrayowijs). The Arab invasion drove many Armenian noblemen to Constantinople, where they inter-married
with the old Roman families or became soldiers of fortune. Artavasdes, an Arsacid, usurped the Byzantine throne for two years; Leo V., an Ardzrunian, and John Zimiskes, became emperors; whilst Manuel, the Mamegonian, and others were amongst the best generals of the empire. In 991, and again in 1021, Basil II. invaded Armenia, and in the latter year Senekherim, king of Vaspuragan, exchanged his kingdom for Sivas and its territory, where he settled down with many Armenian emigrants. Basil’s policy was to make the great Armenian fortresses, garrisoned by imperial troops, the first line of defence on his eastern frontier; but it failed in the hands of his feeble successors, who thought more of converting heretical Armenia than of defending its frontier. The king of Ani, Kagig II., was compelled to exchange his kingdom for estates in Cappadocia. The country was raided by Seljuks and harried by Byzantine soldiers, and the miseries of the people were regarded as gain to the Orthodox church. After the defeat and capture of Romanus IV. by Alp Arslan, 1071, Armenia formed part of the Seljuk empire until it split up, 1157, into petty states, ruled by Arabs, Kurds, and Seljuks, who were in turn swept away by the Mongol invasion, 1235. For more than three centuries after the appearance of the Seljuks, Armenia was traversed by a long succession of nomad tribes whose one aim was to secure good pasturage for their flocks on their way to the richer lands of Asia Minor. The cultivators were driven from the plains, agriculture was destroyed, and the country was seriously impoverished when its ruin was completed by the ravages and wholesale butcheries of Timur. Many Armenians fled to the mountains where they embraced Isldm, and intermarried with the Kurds, or purchased security by paying blackmail to Kurdish chiefs. Others migrated to Cappadocia or to Cilicia, where the Bagratid Rhupen had founded, 1080, a small principality which, gradually extending its limits, became the kingdom of Lesser Armenia. This Christian kingdom in the midst of Moslem states, hostile to the Byzantines, giving valuable support to the leaders of the Crusades, and trading with the great commercial cities of Italy, had a stormy existence of about 300 years. Internal disorders, due to attempts by the later Lusignan kings, to make their subjects conform to the Roman Church, facilitated its conquest by Egypt, 1375. The memory of Kiligia (Cilicia) is enshrined in a popular song, and at Zeitiin, in the recesses of Mount Taurus, a small Armenian community has hitherto maintained almost complete independence. After the death of Timur, Armenia formed part of the territories of the Turkoman dynasties of Ak- and Kara-Koyunlu, and under their milder rule the seat of the Katholikos, which, during the Seljuk invasion, had been moved first to Sivas, and then to Lesser Armenia, was re-established, 1441, at Echmiadzin. In 1514, the Persian campaign of Selim I. gave Armenia to the Osmanli Turks, and its reorganization was entrusted to Idris, the historian, who was a Kurd of Bitlis. Idris found the rich arable lands almost deserted, and the mountains bristling with the castles of independent chieftains, of Kurd, Arab, and Armenian descent, between whom there were long-standing feuds. He compelled the Kurds to settle on the vacant lands, and divided the country into small sanjaks which in the plains were governed by Turkish officials, and in the mountains by local chiefs. This policy gave rest to the country, but favoured the growth of Kiird influence and power, which by 1534 had spread westwards to Angora. Armenia was invaded by the Persians in 1575, and again in 1604, when Shah Abbas transplanted many thousand Armenians from Julfa to his new capital
