Chapter XVIII: Ani, and the Armenian Kingdom of the Middle Ages (1)

In Europe we may find examples of mediæval towns from which the tide of life has long since receded, and which have been preserved almost intact to the present day. Less fortune attends the footsteps of the traveller in Armenia, until he arrives before the walls and towers of the city on the Arpa Chai. It is perhaps to the complete desolation of the neighbourhood that is due this welcome surprise. No settlement has arisen in the immediate vicinity to despoil these architectural remains. Favoured by the dryness of the Armenian climate, the pink volcanic stone displays all the freshness of the day when it was fashioned by the mason's tool. Even lichen has failed to effect much hold upon its surface, while our persistent ivies and sweet, irresistible wallflowers have not adventured into these sunny and treeless plains. We admire these buildings in much the same state and condition as when they delighted the eyes of Armenian monarchs nine centuries ago. Such a site would in Western lands be at least occupied by a small town or village; the solitude of Ani is not shared by any such presence; and the mood engendered by the spectacle of her many noble monuments is not disturbed by the contrast of commonplace successors or of miserable tenements, clinging to the creations of a culture that has disappeared.

The impression of the ancient city which is perhaps likely to prove most permanent is due to the aspect from without of that long row of double walls with their even masonry and graceful towers at intervals (Fig. 70, p. 369). How well they are seen from the floor of this plain without limits; how strange they look among surroundings which scarcely display a trace of man! When we reflect that we are face to face with the capital of a kingdom, towards which the roads converged from every direction, and which was situated in the midst of a fertile province, famous for the production of corn, we are the more affected by the bareness and the loneliness of the countryside, which is only traversed here and there by a few vague tracks. Years upon years have elapsed since district and city throbbed with the pulse of human life. Yet if the Present be quite voiceless, the Past is doubly eloquent; and by reason not only of these many memorials, with their countless inscriptions, but also happily because of the comparative richness of the material which has been preserved in literature. In the case of many an old Armenian city, of which we shall visit the scanty remains, we have to deplore the broken skein of History. Ani has been better treated both by Time and by written records; and the dynasty which produced her splendour still lives in the lifelike narrative of the most attractive of the Armenian writers of that age. [265]

In the ninth century of our era the plains and mountains of Armenia were divided between the two great contemporary Powers which held sway in the East. The western portion of the country formed a part of the Roman Empire; while that on the east, comprising by far the largest and most populous area, was subject to the caliphs at Baghdad. The span of this single century is sufficient to include the full splendour and the decay and incipient disruption of the caliphate. At its commencement Harun-al-Rashid (786-809) was real master of vast dominions--a personality round which the romance of the age collected to adorn the literature of all times. Before its close many of these possessions had become parcelled out among petty dynasties, whose titular overlord--a Mutaz (866-869), a Muhtadi (869-870), a Mutamid (870-892)--was scarcely better than a puppet in the hands of his Turkish bodyguard. Such was the period and such the political environment in which the Armenian dynasty of the Middle Ages rose by successive steps to the position of Kings of Armenia--a rank which was recognised by their co-religionists, the Greek Cæsars, but which was conferred or confirmed by the Commander of the Faithful, within whose realm their dominions lay. [266]

The native institutions of the Armenian people were not unfavourable to such a development. At the present day they cannot be said to possess a class of nobles, and they are devoid of natural leaders. But in the ninth century their councils were governed by a strong territorial nobility, a relic of the period when they possessed their own independent kings of Arsakid descent. The Arsakid dynasty had struggled on into the fifth century, when it succumbed to the Sasanian monarchy of Persia and Mesopotamia, and a Persian governor was sent to rule over the land (A.D. 428). But the great nobles maintained and perhaps increased their ascendency; they were supported by the obstinate patriotism of the people; and the interval between the overthrow of the ancient and the rise of the mediæval kingdom is filled by the almost incessant clash of arms. From the east the pertinacity of the Armenian race is challenged at first by the Persians, eager to convert them to the religion of the Magi, and next by the Arabs, who, after supplanting the Sasanian dynasty, seek to impose upon them the precepts of Islam. Their neighbours upon the west are scarcely less obtrusive; and we may discover beneath the religious controversies with their fellow-Christians of the Roman Empire the same fervid self-assertion which has enabled this strange people to preserve, in the face of odds which appear to us to have been overwhelming, the inflexible individuality of their race. While their clergy are resisting the menaces or the blandishments of the Church of the Empire, their nobles are combating the worship of the Persians or of the Mohammedans at the head of the native levies. It thus happened that, when the bonds relaxed which bound the subject states to the Arab caliphate, the Armenians possessed, in their class of nobles as well as in their patriarchate, institutions which had been tested in the furnace of adversity during a period of over 400 years.

Two Armenian families of princely rank were conspicuous at that time. The Artsruni had extended their possessions during the domination of the Arabs, until they comprised a vast territory and some of the richest districts in the neighbourhood of the ancient city of Van. They claimed descent from one of the kings of Assyria, whose two sons were reputed to have escaped to Armenia after having perpetrated parricide. They drew their name from the lofty office which had been bestowed upon their ancestor, that of bearing before the Arsakid king the emblem of the golden eagle--an emblem which is cherished by the Armenian inhabitants of Van at the present day as the distinctive ensign of their city and province. The family of the Bagratuni or Bagratids had attained a position in the centre and north of Armenia which rivalled and perhaps surpassed that of the Artsruni in the south. Of Jewish origin, they were already powerful in the earliest Arsakid times, when they had been invested with the hereditary privilege of crowning the king. Their ancient seats appear to have been placed in the Chorokh country, in the vicinity of the town of Ispir. But this nucleus became lost in the territory which they subsequently acquired, whether by marriage or by conquest. The province of Shirak, by which is designated the extensive grain-growing district on the right bank of the Arpa Chai, was perhaps the richest appanage of their House; but they were masters of the Armenian districts on the side of Georgia, while towards the west and south their possessions at one time extended into the plain of Pasin and the fertile districts about the present town of Mush. A branch of this same family established themselves in Georgia--the salubrious uplands and rich plains at the southern foot of Caucasus, which are separated from the highlands of Armenia by the belt of mountains on the right bank of the river Kur. The Georgians, like the Armenians, professed the Christian religion, and at the period with which we are dealing were being harassed by the Arab caliphs. During the decline of the caliphate, when native impulses were revived in Georgia as well as in Armenia, the movement centred in a dynasty of Bagratid descent. This dynasty outlived that of their kinsmen in Armenia by many centuries. The Georgian sovereigns weathered the storm of Seljuk invasion in the eleventh century, which swept before it the feeble thrones of the Armenian monarchs. Perhaps they owed their escape in part to the geographical position of their country, removed as it was by a zone of intricate mountains from the highway of the Armenian plains. Yet their capital, Tiflis, fell a prey to the same sultan who captured Ani, the famous Alp Arslan. During the first half of the twelfth century they were successful in expelling the invaders, and a little later their kingdom was increased to the limits of an extensive empire during the reign of the great queen Thamar. The Georgian Bagratids maintained their throne until the end of the eighteenth century, when the last king renounced his crown in favour of the Russian Tsars. [267]

About the middle of the ninth century, to which I return from this brief digression, the reigning caliph, Mutawakil, despatched an army into Armenia with instructions to punish the inhabitants and to bring them over to the Mohammedan faith. His severity had been invited by the behaviour of his subjects, who had fallen upon and killed their Arab governor. The Arab commander, by name Bugha, acquitted himself of his congenial mission in a manner which accords with the best traditions of Eastern statecraft. He crossed the Taurus, descended into the plains about the Murad, and took prisoners all the Armenian chiefs of the districts through which his route lay. The Bagratid family had become involved in the preceding troubles; one of their members was already in the hands of the caliph; and his two sons were now added to the train of the avenging general, who directed his march from the territory of Taron (Mush) to that of Vaspurakan (Van). The Artsruni were not more fortunate in their resistance; their prince was captured, loaded with chains, and sent to the caliph. Bugha pursued a leisurely course through the Armenian country, giving over to the sword the less prominent among the people, selecting some for their birth or personal qualities as worthy of conversion to Islam. When he arrived at the capital of central Armenia, the city of Dvin, in the neighbourhood of the present town of Erivan, which had been conquered by the Arabs in A.D. 642, [268] he was met by a native prince who bore the title of commander-in-chief [269] and the name of Sembat. This notable was the great-grandson of a distinguished Bagratid chief, Ashot, who had been entrusted with the government of Armenia by the last of the Ommiad caliphs, and who had been deprived of sight by his countrymen, incensed at his Arab proclivities. According to the Armenians, this Ashot was the progenitor alike of the Georgian sovereigns and of the Armenian dynasty of the Middle Ages. His descendant endeavoured to propitiate the tyrant, who appeared to listen to his fair words. But Sembat was conveyed to Baghdad with the rest of the prisoners, and accompanied the triumphal return of the caliph's legate. Arrived at court, the Armenian princes were offered the choice of Islam and freedom or a painful and violent death. Sembat was one of those who refused to abjure his religion and who perished as a martyr to the Christian faith (A.D. 856 [C.]). [270]

The pompous title of the deceased chieftain, together with his influence, descended to his son Ashot. This prince had contrived to escape the meshes of the Moslem net; and in the period which immediately followed the departure of the Arab general he proved himself worthy to sustain the burden of his high position. In the flower of his age, he enjoyed the union of imposing physical qualities with habits of mind which gave peculiar weight to his counsels, and with a natural suavity of disposition and expression. An agreeable face--in which, however, the eyes, with their heavy black eyebrows, were shot with blood, like a speck of red upon a pearl--was set around with a magnificent beard, and sprang from broad shoulders in keeping with his fine stature. Whatever defects might belong to such an exterior were compensated by the habitual purity of his life. The prince was missed at the sumptuous banquets of the rich, but his presence was felt by the poor in every action of their daily life. He once said, "The service of humanity is a life-long service"; and his precept was illustrated by the example of his own long life. How far the qualities of the son of Sembat were instrumental in obtaining a reversal of the policy of the caliphate, or whether the complete change which ensued in the treatment of the Armenians may have been due to causes of a different order, our historian has omitted to relate. Five years after the martyrdom of his father and of the leading nobles of his country, Ashot is invested by the new Arab governor with the title of prince of princes, and becomes the recipient of almost royal distinctions (A.D. 861 [D.]). [271] Those of the nobles who had become apostates during the recent persecution openly return to their old faith. For twenty-five years he continues to exercise his authority, which reposes not only upon the goodwill of the Arab governor, but also upon the loyalty of his fellow-nobles, who consent that his family shall be assigned a special and quasi- royal rank, and be permanently elevated above all other princely families. At the end of this period the Armenian nobility unanimously petition the caliph in favour of the elevation of their prince to the rank of king. Their desire is conveyed to their suzerain by his representative in the country, a governor by name Isa. It is accorded with the greatest readiness. A royal crown is despatched, and placed by Isa himself upon the head of Ashot. Armenian royalty is revived in this branch of the Bagratid family after an interval of over 450 years (A.D. 885 [D.]). The reigning Cæsar, Basil I., confirms this investiture, and accompanies the friendly sentiments of an attached ally and a spiritual father with the gift of a crown, the second to be worn by the new monarch. [272]

For five years Ashot continued in the exercise of his kingly prerogative, supported by the Armenian nobles, the most powerful of whom he attached by marriage, and enjoying the favour both of the Caliph and of the Emperor. His capital was the city of Bagaran, on the banks of the Akhurean, the modern Arpa Chai, situated to the south of the later capital at Ani. [273] He died in advanced age (A.D. 889 [C.] or 890 [D.]) [274] and with unimpaired reputation at a date when the empire of the caliphs was in process of dismemberment, and when a number of petty Mussulman dynasties, such as the Tahirids and the Saffarids, had arisen in the adjacent lands. [275] We can scarcely doubt that his elevation was occasioned by the decline of the central authority; and he and his descendants were glad to purchase by the promise of an assured tribute the greater independence of the Armenian people and their own ascendency.

At the time of the death of Ashot I. his son and successor Sembat was absent on an expedition of conquest in the country of the Upper Kur. He received the homage of his subjects upon his arrival at Erazgavors, a town in Shirak, which was his own particular residence. Thither repaired the prince of Georgia, Aternerseh, himself a Bagratid, proffering his sympathy and his aid (A.D. 890 [C.]). The succession was hotly disputed by Abas, brother of the deceased monarch, a vain and ambitious prince. His animosity appears to have been directed in the principal degree against the prince of Georgia; he broke the peace which he was induced to make at the instance of the patriarch with that potentate, and at length he turned his arms against the province of Shirak. The approach of Sembat at the head of a numerous army compelled him to take refuge in a strong place, and his condition was desperate when he obtained from the clemency of his royal nephew a pardon which he had not deserved. Sembat was already in possession of supreme power when he received from the Arab governor of Azerbaijan [276] on behalf of the caliph a royal crown such as had been bestowed upon his father. At the same time he confirmed the friendly relations which had subsisted between Ashot and the Byzantine Empire. The reigning emperor, Leo VI., received his ambassadors with great distinction, and dismissed them charged with valuable presents. In the missives between them the king of Armenia was addressed as a beloved son, and the Cæsar with the reverence due to a father. Nor was this intercourse confined to a single and a splendid occasion; it appears to have been renewed every year. It naturally excited the jealousy of the Arab governor of Azerbaijan, the powerful neighbour of the new state upon the east.

This individual, by name Afshin, is depicted by the priestly historian with all the resources of the vocabulary of hate. He is a wild beast; he is armed with the poignard of perfidy, and his death is described as the outcome of a loathsome malady which destroyed the body before the soul descended to hell. Throughout the reign we see him harassing the dominions of the Armenian monarch; but his first expedition appears to have been met by a vigorous and successful resistance, which no doubt helped the remonstrances of Sembat. At the head of his troops the king reasoned with his Mohammedan adversary, and represented that his friendship with the emperor of the Greeks was to the advantage of the master of Afshin. "You yourselves," he said, "may at any moment have need of the support of the Greeks, and your merchants require openings in Greek territory, whence they will draw riches which will swell the treasury at Baghdad." These advances were met on the part of the Arab governor by the offer of a peace, which was duly ratified. Afshin returned to Azerbaijan, and the king retraced his steps up the Araxes and appeared before the walls of Dvin. This city, which was at this period the acknowledged capital of Armenia, was reduced to an obedience from which it had lapsed. Its situation in the neighbourhood of the present town of Erivan was calculated to invest it with the character of a strong place on the side of the Arab possessions in Persia. Its subjection to Sembat does not appear to have been of long duration; during the subsequent portion of his reign we find it in the hands of the Mohammedans, serving, it would seem, as an advanced base to the troops of Afshin and of his successor.

The diplomacy no less than the prowess of Sembat was successful in other directions nearer home. If his kingdom remained essentially feudal in character, its limits were at least extended over the adjacent lands. On the west his sovereignty was acknowledged as far as the city of Karin, the modern Erzerum; while on the north-east and east it embraced the foot of Caucasus and the shore of the Caspian Sea. The Armenian princes who ruled in the country on the southern side of the barrier of mountains which culminate in Ararat were attached to him by feudal or family ties; his name must at least have been respected among his countrymen beyond the limits of the lake of Van. His ascendency was for a second time challenged by Afshin, who advanced to Nakhichevan and Dvin; but he led his troops in person against the Mussulmans, and inflicted upon them a signal defeat. The subsequent defection to his enemy of his nephew, the prince of Vaspurakan (Van), who was joined for a time by the prince of Siunik, a province bordering that of Van upon the north, does not appear to have materially shaken his power; we find him directing his attention to the outer limits of his territory, and endeavouring to establish his dominion not only over the country of Taron (Mush), but also as far south as the Mesopotamian plains.

This advance brought him into collision with an Arab emir, named Ahmed, who, in the decay of the caliphate, cherished pretensions to these districts. The Armenian prince of Taron was unable to withstand his Mussulman adversary, and Sembat was obliged to take the field in person (A.D. 896 [C.]). At the head of a numerous army he marched towards Taron, west of which his enemy was encamped. The reverse of his arms was due to the treachery of a countryman, a prince belonging to the province of Vaspurakan; and, indeed, the jealousy of the chiefs of the Van country seems to have paved the way for the successes of his Mussulman neighbours. His old enemy Afshin was not slow to profit by this turn of fortune. After attempting in vain to seduce the loyalty of the northern feudatories of Sembat, he entered the province of Kars and laid siege to that fortress. Thither had taken refuge the Armenian queen, a daughter of the king of Kolchis, and several of the wives of the principal nobles. The capitulation of Kars and the capture of the queen came as a melancholy pendant to the disaster of the king's arms in the south. He was obliged to purchase peace on humiliating terms, and to give his niece in marriage to the Mohammedan potentate. But it was not long before hostilities were again resumed in the same quarter. Afshin directed his march towards the city of Tiflis, swept like a whirlwind through the Georgian country, and advanced upon Shirak. Sembat and his army were obliged to take refuge in the strong places of his ally Aternerseh, upon whom he had previously bestowed a royal crown; while his adversary, after having endeavoured in vain to sap the loyalty of the Georgian prince, retraced his steps along the Araxes to Azerbaijan. Afshin was meditating a fresh attack when he fell a victim to a malignant malady, which appears also to have made ravages among his troops (901 [St.-M.], 898-99 [D.]).

The tyrant was succeeded by his brother Yusuf in the government of Azerbaijan. Upon the accession of this potentate the Armenian monarch despatched an embassy to the caliph at Baghdad with the view of contracting a stable alliance with the nominal sovereign of Persia and of that portion of Armenia which lay within the Arab sphere. His advances were well received by the successor of the Prophet, who confirmed him in his royal dignity. [277] Although Yusuf continued to pursue the hostile policy of his predecessor, he appears to have been thwarted by the greater readiness of Sembat. Armenia enjoyed a short respite from the inroads of the Mussulmans. "At this period," says our historian, who is fond of allegory, "our Saviour visited the country of the Armenians, and protected their lives and property. Lands were bestowed, vines were planted and groves of olive-trees; the most ancient fruit-trees yielded their fruits. The harvests produced corn in excessive abundance; the cellars were filled with wine when the vintage had been gathered in. The mountains were in great joy, and so were the herdsmen and the shepherds, because of the quantity of pasturage and the increase in the flocks. The chiefs and notables of our country lived in perfect security and were not afraid of depredations; they were free to bestow their leisure and zeal upon the construction of churches in solid stone, with which they graced the towns, the open country, and the desert places." The king enjoyed the favour of his Byzantine ally, and the gifts of Heaven were supplemented by the imperial presents. The ambition of the king of Kolchis, who was striving to extend his dominions eastwards at the expense of his relative, the Armenian monarch, was restrained by a conjunction of the Armenian forces with those of the king of Georgia; the unhappy kinglet was taken prisoner and lodged in a fortress, from which he was released by the clemency of his captor and restored to his possessions. This mild treatment of a rival excited the jealousy of Aternerseh; the attached ally became converted into a perfidious enemy; and the incident, while it seems to mark the culmination of this brighter era, was the prelude of the domestic and foreign calamities in which the reign of Sembat was brought to a tragic close.

A curious incident now occurs, which is characteristic of the times (A.D. 905 [St.-M.]). Yusuf prepares in secret to sever his allegiance to the caliph, and goes so far as to issue orders in his own name. Apprised of his proceedings, the sovereign at Baghdad sends messengers throughout his dominions to effect a rising against his rebellious servant. One of the highest in rank of these envoys arrives at the court of the Armenian monarch, and delivers a personal letter requiring the prince to assemble his forces and to march against the emir of Azerbaijan. As an inducement, the vassal is remitted the payment of a year's tribute. This request or command was at once difficult to comply with and impossible to elude or reject. Sembat was bound to Yusuf by the terms of a treaty, and still more forcibly deterred from offending his neighbour by motives of interest. It was only natural that he should have recourse to perfidy, the usual expedient in such circumstances among Eastern princes. But his double-dealing was of transitory advantage: and it may, perhaps, be excused by the reflection that his own weight would have been insufficient to turn the scale to the advantage of either side. Yusuf affected submission to his spiritual and temporal superior; the Armenians were confronted by a coalition of the contending influences; and the unhappy king was besieged by emissaries from both the Mussulman princes, demanding the arrears of tribute in imperious terms. On four occasions he had succeeded in acquitting his obligations by making the prescribed payment in kind; but this time he was compelled to discharge the debt in money, and to impose taxes which strained the structure of his feudal rule.

A combination of some of the nobles with Aternerseh of Georgia was the outcome of these events. Ani, which was then a fortress, was handed over to Aternerseh, together with the treasures of the royal palace at Erazgavors. Sembat at the head of his forces hurried back to Shirak, whereupon the conspirators evacuated the province, laden with spoils. The Armenian monarch carried the war into the territory of Aternerseh, who was constrained to sue for peace. Many of the revolted nobles fell into the hands of their sovereign, who, after putting out their eyes, dispatched some to the Byzantine emperor for custody and others to the king of Kolchis. This rising had no sooner been quelled than the reigning prince of Vaspurakan separated himself from the king. The cause of quarrel was a dispute about the town of Nakhichevan in the valley of the Araxes, which Sembat had conferred on another noble, but to which this prince had a hereditary claim. Gagik--such was his name--had recourse to the common enemy, Yusuf, who was eager to profit by such dissension among his Christian neighbours. The emir bestowed upon him a royal crown in order to perpetuate his rivalry with Sembat. It was all in vain that our historian, who was at that time patriarch, endeavoured to avert the rising storm. He even journeyed to the court of the emir in Azerbaijan, taking with him magnificent presents, among which were included some of the sacred vessels belonging to the churches. He was treated with distinction by his Mussulman host so long as his gifts held out. When these were exhausted he was thrown into prison, where he lingered for a considerable time. The hardships of his condition were aggravated by the mortification which he must have experienced at the complete failure of his good offices. He was strictly refused an audience of his countryman, King Gagik, who shortly afterwards arrived at the court of Yusuf in order to concert an invasion of the territory of Sembat. At the approach of spring the emir set out for Armenia, taking with him the unhappy patriarch, loaded with chains. In the neighbourhood of Nakhichevan were received the messengers of Gagik, who announced the approach of their master with his troops (A.D. 909 [St. M.]). Sembat endeavoured to pacify his enemy by a payment of money, which the emir swallowed without arresting his advance. The king was quite unable to cope with the forces arrayed against him; he fled to the fortresses of Georgia, whither he was pursued by his implacable adversary.

It is unnecessary to follow in detail the developments of a situation, of which the historical interest consists in the light which it throws upon the Armenian monarchy of the Middle Ages, and upon the relations of that monarchy to the neighbouring states. We see the Artsrunian prince of the extensive province of Vaspurakan turning his arms against his own countrymen and their Bagratid king, and in active alliance with the enemies of his religion and race. The Mussulman horsemen overran the fertile plains of Armenia, and the tardy repentance of Gagik came too late. Sembat appealed in vain to the suzerain at Baghdad, who was too much occupied by domestic troubles to intervene. Better success attended his entreaties at the Byzantine court, and his old friend, Leo, collected troops and marched in person to his assistance. The death of the emperor at the inception of the enterprise, and the internal troubles of the new reign, removed all hope of succour from the side of the Roman provinces. The Christian state in the heart of Asia seemed doomed to destruction, and the king and queen were taken prisoners. Sembat was conducted to Dvin, where he was barbarously tortured in the presence of the populace. Every indignity was inflicted upon him, and each refinement of Oriental cruelty; after he had expired, his body was nailed to a wooden stake and exhibited to the townspeople (A.D. 914 [C.]).

A desperate effort was made by his son Ashot to retrieve the fortunes of the Armenian arms. He expelled the Mohammedans from many of the fortified places which they had occupied, and allied himself closely with the king of Georgia, who placed the crown of Armenia upon his head. Yusuf was not slow to revenge the reverses of his adherents, and the whole country was given over to war. The wretched inhabitants fled to the mountains and the deserts; the remnant wandered about in a state of nakedness, and experienced all the tortures of famine. When winter came thousands perished in the snow. If they fell into the hands of the enemy they were either massacred or subjected to every description of torture. In many cases they were offered liberty and even affluence if they would abjure the Christian religion; but these advances were almost always without effect. Our historian relates with pride the tragic incidents of this period of martyrdom; and the profession of faith which he puts in the mouth of one of the victims is worthy of the highest conceptions of religious minds. "We are Christians," exclaimed a young noble in the presence of Yusuf; "we believe in God, Who is Truth and Who dwells in the midst of Light without limits." These afflictions might have excited the compassion of their Christian neighbours. But perhaps these neighbours were conscious of their own helplessness; they preferred to ride on the wave of the Mussulman invasion, and to share in the spoils of the Armenian provinces. Whole towns were destroyed and whole countrysides depopulated; while the nobles, instead of combining, were involved in civil war. This state of affairs continued for no less than seven years, exhausting the country and denuding it of cultivation. "We sow, but we do not reap; we plant, but gather not the fruit; the fig-tree bears not, and the vine and olive-tree are barren. We collect a little and abandon the rest." Page after page our author unfolds the tale of all the miseries which were endured by himself and his countrymen. He himself was a refugee at the court of the king of Georgia, where he was in correspondence with the patriarch of Constantinople. It was the aim of Byzantine policy to unite the Christian nations of Transcaucasia with the Armenians; and the historian, as the spiritual head of the latter people, used his best endeavours towards this end. Issuing from his retreat, he made his way to the province of Taron (Mush), whence he addressed a long missive to the Byzantine Cæsar (A.D. 920 [C.]). In touching terms he entreated him to become the avenger of the Armenian Christians, whom he represented as the spiritual sons and servants of Constantine. At his instance the Byzantine court despatched an imperial legate to the son of Sembat, with the view of renewing the relations which had subsisted between his father and the deceased ruler of the Eastern Empire. Our writer met this envoy in the territory of Taron, and accompanied him to the presence of Ashot. The prince returned with the legate to Constantinople (A.D. 921 [C.]), where he was received in a manner becoming his royal rank. He was addressed as the son of a martyr and the spiritual son of the Cæsar, was arrayed in purple and invested with the insignia of royalty. Meanwhile the historian was sojourning in the province of Terjan, a district which has retained its name to the present day. He naïvely exhibits the difficulties of his position, endeavouring, as he was, to avoid complying with the pressing invitations to the imperial city which were lavished upon him by his spiritual brothers of the Greek Church. He was deterred by the fear that he would be pressed to conform to the doctrine which had been laid down at the Council of Chalcedon. His peregrinations brought him to the scenes where St. Gregory the Illuminator passed his later years in the seclusion of an anchorite. He describes the cavern where the saint lived, and where his remains were deposited, to be removed by an angel to a grave in the vicinity. His account of this lonely place, so difficult of access, agrees in a striking manner with that of a modern traveller, which it invests with an impressive reality. [278] The patriarch found the district inhabited by anchorites, who maintained an altar in the holy cave.

In the meantime Yusuf had become embroiled with his old ally of Vaspurakan, and the war was being carried into the southern province. A vigorous resistance was offered by King Gagik, who owed his title to his enemy. Hostilities appear to have lingered on without decisive result. Such was the state of affairs when King Ashot II. returned to his dominions, accompanied by several generals of the Roman Empire, together with a considerable detachment of the imperial troops. This material support, as well as a subsidy in money, enabled him to recover his position among his feudatories; and we may conclude that the relations between himself and King Gagik had become improved by the change in the attitude of the latter towards the Mussulman emir. But that crafty statesman knew too well the weak spots in the political organisation of the Armenians. If two kings did not suffice to divide his opponents, it could do no harm and might bring him fortune to create a third. His choice fell upon a cousin of King Ashot, who had previously been invested by that monarch with the title of general-in-chief. His name, which was also Ashot, introduces further confusion into the turbid narrative of the priestly historian. The stage becomes filled with a crowd of nobles, contending with each other and combining to mutual destruction round the persons of the two Ashots. Behind these figures emerge those of the king of Kolchis and the king of Georgia, while in the background we perceive the light cavalry of the Mohammedans and the gorgeous functionaries of the Byzantine Empire. It is scarcely possible during this troubled period to follow the threads of the emir's policy. No sooner has he placed a crown upon the forehead of the one Ashot, than he invests the other with similar insignia of royalty. [279] Nor does the king of the Van country yield in splendour to his colleagues; the caliph himself sends him a crown and magnificent robes. This act excites the fury of the emir of Azerbaijan, who presently revolts from his sovereign at Baghdad. His capture and imprisonment removed for awhile the sword suspended over the head of Gagik, and were the occasion of a general although transitory improvement in the condition of the Armenian provinces. The caliph sent one of the highest in rank of the officers about his person to take over the administration of the province of his rebellious emir. This official not only concluded a treaty of peace and alliance with Ashot II. (son of King Sembat), but also conferred upon him the title of Shahanshah, or king of kings. In this manner the Bagratid dynasty of Shirak recovered their titular sovereignty over Armenia; and the fact illustrates a marked divergence between the policy of the caliphate, which appears to have desired a strong Armenia, and that of the semi-independent emirs of Azerbaijan, who strove incessantly to prepare the country for their own yoke. On the other hand, while the caliphs were anxious to secure a counterpoise to their turbulent governors, the Byzantine Cæsars were well pleased by any accretion of strength to a buffer state which was attached to themselves by community of faith.

Our historian was not spared to witness the splendour of this dynasty, as it is manifested in the noble buildings of their capital, Ani, which had not yet become a royal residence. His closing years were spent under a recrudescence of the old troubles--disunion from within and new inroads of the Mussulmans from without. The release of Yusuf restored this malefactor to the scene of his iniquities; [280] he crossed the Kurdish mountains, and descended into the territory of Vaspurakan. King Gagik was in arrears with several instalments of the annual tribute, and was obliged to collect all the available riches of his country and deliver them up to his implacable foe. Yusuf continued his journey to Persia, and, upon his arrival, sent one of his officers to assert his authority over the Armenian provinces. There ensued an era of constant activity on the part of the Mussulmans. The patriarch became a fugitive, taking refuge in the little island of Lake Sevan, and proceeding thence to a small castle in his own possession. But the enemy surrounded the place and took him prisoner, together with the companions of his flight. Escaping from their clutches, he made his way to the court of Ashot, who was residing in the royal palace of Bagaran; and the curtain falls upon his narrative while he is on a visit to King Gagik, with whom he appears to have maintained relations which were perhaps prompted by motives of interest, since the patriarchal palace and domains were situated within his dominions. [281] Panic had taken hold of the feudal levies, and his countrymen were being massacred (924 [C.]). In one of the closing sentences in which he describes that Reign of Terror he, in fact, resumes the larger history of his race: "Who can foretell our future? Spare me the attempt. We are like a harvest reaped by bad husbandmen amidst encircling gloom and cloud." [282]

We close these graphic pages with the feeling that we have been privileged to gain some insight into the state of the country during the reigns of the Bagratid sovereigns, as well as to estimate the nature of their rule. If I have eliminated by this brief abstract whole chapters of our author, I may perhaps have saved my reader from becoming wearied by his declamations, and from losing the main thread of his thrilling narrative among the side issues in which he allows it to become involved. The sovereignty of the Bagratids was essentially feudal in character; and the loose ties of such a political organisation were ill adapted to withstand the strain to which they were subjected at the hands of their Mussulman neighbours. Indeed, the fact that such a dynasty could ever have arisen in the heart of Asia, among a people which could not have numbered more than a few millions of souls, can only be explained by the comparative weakness of their contemporaries professing the Mohammedan faith. The Armenian historians are fond of railing upon their countrymen on account of the internal divisions which precipitated their political fall. They are not less inclined to attribute the miseries of their nation to their desertion in critical moments by the Greek Empire. But they do not appear to have reflected that the frequent instances of treachery among the Armenian nobles need not have been due to any inherent defects in the character of the Armenian people. Similar examples abound in the annals of our European nations while they were still in the feudal stage of development. Again, the Greeks, while they were no doubt prejudiced by dogmatic differences, might, one cannot doubt, have established a good case for their abstention from more strenuous succour of the young state. Their subsidies were spent, and their troops were marched across Asia with little further result than the aggrandisement of one princelet at the expense of a competing claimant of the same race. The lesson which may be derived from a perusal of this contemporary record explains to us many points which would otherwise be obscure in the much more meagre annals of the subsequent period which witnessed the frail blossoming and premature destruction of the Armenian kingdom of the Middle Ages. When the hordes of Turks descended from the valleys of the Tien-shan and swept across the settled territories of Persia towards the richest portions of the Old World, they found upon the high road of the Armenian tableland a state which was as little adapted to provide a bulwark against their invasions as any other of the fissiparous fragments of the caliphs' empire.

The narrative of John the Patriarch brings us down to the closing years of Ashot, second king of that name. The picture which he has presented of the troubled reigns of these Bagratid sovereigns may enable us to dispense with the repetition of similar struggles during the reigns of their successors. Even were I permitted by the scope of this work and by the material at my disposal to assign to that later period the same proportion of space which has been devoted to the actions of the first three kings, I should run the risk of inflicting upon my reader the same fatigue which I have myself experienced by the perusal of a Samuel of Ani [283] and a Matthew of Edessa, [284] to say nothing of the industrious compilers of our own times. The storm-clouds, beneath which the work of the priestly annalist closes, appear to have lifted over the setting of Ashot's career; and a mild light envelops the reign of his brother Abas, who succeeded him on the throne. This tranquil era seems to have been induced by the weakness or somnolence of the neighbours of Abas. The activity of the Sajid family in Azerbaijan, which had been manifest in the exploits of Afshin and of Yusuf, came to an end at the commencement of his reign. The caliphate was becoming more and more the shadow of a reality; and the death of Radi (A.D. 940) removed the last of the successors of the Prophet who sustained a measure of personal power and prestige. In the West the Armenian monarch might observe without anxiety the enforced seclusion of the Cæsar, Constantine the Seventh, as well as the later application of his benignant mind to the affairs of state. Such a wholesome respite was employed by king and nobles in adorning Armenia with churches and monasteries. In the city of Kars, where Abas appears to have placed the seat of government, a cathedral of unusual grandeur rose into being. [285] The pugnacity of the race was exercised in fierce religious dissensions with the Church of the Empire. The western provinces, subject to the Cæsars and administered by them, were convulsed by the rival battle-cries of Greeks and Armenians, each imputing to the other heretical opinions upon the unfathomable subject of the divinity of Christ. Many Armenians took refuge within the dominions of the Bagratid king; and if their babes had been baptized according to the Greek ritual, the ceremony was performed a second time by the jealous clergy of the Armenian Church (944 [C.]).

But it was under the next two reigns that the brilliancy of the dynasty attained the culminating point. Upon the death of Abas his son Ashot assumed the government; and it was perhaps due to a combination of domestic dissensions and war with his neighbours that for ten years he remained an uncrowned king. On the part of the Mussulmans, an Arab emir, whom the historians name Hamdun, and who may perhaps be identified with the powerful adversary of the Cæsars in Mesopotamia, Seif-ed-Daula of the Hamdanid family, made incursions into the southerly provinces of Armenia, and even threatened the dominions of Ashot. The signal victory of the Armenian monarch (A.D. 960) [286] appears to have gratified the caliph and his masters the Buwayhids, a petty dynasty which had arisen in Persia, and into whose hands had fallen Baghdad (945). The same event may have been instrumental in consolidating the power of Ashot at home. In the year 961 he was anointed king at Ani, in the presence and with the consent of the great nobles. The rulers of the neighbouring states, Mussulman and Christian, signified their goodwill by sending valuable presents. His suzerain at Baghdad bestowed upon him a royal crown, addressing him as Shah-i-Armen or Armenian shah. But we must impute to this sovereign a new division of authority, and a consequent reduction of the resisting powers of the Armenian nation in face of foreign aggression. By investing his brother Mushegh with royal prerogatives at Kars, he added yet another to the number of kinglets whose mutual jealousies prepared the way for the passage of the Seljuk Turks towards the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. His successor continued and even developed this baneful policy, adding to the kings of Kars the kings of Lori, in the mountains which border Armenia upon the north. This latter Bagratid dynasty struggled on into the thirteenth century; but the kings of Kars made over their realm to the Cæsar Constantine the Tenth after the capture of Ani by the Seljuks under Alp Arslan.

The reign of Ashot the Third is contemporary with the campaigns of Nikephorus Phokas and of John Zimiskes against the Saracens. Throughout this period the Arab emirs of Syria and Mesopotamia are actively engaged in harassing the outposts of the great Christian empire, and are not less actively repulsed. The conceptions of the Crusaders are anticipated by these generals over a century before the arrival of the Western chivalry. Both successively ascended the throne of the Cæsars; and it was in the capacity of emperor of the Romans that Zimiskes, himself of Armenian descent, summoned the Armenian monarch to attach to his army a contingent of troops. His expedition appears to have excited the alarm of the Armenians; and the native levies had been marshalled to the proportions of a large army under the command of the three Armenian kinglets, Ashot, his colleague of Kars, and his colleague of Van. Zimiskes advanced into the territory of Mush; but an alliance was secured by the despatch of a body of 10,000 Armenian warriors to share in the victories which were about to secure the triumph of the imperial arms over the followers of the Prophet. These brilliant feats are narrated for the benefit of King Ashot in a despatch which was addressed to him by the emperor, and which has been preserved by Matthew of Edessa. The Armenian monarch is styled Shahinshah of Great Armenia, the spiritual son of the Cæsar (A.D. 974). [287]

The reign of this prince has a special interest for the traveller to Ani; for it is at this period that the city on the Arpa emerges from the condition of a mere fortress into the splendour of a royal residence and capital of a kingdom. Ashot the Third is known to have added both to the defences and to the public buildings of a town which had witnessed the ceremony of his coronation. [288] It was considerably enlarged by his son and successor, Sembat the Second, who built the outer wall in face of which I have brought my reader at the commencement of this chapter. [289] Sembat also laid the foundations of the cathedral, but died before it was completed. [290] The title which is assigned to this king by the Armenian historians dissembles with truly Oriental ingenuity the inherent weakness of the structure which supported his throne. He is styled the king of Armenian kings, Shahinshah-Armen. Sembat was succeeded by his brother Gagik the First, a prince who is described as at once victorious in the field and strenuous in the works of peace. His military qualities may have been displayed in a campaign against the Mussulmans under the emir of Azerbaijan, Mamlun. But the credit of the victory over this successor of the Afshins and the Yusufs belongs in the principal degree to an Armenian prince of the country of Akhaltsykh, David, who endeavoured, at the head of forces composed of Georgians and Armenians, to wrest from the Moslem yoke the fortresses in the south of Armenia, Melazkert, Akhlat, Arjish. [291] It is rather in the sphere of a patron of art that we may be able to remember Gagik. It was during his reign that the noble cathedral at Ani was brought to completion, largely at the expense and by the initiative of his queen. [292] He built another of the great churches which adorned his capital, that of the Illuminator on the side of the Valley of Flowers. [293] The monastery of Marmashen, near Alexandropol, was constructed at this period by one of the Armenian princes, Vahram. [294] Lastly, the seat of the patriarchate was removed to Ani from the neighbouring town of Arghina. [295]

Upon the death of King Gagik the eldest of his three sons ascended the ancestral throne. Rare natural intelligence belonged to John Sembat-- the monarch is known under either name; but these mental qualities were perhaps clouded by an excessive corpulency. On the other hand, his brother Ashot displayed the union of physical symmetry to ardent courage and passion for war. The man of action chafed under the supremacy of the peaceable civilian; and no sooner was the natural heir in possession of his heritage than his ambitious brother broke into open revolt. A peace was at length concluded upon the terms that John should reign in Shirak, with the capital Ani, and Ashot over the remainder of his father's dominions. [296] This compact was observed at least so far that Ashot the Fourth was never permitted by his jealous colleague to enter the capital. [297] But the civil war loosened the bonds which attached the feudatories to their king, and the neighbouring states to a dynasty in its strength. The one partner was obliged to have recourse to the Cæsar Basil; and it was not without the assistance of a contingent of imperial troops that Ashot IV. imposed his rule upon his allotted territories. The other was defeated at the commencement of his reign by the Bagratid king of Abkhasia and Georgia, whose troops entered and pillaged Ani. [298] These events appear to have been followed by a period of comparative tranquillity, during which either monarch was enabled to recover breath. But the Mussulman emirs were encroaching; the Seljuk Turks were harrying the frontiers; and the Armenian nation, the natural bulwark against their invasions, was distracted by the separate counsels of the king with Ani and the king without Ani, of the king of Lori and the king of Kars. The king of Van, upon whom the brunt of the Mussulman and Turkish incursions had fallen, was preparing or had already accomplished the cession of his kingdom to the Cæsar, in despair of withstanding these unceasing assaults.