Download PDF | Armen Ayvazyan - The Armenian Military in the Byzantine Empire. Conflict and Alliance Under Justinian and Maurice-Sigest (2014).
127 Pages
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank many friends abroad who promptly assisted me in obtaining the specific literature for writing this work. Some generously purchased the books that I had asked for, while others utilized their library facilities and supplied me at my residence during my short stays in the United States. In this regard, Mr. Tony Kahve’s, Mr. Bagrat Nazarian’s and Mr. Stepan Sargsyan’s contributions were vital for meeting my bibliographic needs. Thus, J was able to consult numerous books which otherwise were unavailable either in the Yerevan libraries, or in my personal collection or in the relevant Internet resources. Special thanks to Dr. Ilkka Syvanne who kindly read my manuscript and offered his very valuable feedback. My friendly gratitude to Dr. Aram Hajian and Mr. Bagrat Nazarian who with great care checked my English in the final stage of this book’s preparation. I am also indebted to Mr. Gegham Badalyan who made useful comments on matters of Armenia’ historical geography related to this study. Finally, I must thank my wife, Dr. Lusine Sahakyan, for her advice and encouragement throughout.
Armen Ayvazyan
Foreword
When I was asked to write a foreword for this book, | was very pleased to comply because there is a definite need for the kind of study Dr. Armen Ayvazyan has written. In the course of my research of late Roman military history, I have become ever more aware of how little research has been done on the neighbors, allies, friends, and enemies of Rome. In fact, I have been forced to devote more time to researching those than to researching Roman military. For example, I have so far been unable to find any really good military map of Rome’s eastern frontier. The main passes and roads, especially the Roman roads, are well known and shown at least on some of the better maps, but not the less important pathways that could still have been (and were) used even by cavalry armies. Similarly, it is a rare treat, if the map includes all the forts and fortresses that had military significance. Therefore, the Map attached to the present study is a welcome new addition to the military cartography of the Roman/Byzantine North-Eastern frontier.
Dr. Armen Ayvazyan's book consists of two separate essays that deal with different and largely overlooked aspects of Roman and Armenian military history, but which are still thematically interconnected. The topics of the essays are the Armenian revolt of 538-539 and the reasons for the omission of the Armenians from Emperor Maurice’s Strategikon, one of the most famous Byzantine manuals of war. Ayva-
zyan uses these essays as his vehicles to highlight other equally or even more important matters relating to the military cultures of both Rome and Armenia from the fourth to the sixth centuries. With these two pieces of solid research, Ayvazyan has positively managed to bring to the limelight matters of highest importance.
On the surface, it seems surprising that until now the militarily very significant Armenian rebellion of 538-539 against Justinian’s government had not been studied in any satisfactory manner. One of the possible reasons for this is that there have been too few historians with the right qualifications. To put it simply, there have been too few historians who also understand military matters. Fortunately, in the past 30 years the situation has been slowly improving and Dr. Ayvazyan is a prime example of this long-awaited transformation. He clearly possesses an in-depth knowledge of both the Armenian and Western primary sources and secondary literature together with an expertise of both ancient and modern military theories and affairs.
In the first essay Dr. Ayvazyan has managed to perform an almost impossible task. He has demonstrated that, despite the perceived paucity of the relevant historical evidence, it is still possible to arrive ata completely new, well-substantiated and plausible reconstruction of the Armenian rebellion in 538-539. He has done that by applying an interdisciplinary approach, which includes the simultaneous utilization of historical geography, geopolitics, linguistics, historical-comparative methodology in combination with the analyses of military strategy and tactics. Ayvazyan’s ability to make sense of the dynamics of a battle even when the sources are sparse is best testified by his multi-pronged analysis of the battle of Oinochalakon (Avnik). He accurately locates the battlefield, deciphers the offensive and defensive movements of the campaign, determines the chain of command and composition of _ Armenian rebel forces, and discovers the preferred Armenian tactics against numerically superior enemies from the fifth to the sixth centuries. Only after having built these mutually supportive facts does
Ayvazyan proceed to present his strikingly convincing reconstruction of the battle itself .
The second essay expounds a persuasive set of reasons about why the Armenians were omitted from the list of enemies in the Serategikon. While doing this, ic also unearths some deep-rooted cultural prejudices within the Roman Empire. On the basis of these findings, it is also easy to see why the Arabs were similarly left out of the same list. The original questions put forward here allow the author to reveal explicitly the continuity of — and interplay between — Roman and Byzantine traditional policies against Armenia’s independent or autonomous status on the one hand and ethnic bias against the Armenians in Roman and Byzantine society on the other hand.
Ayvazyan illustrates how important a role the Armenians played in the Roman military and how varied, and sometimes hostile, the Roman elites’ reactions were towards them. After reading Ayvazyan’s analysis, it becomes abundantly clear that the root source of the military effectiveness of the Armenian princes and their retinues was their fiercely independent nature. This in turn could cause the Roman government to adopt hostile and counterproductive measures to quell their traditionally self-reliant spirit, as exemplified in Maurice’s ill-conceived project of transferring the Armenian military from Armenia to the Balkans.
In short, Dr. Armen Ayvazyan’s small, yet dense study of Byzantine, Armenian and Iranian military relations is a pioneering piece of scholarship, indeed capable of triggering a renewed interest by Western military historians into the too-often ignored Armenian material. Not coincidentally, this is one of the author's stated objectives in his Preface, which represents, in effect, a well-developed investigative draft plan for future students of Armenian military history.
Ilkka Syvanne, Ph.D.
Vice Chairman of the Finnish Society for Byzantine Studies, author of The Age of Hippotoxotai. Art of War
in Roman Revival and Disaster 491-63
Preface
Ancient and medieval primary sources have amply recorded the robust and durable presence of the Armenian armed Forces as well as their recurrently effective combat performance both within their homeland and abroad. Nevertheless, the military history of Armenia still remains a largely uncharted terrain: the system of manning its troops, their numbers, force structure, training, equipment, ideology and art of war have not been well analyzed. Likewise, Armenia’s system of fortifications and the use of its roads for military purposes have yet to be explored in depth.
The Armenian military had been both the progenitor and the product of the Kingdom of Armenia and its antecedent states, which originated on the Armenian Highlands in times immemorial and had a historically recorded existence at least from the second millennium BC. It is true that due to its extremely difficult geostrategic location, particularly its immediate adjacency with the greatest empires of ancient and medieval world, as well as the early emergence of feudalism, Armenia was periodically subjected to decentralizing tendencies. However, the well-organized centralization of Armenian kingdoms was much more regular than has been generally recognized.
From the ancient period till the mid-eleventh century AD Armenia had one of the most experienced, capable, and institutionalized armed forces in the Near East. Not surprisingly, among various national institutions operative in ancient and medieval Armenian kingdoms the most ethno-nationally integrative function was performed by the military. The importance of the military among other state Structures was reflected, for example, in that Armenian sparapets (commanders. in-chief) were unmatched in their next-after-the-king position in the feudal hierarchies of Great Armenia.
This was the procedure under at least the dynasties of Arshakunis (66-428 AD) and Bagratunis (885. 1045 AD), possibly of earlier Artashesians (189 BC-11 AD) too, as well as in the later Cilician Armenian Kingdom (1198-1375 AD). Conspicuously, even after the Persians abolished the Armenian kingdom of Arshakunis in 428 AD, they did not encroach upon sparapetutiun, the war ministry of Great Armenia, with a unified command structure headed by the princely house of Mamikoneans, the hereditary sparapets. As will be discussed later in this study, from 390 AD up until the reforms of Emperor Justinian in the 530s, the Romans, too, tolerated the functioning of the sparapets in the regions of Armenia under their control.
The office of sparapet continued operating during the Arab domination as well, from the seventh to the ninth centuries, The Armenian armed forces maintained their combat readiness throughout the lengthy intervals of temporary absence of an independent state. During Persian, Romano-Byzantine and Arab dominations, the high combat effectiveness of the Armenian forces was displayed in Ss successful operations executed either independently or in conjunction with both Romano-Byzantine and Partho-Persian armies. The distinctiveness of the ancient and medieval Armenian armed forces and their ways of war from those of their rivals was shaped bya
number of historical, geographical and societal factors, of which I will enumerate only the rnajor ones:
(1) the defense of the terrain of Armenia, essentially mountainous but with various open Passageways leading to the heart of the a pies necessitated the creation and skillful employment of a combined force of heavy and light cavalry alongside the specialized infantry units, including garrison and mountain troops;
(2) the natural features of Armenia, especially its excellent horse pastures, made it one of the earliest places of horse breeding: Armenia was producing abundant numbers of war horses! and thus enabling the maintenance of a highly mobile cavalry-centric army;
(3) Armenias economy and population base were large enough to sustain armies of professional commanders and practiced soldiers;
(4) Armenia’ climate of hot summers and bitterly cold winters required all-weather preparedness, special equipment and clothing for the troops, adding to their confidence, physical toughness and endurance;
(5) almost incessant wars waged against the armies of such superpowers as Parthia/Persia and Rome/Byzantium (more often than not in alliance with one of them against the other) as well as against the Caucasian mountaineers and the invading nomads from Central Asia acquainted the Armenian military with the most potent war machines of the time and, by necessity, helped to develop sttategies for opposing each of them and adopting their foes’ warfare practices, thus enriching the resourcefulness of Armenian battlefield tactics;
(6) the interplay between an early and strong sense of Armenian ethnocentric identity, the distinctive national culture and Church as well as the continual armed opposition against foreign imperial powers were all in fact emotionally powerful vehicles for developing nationally unifying — though not always and automatically applied — social-psychological attachments and ideological commitments
to the traditions of independent or autonomous existence;
(7) finally and most importantly, the ancient and medieval Armenian states and kings were naturally cultivating and institu- tionalizing their armed forces, all in ali effectuating a considerable standardizarion of Armenias military culrure.
The title of chis book should in no way be taken as an application for a comprehensive coverage of the numerous and diverse relation-ships between the Armenian military and the Byzantine Empire in the age of Emperors Justinian and Maurice. The present study strives to bring co light only one of the least known, yet most turbulent periods in the history of the Armenian military.
In its first part. 1 embark on a military-historical analysis of the Armenian uprising against Emperor Justinians government in 538539. While revealing and evaluating various tactical elements and stratagems employed by the Armenian forces, it was imperative to selectively consider earlier and later evidence regarding their military operations, including both conventional warfare and high risk missions such as targeting killings of enemy commanders-in-chief and assassination plots against the heads of colonial administrations. Thus it became possible ro identify some important aspects of military strategy and tactics utilized by the Armenian commanders from the fourth to the sixth centuries.
And in the second part. I examine the Byzantine attitudes towards the Armenians and their armed forces, revealing, inter alia, that the underlying source for continuity of the anti-Armenian images with the analogous Roman tradition of prejudice was essentially geopolitical.
Ir is my hope that this book will act as a catalyst for a long overdue rigorous scholarly research into the military history of Armenia. After all, the booming studies of the Romano-Byzantine and Partho-Persian militaries could hardly claim to be inclusive without a closer analysis of the enduringly dynamic armed forces of Armenia, may the latter be an intermittently fully independent or autonomous actor in the historical Near East.
A Note on Armenian Personal Names and Toponyms
The Armenian personal names and toponyms appearing in this study are used interchangeably in either their original Armenian, or Greek, Latinized and Anglicized versions, depending on the quoted source as well as whether the particular usage has been historically established in the scholarly literature. Below is the list of Armenian names and toponyms in both variants, while the transliterations are provided in square brackets.
Personal names
Uw [Akak] = Acacius
Upguw [Arshak] = Arsaces
Upgwnth [Arshakuni] = Arsacid/Arsacids Upuwytuywhtkp [Artashesians] = Artaxiads Upuwiyhp [Artashir] = Artasires
Upuuiuit [Artavan] = Artabanes
Uuujiunncbh [Aspetuni] = Aspetean/Aspetian/Aspetiani/ Apetiani
Unpyztway [Uupdztuuyy] = Atrvshnasp Fugpwunibh [Bagratuni] = Bagratids
“Lwiquip wpuytgh [Ghazar Parpetzi) = Lazar of Parpi phqnp [Grigor] = Gregorius/Gregory
2pwhwin (Guvumpwlwitr) [Hrahat (Kamsarakan)] = Aratius
Zuuwquiuyy [Hamazasp] = Amazaspes
Znyhubutu [Hovhannes] = John
Uwihypttut [Mamikonean/Mamikonian] = Mamikonids Utputh (Guuumpwlwt) [Nerseh (Kamsarakan)] = Narses wu [Vasak] = Bassaces
brhat [Yeghishe] = Elishe, Eliseus
Toponyms
whwiwytt = Vahanashen
Upuwyku [Artales] = Artaleson
Unupy [Avnik] = Oenochalakon/Oinochalakon Puyptpy, Pwpipy [Baly]berd] = Ba[y]berd Ennpkpy [Rnnpkpy] = Bolberd
wpnyup [Daroink] = Daroink
Pwubtwi [Basean] = Basean
bykrkwg [Ekeghyats] = Ekelesene/Akilisene Wupht [Karin] = Carenitis = Theodosiopolis Uppumhé [Kitarich] = Kitharizon/Citharizon Uwpwppnuntynypu [Martyrusopolis] = Martyropolis Ujkhh [Mlehi] = Mlehi
Uujtp [Sper] = Syspiritis/Suspiritis
Opnt: [Oron] = Horonon
Uwinwiy [Satagh] = Satala
Owbquy [Tzanzak] = Tzanzakon
jupy [Vkhik] = Vkhik
Opwmk [Vokaghe] = Okale
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