Download PDF | Seta B. Dadoyan - The Armenians in the Medieval Islamic World_ The Arab Period in Armnyahseventh to Eleventh Centuries-Routledge (2011).
237 Pages
Prologue
My initiative to study the Armenian experience in the medieval Islamic world through paradigmatic cases of interaction takes its beginnings in the Armenian condition in the Near Eastern region. It is best explained by Nietzsche’s dictum sum ergo cogito , I exist therefore I think. Existential in many respects this questioning is also its motive and inner dimension. In this perspective writing about the history of Armenians in the medieval Islamic world means trying to make sense of the circumstances. It means an eff ort to create/defi ne, rather, to recreate/re-defi ne the historicity of the experiences. Being Armenian, almost universally, is having a mobile line of ethnic ancestry laden with narratives from the vast historic Armenian oikoumenē or habitat from Iran to Constantinople and from the Caucasus to Egypt.
This study refl ects, then, a questioning that a minimal level of concern about my Armenological Dasein, or my being an Armenologist requires. Th e condition of my generation of the 1960s in particular, meant growing up in trilingual and pluricultural communities in ancient cities of mosques, churches, suk s, local and missionary schools, and eastern/western ideologies and folklores. Above all, it meant carrying a heavy luggage of vaguely perceived legacies, while learning/living in local and cosmopolitan networks of relations. However, these and many other factors are not causes for crises, as long as one takes the environment as the ground of identity, no matter how compounded and peculiar it is.
In other words, the Armenian condition in Near Eastern countries is not problematic in itself; it becomes so when isolated in a small enclosure such as the glass pyramid of the Louvre. Space/time takes the shape of the pyramid as opposed to and separated from outer space and real time. As far as the pyramid is concerned, the narrative of the classic histories is also a value theory or the “ethics” of being an Armenian. However, in real space/time this ethics lacks grounds in lived sensibilities, and epistemological criteria for its credibility. Th is is when the Armenian condition becomes problematic, the scholarship in the pyramid a parody, and one’s existence an unresolved matter. I existed and still do in these circumstances, therefore I must think, at least to clear the Armenian psyche of sedimentations and fi xities.
As of the inception of this work over a decade ago, and throughout, the objective was to create a broad, inclusive, and defi nitely critical re-construction of the Armenian condition in the medieval Near East from the advent of Islam to the end of the Mongol period. For its proximity to the lived and recorded experiences, this new analysis of the Armenian condition had to be solid enough to stand out as an aesthetically more realistic, historically more accurate, philosophically more consistent, and intellectually more intriguing account. For a task of these requirements the key was to identify the problematic aspects of the traditional narratives and constructs in circulation for centuries. I did not have to go too far or search too long to fi nd episodes and texts that were paradigm cases for a diff erent historicity, even for a counter-history. Contrary to mainstream accounts, Armenian history is far from being monolithic.
Several and often contradictory trends went into its making, yet the images in the narratives failed to refl ect its rich texture and dynamics. Armenian–Islamic history—as a case study—was just one way of dealing with the problem. Also, the objective of my interest in the so-called sects is to draw the historicity of Armenian dissidence and what may be termed revolutionary elements on all strata and phases. Th e initiative to see these elements as part of the whole is novel and for some, even controversial. Surely, the book is not about interactions through dissident channels but dissidence was a channel of interaction. Also it does not focus on the dissident aspect of Armenian history, because that would betray its holistic logic. Th e same can be said about the so-far marginalized question of Muslim Armenians. Th eir case is not a highlight but just part of the general argument to look at Armenian history from as many perspectives as possible. Several other subjects in the book, in turn discovered or brought up for the fi rst time, demonstrate the multidimensional and interactive nature of the Armenian experience in the medieval Islamic and wider world. Th ings could have been—as they in fact were—very diff erent than imagined, desired and told in traditional narratives. Th is is as much a historical as a deeply existential and epistemological issue, which is central to a project as ambitious as this book.
I began pondering over the extraordinary channels of interaction and their signifi cance in Armenian history many years ago. I was a graduate student majoring in philosophy when I discovered that an obscure thirteenth-century Armenian manuscript was in fact a summary of the esoteric Epistles of the Brethren of Purity of the tenth century. Th e broader project matured during a long period because I was venturing into unchartered territory. Th ere were no studies and the task was hard, multifaceted, dangerous but challenging and overdue. Th e tools were an interdisciplinary training, a critical approach, and a taste for dialectics. After two decades of research, publication of two books and several papers on the theme of Armenians and Islam, the opus came together as an “argument” based on and structured by hitherto unnoticed or marginalized paradigm cases. Each one of these cases raised new questions and revealed new patterns of interaction and evolution in the medieval Near East.
The new knowledge that I excavated will hopefully lead to fresh ways and areas of inquiry in Near Eastern as well as Armenian studies. In its intent and rather unconventional content, this book is also a prolegomenon to writing Armenian history in the context of the Near East and to review things Near Eastern in their interactive aspects. It is supposed to suggest new outlooks and re-assessments in Islamic histories as well. At this point, few notes about the sources and the structure or the aesthetics of the book are in order. Th e selection and use of sources were based on the necessities of the initial objectives, as stated earlier. Th e essential was the arrangement of a very large amount of data for a composition which, by its making, presented a new account of things Armenian as things Near Eastern. In the case of Armenian sources, in addition to contemporary sources, the focus was on primary sources. In the case of Arab sources, naturally all basic primary sources and texts were utilized. In fact most of the arguments and narratives are based precisely on their testimony. In all detailed narratives, and there are many, the objective was to draw a general context for the reader to understand and have a feel of the period and the argument/s . Th e sources were selected in this light. Th erefore, to keep the framework straightforward—especially for the reader who is not familiar with Armenian and/or Islamic history— I avoided debates on specifi c issues.
Th is is not a detective’s initiative or report, and I am well aware of what some call “scholarship out there.” I also deliberately avoided unnecessary bibliographic “embellishment,” if the material did not contribute to or was not actually used in the work. Already a very long and complicated text of many strands of arguments, this book could not carry parallel tracks of information. On the other hand, I have intentionally made use of certain details and ideas of relatively old sources such as Gibbon. Th is was to highlight a point, sometimes humorously, or open diff erent channels of thought/imagination for the reader. After all, similar to all writing and reading, historical writing too is an aesthetic activity even when it focuses on critical thinking and analysis. Since making causal connections was essential to the process of deriving and drawing the historicity of otherwise isolated and/or undetected paradigm cases or trends over seven centuries, the sequence of the episodes was an essential part of building the arguments. A chronological approach was the most appropriate means to construct the blocks and arrange the paradigms in the clearest possible composition. A thematic classifi cation would have been not only confusing but would seriously impair the conceptual structure of the work. A comment must be made about the multiplicity of themes and the content. Th e great range of interrelated themes may have justifi ed a single and very large volume. It would have been architecturally more coherent, but the sequence and content of six parts made the division to three volumes so much more accessible and practical. Th e reader, however, should read the volumes as parts of a whole. Th e essential for me was the shaping and illustrating, or grounding of, arguments through paradigmatic cases. From the Prologue of Volume One to the end of Volume Th ree, a central argument and corollaries bridge the various episodes and issues. Th e style in organizing the text and the problem of details must be commented on too. In view of my dialectical–holistic approach, also the objectives and the nature of the study, I did not and could not implement the common technique of maintaining a fl owing narrative and keeping the details in the footnotes. Personally, I do not particularly enjoy reading texts of this style and in turn avoid imposing double levels of attention on the reader. Th e details are not just for information and evidence, as most traditionally trained historians take them to be. Details are part of the story and the argument(s) and if they have no relevance to the central themes, they must be excluded. As in Flemish and much later photo-realist arts, the fi ne details are trompe l’oeil elements to draw the viewer/reader into the “reality”
of the work. In other words, these details are necessary, not just as evidence but to assist the viewer/reader to try to think from within the narrative. Indeed I write as Chuck Close paints his very large portraits. Th e fi ne hair and minutest details on a face are not information; Matisse could tell a big tale with two or three strokes of the brush or with charcoal. Details are elements in a symphonic interaction with the image that is a construction or a composition anyway. Th is is my style of writing history and naturally it is shaped by the idea of the opus. Every piece of literature—including and especially a historical writing—is an artifact of sorts. It is a composition of many elements arranged in deliberate forms, order, sequence, proportion, dimension, detail, highlight, intensity, lines, colors, etc. As in the arts too, seemingly odd elements contribute to the making of the whole. Even though in a good piece of literature and art too, form, content, and subject are ideally one, form is always the key to the latter. I have composed and arranged the larger subjects and their subthemes in such a way as to create an open yet dynamic historic continuity that is closer to the Armenian condition and as such more intriguing. By its intent, form and content the book will hopefully stimulate a process of revaluating everything, including itself, and re-conceptualizing Armenian and Near Eastern histories.
Introduction
I. Armenian Historiography and the Book as an Argument Broader in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, this is not a book of history in the traditional sense, but it strongly suggests a different historical reading and thinking exercise. In form and content, this study in three volumes is written as an argument for and a prolegomenon to writing Armenian history in the Near Eastern context. My main argument is: If, since the seventh-century historic Armenia, from Asia Minor to the South Caucasus, as well as the modern Republic have been part of the Islamic world, and if until a few decades ago the entire region, from the Black and Caspian seas to the Mediterranean, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt, was the habitat of most of the Armenians, their history too was naturally part of these locations and peoples. Armenians lived there as integral elements and their world was governed by more or less the same laws that governed the region. In elementary Newtonian terms, the law that makes the apple fall is the same that keeps the moon in orbit. In other words, since history has no secret pockets and private laws, things Armenian are also things Near Eastern and must be studied as such. Th is has not been the case and this is where this study takes its urgency and legitimacy. In line with the initial argument, the re-conceptualization of the medieval Armenian experience within the context of cultural and political Islam is an immediate task. Th e ultimate aim is to draw the outlines of a new philosophy of Armenian history based on hitherto undetected or obscured patterns of interaction. Keeping the general chronology of events from the fourth to the end of the fourteenth century as background, the various themes in three volumes are paradigm cases of interaction on political, cultural, religious, philosophical, literary, even artistic levels. Surely, this is not a Socratic quest for the truth, but the exercise will at least clear sedimentations in historical writing.
Th e focus on the ongoing Armenian experience as part of the Near Eastern world will overcome an inherent Armenocentrism, which has inevitably created a dualism in Armenian historical writing. Th is is looking at all things Armenian as central and everything else peripheral. Th ere is need for a Copernican step, which will shift this center from the Armenian into the Near Eastern universe and initiate a comprehensive project of re-evaluating the narratives. As various camps in Armenian studies discern and occasionally debate diff erences in perspective, interest, methodology, and objectives, Armenian historians are gradually becoming more self-conscious and less Armenocentric. But there are still accumulated narratives and accounts that will have to be reviewed. Th e task demands a fusion of the disciplines of historiography, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, critical theories, psychology, linguistics, literature, arts, and many more. Surely, how various Armenologists think depends on their backgrounds and roles; but despite the recent proliferation of Armenian studies centers, institutional bias and politicization still seriously threaten to derail a process of critical refl ection. Th e critical and interdisciplinary approach adopted in this book looks at the Armenological market place, so to speak, at a phenomenological distance. Th e so-called objectivity claimed by some historians is problematic. It is a myth. Th ere is always a transcendental and a priori grid of historical thinking, which precedes all types of writing. Th is grid may be an ideology, an agenda, or some other consideration. As is the case now, Armenian studies are and have always been embedded in cultural–political traditions. During the recent decades, several academics deliberately borrowed the beliefs and agendas of dominant institutions and political parties. Many drifted along believing that they were doing what they were expected to do as “authentic” Armenologists, such as concentrating on the later modern period and the Genocide. Heideggerian authenticity does not very much apply here, but beyond these practices, to be an authentic scholar probably means to face up to one’s responsibility for what one’s career in Armenian studies adds up to. Today, in the aftermath of postmodern critique of historical writing, we can see that strictly conservative approaches seriously disrupted the discipline of Armenian history. Th e scholarship and the discipline of Armenian studies in general face serious problems, such as cultural traffi c lights and institutional validations. Furthermore, in my opinion, among Armenians there has always been a deeply rooted and strong culture of authority. Th is is a tendency to fi x authority in all matters, even those of opinion. Once a subject or a fi gure and episode from any fi eld manage or are chosen to gain the status of authority, they become references and the general public turns into an impenetrable wall around them. Th e victims of this tradition have always been the intellectual culture and the public itself. For many Armenians, the seeming security authority provides has had priority, and it has become almost impossible to break through and open all things Armenian to all other things. Furthermore, the institutional infrastructure of the Armenian environment still does not allow the development of a culture of experimentation and critical thinking. At present everyone admits that primarily Armenian sources and interpretations may not and did not provide thorough accounts. Similar to Syriac and Byzantine sources, Arab sources are absolutely essential. Language cannot be the reason for shortcomings as well as success in using these sources. Th e causes are in the politics of Armenian intellectual culture to safeguard the classical framework and some foundational concepts. Surely there are several exceptions, as the reader will fi nd throughout this work. Th e point is that the Armenian experience in the medieval Near East is too diverse and complicated to respond to simplistic and quasiepic constructs. Indeed, it is very diffi cult to trace a constant line of Armenian policy, ideology, or strategy, except mobility and fl exibility in the diff erent communities and places that sustained the continuity of the whole for centuries. Consequently, Armenian histories should refl ect this condition and avoid essentialism. One of the oldest surviving pre-modern nations of their region, Armenians lived on its entire surface and beyond, closely interacting with peoples and their cultures. More importantly, the Armenian habitat extended from the historic land into the whole region and beyond, into Europe and recently the Americas. Th e patterns of cultural–political experiences were highly interactive, decentralized, and multidimensional. Th e communities everywhere evolved by the requirements of their habitats. Many episodes in medieval and modern Armenian history—mostly unstudied or thrown into oblivion—indicate to unexpected manners of interaction with and at times manipulation of the environment by Armenian individuals and factions. In fact, there exists a vast area of Armenian–Islamic realpolitik with Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds as well as heterodox Islam (such as Ismā‘īlism). During the Soviet era the institutes and/or departments of oriental studies ( arewelagit‘iwn ) in the Republic lumped together some modern Middle Eastern research under the headings of the “brotherly relations between the peoples of the region” or “liberation struggles of the peasant and proletarian classes” in Arab countries. A more banal and folkloric category is “the contribution of Armenians to the social-cultural development” of a given country/period. Otherwise Armenian–Islamic interactions of fourteen centuries, the subject of this book, remain untouched. In scale and breadth, and perhaps for the fi rst time this study initiates Islamic–Armenian studies as a new area in Near Eastern studies. Every phase of Armenian political and cultural development therefore can only be understood in context and by contemporary tools. In turn, medieval Armenian history after the mid-seventh century can only be understood in the context of the Islamic world. Th is has not been the case. Any change in this situation will require a radical transformation in the way intellectuals think of themselves and their subject matter. Scholars in social sciences and humanities will have to develop a practice of thinking the unthinkable, of looking beyond the deep-seated presuppositions of what conventionally and almost naturally “passed for the truth,” as Nietzsche would put it. Traditional dichotomies between disciplines are now abandoned by many in favor of the “deployment of a battery of techniques and insights from linguistics, literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy, history, and art criticism,” etc.1 I strongly believe that the historian is primarily an interpreter and that history is not an exclusive discipline, as traditional historians still hold. It is through a process of conceptualization that all sorts of elements are transformed into so-called historical texts. Th is is a very intriguing and dangerous process. Historical narratives may create seemingly detailed accounts2 that can be marketed as “facts,” and diff erent narratives by diff erent writers may give contradictory images as “facts.” In Armenian medieval histories, for example, it is very common to fi nd elaborate yet contradictory reconstructions of the same episode. Th is is the nature of historical writing, it has always suff ered of epistemological fl aws and the historian must be aware of his/her predicament. In another respect, the inspirational value of history can/should never be underestimated. It has priority for many. We also know that “inspirational” histories are also designed to achieve certain political objectives. As Lyotard says, narrative is “a kind of self-legitimization whereby constructing it according to a certain set of socially accepted rules and practices establishes the speaker’s or writer’s authority within their society and acts as a mutual reinforcement of that society’s self-identity.”3 Conceptualizing is the core of writing history and the self-refl exive historian knows that it is possible to off er an interpretation which, although not claiming to be a “true” narrative, may nevertheless be a more plausible account than the existing ones.4 Th e opening up of historical analysis to rhetorical interrogation is at the heart of contemporary thinking, which recognizes no distinction between history proper and philosophy of history.5 Armenian studies scholars are probably aware of this fact. At present, who or what is an Armenologist as an intellectual—a legacy of the Enlightenment—may mean being part of the traditional Armenian politics of truth or a critic of it, being part of the culture industry or its adversary and reformer. Many of the cases discussed in this study are counter-cases and will inevitably cause uncertainties, even hostility. Th ere should be no problem, because “uncertainty in history is a form of protection” against dogmatism, at least.6 A radical review of Armenian history in its Near Eastern context is a project for generations of academics. Th is study is only a fi rst attempt to open and survey a mostly unstudied fi eld with novel methods and identify the problematic aspects and develop the arguments. At the end of each volume, there is an epilogue where the arguments are summarized.
II. Introduction to Volume One
Chapter One of this volume traces “Factors in the Pre-Islamic Armenian Condition—Fourth–Seventh Centuries,” as the title states. Th ese factors also shaped the patterns of Armenian–Islamic interactions, hence the relevance of this section to the general study. From the beginning, bipolarity and pluralism distinguished all things Armenian and both the culture and politics evolved between and as part of the Roman/Byzantine west and Persian/Islamic east, assimilating many elements from both. Th e process continued to the end of the Middle Ages, and the beginning of the Ottoman Period. While most of the clergy and some of the nobility were consistently pro-western, the eastern camp was always broader and included large popular factions as well. Th e political–religious institutions were more rigid and pro-western, and the formation of dissident ideologies and careers was expected and happened. Regional politics contributed to the militarization of some trends and/or the suppression of others, but throughout, dissidence was part of the basic texture of Armenian history. Th is is a major argument in this book and the theme of Armenian Dissidence is taken up throughout the study. In general, each case and/or episode is studied in a holistic perspective. Th is means taking all the elements as parts of a whole. For example, as of the fourth century the “heretical” Christianity of the sects was as much part of early Armenian Christianity as that of the Church. Consequently, almost all of what has been written about the subject can only be partial. Armenian Christianity was not monolithic; it did not and could not really signal a sudden transition from one religious culture into another. Since there can be no purely religious ideology and culture, the substratum of both is simultaneously social, political, and economic. Similar to heterodoxy, I also take syncretism as a paradigm to explain many obscure episodes, cultures, and folklores that persisted to the present. In general, the cultures of the entire region were unavoidably syncretistic, while ideological purism typifi ed the policies and ideologies of the dominant religious and political institutions. Dichotomies between Armenian orthodoxy and heresy were drawn and conceptualized during the fi fth century or the Golden Age of Armenian intellectual culture. Th ey were maintained and persisted with force for many centuries. It is rarely noticed that the fi fth century (or the Golden Age) legacies of faith, language, and ancestral values—the fundamentals in the conceptualization of the Armenians as a distinct people—gradually turned into fi xities that trapped the free fl ow of cultural traffi c, while causing sedimentations and congestion. Th e “orthodoxy” of the Armenian institutions took shape in the midst of Byzantine–Persian confl ict already during the fourth century and adopted the dogmatism and the imperialist spirit of both. By the eighth century the fi rst histories (as of the fi fth century) shaped the national narrative(s), and simultaneously defi ned all that contradicted or questioned them. In other words, they played a double function. It was in the name of orthodoxy that the artistic and intellectual legacies of paganism of all sorts, Zoroastrianism and Hellenism, as well as the indigenous syncretism of the Near East were branded by the fox-sign, as it were, and the peculiarities of early Armenian Christianity dissolved in the anti-heretical debates. During the mid-fi fth century, Eznik Kołbac‘i (theologian, philosopher, translator, Bishop of Bagrewand, died just after the middle of the fi fth century) provided the philosophical grounding for the legacies of faith, language, and ancestral values of the Age. He introduced a battery of polemical techniques, and more importantly, he contributed to the militarization of the Church. Before the middle of the seventh century and after the arrival of the Arabs in eastern Asia Minor doctrinal affi nities and persecution eased interactions between them and the sects, and the alliance with the Muslims militarized and politicized the dissident factions on the regional level. As I try to show in this chapter and the study in general, Armenian dissidence was not just a class struggle within the Armenian peculiar feudal system, in which the Church too was another powerful participant. It was a more pervasive historical development and current. Individuals and trends of all social strata, even some clergy, like Eustathius (the Armenian bishop of Sivās during the third quarter of the fourth century), and during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, Yakobos (the Armenian bishop of the province of Hark‘ northwest of Lake Van) and his contemporary Vardapet (monk-priest) Grigor Narekac‘i (d.c.1003 of the Monastery of Narek on Lake Van), etc., were suspected and accused of heresy. As I will demonstrate, they were in fact genuinely spiritual and revolutionary-reformist fi gures, and as such they were feared and persecuted. Medieval histories provided little information about these fi gures and their followers. While the fi rst two are referred to in anti-heretical contexts, the latter was known only by his own autobiography and a popular cycle of legends, a Narekiana of sorts, about a certain saintly fi gure called Narek, who was not even a vardapet. In sum, as of the fourth century, what I call Armenian Dissidence was a powerful, grass-root, reformist and cosmopolitan movement, which, as mentioned, was militarized soon after the arrival of the Arabs and drew its path in regional politics. Chapter Two of this volume, “Early Arab Campaigns and the Regulation of Relations According to the Medīnan Legacy” deals with a relatively better-researched subject. However, the perspectives in which this period was narrated—but not analyzed—still remain very narrow. Also, instead of taking the year 884 (the coronation of the fi rst Bagratuni king), I take the massive arrival of the Seljuks after mid-eleventh century as its end. While some medieval authors reconstructed the Arab Period in epic terms, more modern and contemporary authors off ered a tedious story of invaders and invaded, oppressors and oppressed, Muslim fanatics and Christian martyrs, etc.
However looked upon, the Arab Period marked a massive exposure of the Armenians to a new and diff erent, and primarily urban religious–political culture. Islam permanently changed the Near Eastern world and farther, both culturally and politically. Interactions happened, and still do, on all levels of society. It often escapes historians that as of the seventh century, Armenia became part of the Islamic world, also remaining part of the southern Caucasus. Th e situation has not changed much: three of the four neighbors of the Republic of Armenia today are countries with predominantly Muslim populations, Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan. But still, Islamic–Armenian interactions of almost fourteen centuries have received minimal attention from scholars in all the disciplines. Th is is where my research begins. Islam caused an instant politicization of social conditions in Armenia. While in the case of the feudal nobility, the Armenian dynastic territories were created by Arab encouragement and support, large heterodox factions were politicized and militarized through their sympathies for and alliances with the Muslims. Either way, interaction with both political and cultural Islam expanded the peripheries of the Armenian experience, and this is no trivial matter. During the Arab period and practically due to Arab support, irrespective of the motives and the interests of the latter, the Armenian naxarar s or nobility, such as the Bagratunis, Arcrunis, Siwnis rose to dynastic power. Byzantium always resented these so-called “kingdoms.” Byzantine emperors (many of whom were of Armenian descent) never acknowledged Armenian sovereignty and before the middle of the eleventh century these “kingdoms” were annexed to the Empire. One of the peculiarities of medieval Armenian political culture was the total absence of basic frameworks of statehood and administration. Th e naxarar system remained archaic to a large extent, but the fl exibility and pragmatism of the nobility and heterodox factions made up for lags in their evolution and contributed to the persistence of all. Often ideology was secondary to interest. I have analyzed the Arab Period in these perspectives. Another and completely unstudied subject discussed in Chapter Two is the development of the patterns in which Islamic–Armenian relations were regulated as per early Islamic political culture. I argue that the literary tradition of Islamic oaths to Armenians is an absolutely vital issue that has never been studied. All but one of the circulating documents is verifi able, but the question of authenticity has nothing to do with the signifi cance of the tradition. In medieval Armenian histories the origin or the model, so to speak, of all Islamic–Armenian treatises was seen in the Medīnan period of Islam (622–632) and a so-called “Prophet’s Oath to Armenians” (allegedly given to an Armenian delegation to Medīnah). A long chain of agreements—also called “oaths,” “treatises,” “peace agreements,” etc. —continued through the Umayyad, Ayyūbid, and Safavid periods. Th e tradition also echoed in the Ottoman Tanzimat or Reforms of the nineteenth century. As each text in circulation claimed to be based on the previous ones, it became a link in a continuum. Th ere came about a tradition, which acquired a historicity as an important aspect of Islamic–Armenian relations. More importantly, in most of the contacts and resulting agreements, the negotiator was the Armenian Church representing the people. Th is leads us to another understudied subject: the status of the Armenian Church in Islamic states and societies. It must be common knowledge that under Muslim rule—even during the most somber moments of the later Ottoman period—the Armenian Church and clergy were protected by law and gained political signifi cance and economic prosperity. Monasteries and monastic schools were established in the tenth century and had exclusive control over the intellectual culture. Th e dark side of Armenian monasticism was its radicalism and institutional corruption. Th e rebellions in reaction were frequent and widespread. Th e causes and eff ects were simultaneously ideological, social, and economic. Troubled times, especially during the tenth and eleventh centuries on the entire surface of Armenia east and west, only partially surfaced in histories. To connect the dots, Arab sources are of primary importance, other types of texts, such as anti-heretical texts even poetry must be referred to as well. As discussed in Chapter Two, the so-called Paulician and T‘ondrakian histories were very much part of the Arab Period. Th ey produced perhaps the most intriguing paradigms to understand not only Armenian–Islamic interactions but also Armenian social–cultural history and folklore at that time. No literature has survived and most of the information on these trends came from their enemies, but from what has been written in anti-heretical texts it is possible to draw the general outlines of their doctrinal position. I suggest that the philosophical arche (or fi rst principle) and legacy of Armenian dissidence was what I call the “no-boundary” principle. It marked a transition from early Christianity to a more developed phase in social–religious culture. Rejection of hierarchy, egalitarian demands, communalism, rationalism of some trends and mysticism of others, equality of women, etc., were all expressions of a surprisingly developed culture. Th e alliance of the heterodox factions with the Muslim side was a predictable and inevitable consequence of the situation in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, and not just in Armenia, which was anyway divided between the two. Th ere was another factor in the evolution of Armenian dissidence, and that was Islamic dissidence. In Islam dissident trends began appearing as of the fi rst century of its advent. As discussed in my other articles and books, in my opinion the so-called sects in various parts of the medieval Near East shared strikingly similar doctrines, circumstances, and careers. In fact, I could have a much better understanding of the Armenian sects after studying the Irano-Islamic and other syncretistic trends in the entire Near East. Armenian and Near Eastern scholars will have to realize that just as the Armenian ones, Islamic sects too are subjects in medieval Near Eastern urbanism. Similar to Ismā‘īlism, the politicization and militarization of Armenian dissident factions as of the eighth century marked an advanced stage in the evolution of Near Eastern society. Both were closely connected to regional syncretism, reformist tendencies, social and economic change, power struggles, and many more factors, as I try to show in this study. Another major theme is that of the urban youth coalitions of Armenian manuk s and the Islamic futuwwa . As cities began developing in the ‘Abbāsid world, and already during the ninth century, there began appearing somehow anarchistic, extra-ethnic, extra-religious, and militant coalitions of jobless young men. But however they were known, manuks, fi tyān , ah.dāth , ‘ ayyarūn , etc., they were aspects of Near Eastern urban and social development (as I try to demonstrate in Volume Th ree). Also closely connected to the phenomenon of dissidence, the chapter provides yet another entirely new paradigm: the Frontiers or the Borderlands between the Byzantine and Islamic (Arab, Seljuk, and later Mongol) empires. As discussed in Volume Two as well, only recently scholars have begun studying this aspect of medieval Islamic history, but Armenian scholarship is still alien to this development. Even the dispute around the Byzantine epic of Digenis Akritis fi nds its proper context in the Frontiers. Th is was a vast area from the Black Sea to north al-Shām and Cilicia, where several cultures, trends, and traditions were diff used. Th e ‘Abbāsid project to create a unique and exclusive region for Holy War or Jihād and a “true Muslim life” failed but the Frontiers created for these ideals, or the akritic world became an entity of its own. Th e region was a haven for syncretistic, dissident, mostly militant and marginal communities. In this context, Digenis Akritis must be re-studied as “history” too, because it is the only surviving document that contains the identifi able echoes of a lost phase and lost world in Armenian and regional histories. I argue that an important part of Medieval Islamic–Armenian history falls, or rather must fall, under the heading of akritics or Borderlands history, with its own peculiar type of historicity. Th ese border regions were a most appropriate milieu for indigenous Near Eastern syncretism, which under the strictly orthodox establishments of both Byzantium and the Caliphate as well as all the churches, was unwelcome. Muslims and Christians of all ethnic backgrounds—like the heroes of Digenis Akritis— had more in common with one another than with the peoples on the opposite sides of the Frontiers. In over three centuries of existence, the Frontiers became a marker as well as assimilator of diff erences. Th e condition allowed commercial contacts and became a breeding ground for a peculiar landholding warrior aristocracy. Initially built as border fortifi cations, the small fortresstowns on the Frontiers and the Euphrates in particular and some of the Tigris, became cities after the tenth–eleventh centuries and still maintained their cosmopolitan nature. Medieval cosmopolitanism is discussed in Volume Th ree. Th e paradigm of Borderlands, suggested in this study is absolutely essential to review and deconstruct many seemingly simple yet otherwise new and complex patterns of interaction between peoples of the region. Armenian–Islamic interactions are another aspect of this project. Th is chapter also gives some space for the discussion of the revolutionary-reformist or “dissident” nature of the literature of Grigor Narekac‘i. I shall refer to him in Chapter Two of Volume Two. He embodied his age, was accused of T‘ondrakism, but was and still is kept at a safe distance from analysis in the mediocre portrait of the medieval “mystic” and “saint.”
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