Download PDF | Seta B. Dadoyan - The Armenians in the Medieval Islamic World_ Medieval Cosmopolitanism and Images of Islam. Thirteenth to Fourteenth Centuries, 2014.
319 Pages
Prologue
In order to give the reader of Volume Th ree and of the other volumes as well a comprehensive idea of the entire work, below are the Prologue, the General Introduction, and the Introductions of all three volumes. 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 their circumstances.
It means an eff ort to create/defi ne, rather, to re-create/re-defi ne the historicity of their 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. Th is 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 heavy baggage 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.
This 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 reconstruction 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 this 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 as revolutionary elements on all strata and phases. Th e initiative to see these elements as a 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, the book does not focus on the dissident aspects 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; rather, it is 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 over a long period because I was venturing into unchartered territory. Th ere were no studies and the task was not only hard, multifaceted, dangerous, but also challenging and overdue.
The tools were an interdisciplinary training, a critical approach, and a taste for dialectics. After two decades of research and the 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. Th e 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. 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. Nevertheless, 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 not only been confusing but would have also seriously impaired 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.
The reader, however, should read the volumes as parts of a whole. 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 and the objectives and the nature of the study, I did not and could not implement the common technique of maintaining a fl owing narrative, 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 a 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 also 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 reconceptualizing Armenian and Near Eastern histories.
General Introduction
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; rather, it strongly suggests a diff erent 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, including the modern Armenian 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 a 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 the background, the various themes in the three volumes are paradigm cases of interaction on political, cultural, religious, philosophical, literary, and 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.
The critical and interdisciplinary approach adopted in this book looks at the Armenological market place, so to speak, from a phenomenological distance. Th e so-called objectivity claimed by some historians is problematic. Absolute objectivity in history 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. However, 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 the postmodern critique of historical writing, we can see that strictly conservative approaches seriously disrupted the discipline of Armenian history.
The 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 provided by authority 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 quasi-epic 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.” 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 accounts 2 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 from 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 selflegitimization 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.”
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 the 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.
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