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.[24] It was considerably enlarged by his son and successor, Sembat the SecondSembat II., A.D. 977–989., who built the outer wall in face of which I have brought my reader at the commencement of this chapter.[25] Sembat also laid the foundations of the cathedral, but died before it was completed.[26] 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 FirstGagik I., A.D. 989–1019.[27], 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.[28] 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.[29] He built another of the great churches which adorned his capital, that of the Illuminator on the side of the Valley of Flowers.[30] The monastery of Marmashen, near Alexandropol, was constructed at this period by one of the Armenian princes, Vahram.[31] Lastly, the seat of the patriarchate was removed to Ani from the neighbouring town of Arghina.[32]
John Sembat, A.D. 1020–1041.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 AshotAshot IV., A.D. 1020–1040.[33] 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.[34] This compact was observed at least so far that Ashot the Fourth was never permitted by his jealous colleague to enter the capital.[35] 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.[36] 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.
The tribes composing the wave of the great Turkish invasion appear upon the stage of Armenian history as early as the commencement of the eleventh century.[37] The aspect and dress of these savages were as unfamiliar to the Armenians as their mode of conducting war. The Christian warriors, armed with the sword, encountered swarms of archers whose long hair floated behind them like that of women.[38] The signal defeat of his son David by these nomads about the year 1018 caused the reigning king of the Van country to lose heart. The news was brought to him while he was residing in the delicious town of Vostan, upon the wooded spurs of the Kurdish mountains overlooking the lake of Van. His despondency was confirmed by the recollection of a prophecy in which St. Nerses, the fifth successor of St. Gregory, had foretold the advent of great calamities at the hands of a barbarous people a thousand years after the divine mission of Christ. Senekerim despatched his son to the court of Constantinople, where he was received with the greatest kindness by the Emperor Basil II. The Cæsar accepted the gift of his extensive and populous realm, and gave in exchange a secure retreat within the borders of the Empire, the city and territory of Sivas (A.D. 1021). An imperial governor was sent to take over the ceded dominions, in which were included no less than 72 fortresses, 4000 villages, and 8 towns.[39] Some display of force was necessary in order to fasten upon the southern province the rule of the Byzantine monarchs; and it is probable that the measures taken to assert their authority still further enfeebled the rampart they had come to defend. The progress of the shepherds may be traced through the pages of the Armenian historians during the ensuing years. In A.D. 1021 they advanced from Azerbaijan upon the town of Nakhichevan under the conduct of their prince, the famous Toghrul Bey. This incursion was directed up the valley of the Araxes into the country about Ararat. It was resisted by a force of Georgians, who retired without coming to an engagement, and, a little later, by a small detachment of the Armenian army under Vasak, the commander-in-chief. But no concerted action was taken against the invaders, the Armenians contenting themselves with deeds of personal prowess, and the Turkomans swarming over the settled country, plundering, destroying, and putting the inhabitants to the sword.[40] In the year 1042 they were encountered by the king of Armenia, Gagik, the successor of John Sembat and Ashot. At the head of his troops he inflicted upon them a signal defeat on the banks of the Zanga, the river of Erivan. The Turks retired into the Van country, which they devastated anew.[41] Three years later they appeared again in the same province; but this time they were fugitives from Mesopotamia, where they had been repulsed by the emir of Mosul. Their prayer for a safe passage home into Persia was refused by the imperial governor residing at Arjish, on the lake of Van. But the forces at his disposal were routed by the tribesmen, who took him prisoner and put him to death.[42] The Turks returned in greater numbers during the following years, laying waste the southern province, flooding northwards into Pasin and into the valley of the Chorokh. To this period belong the sack of Arzen (near Erzerum) in 1049, and the pillage of Kars and massacre of its inhabitants in 1050. Neither the imperial generals nor their Georgian and Armenian dependents were successful in making headway against the storm.[43] The year 1054 was made memorable in the native annals by the siege of Melazkert. Toghrul had arrived at the head of an immense army in the districts bordering the lake of Van on the side of Azerbaijan. The town of Berkri was taken by assault, that of Arjish purchased immunity; and the conqueror led his host across the level country at the foot of Sipan to the walls of the fortress on the Murad. Melazkert was at that time in the possession of the Empire, and was stoutly defended by its governor. After a close investiture, during which the garrison displayed great resource and bravery, the Seljuk king was constrained to retire. But he had already despatched detachments of his army in all directions; the Turks penetrated as far north as the slopes of Caucasus and the Pontic forests, and as far south as the mountains bordering the southern shore of Lake Van.[44] The area of their raids was still further extended during the subsequent decade. The territory of Mush was overrun in 1058; and the lonely cloister of Surb Karapet, which overlooks that extensive plain, witnessed the prowess of the Armenian chiefs, who directed their gaze towards it before falling upon their savage foes.[45] These bands had perhaps returned from the sack of Malatia beyond and on the west of the Euphrates.[46] In the following year the advancing tide reached the city of Sivas, that peaceful haven in the interior of Asia Minor which had been allotted to King Senekerim, and which was now in possession of his sons. These princes fled for their life, and the Turks were for a moment arrested by the spectacle of the multitude of white domes, belonging to the churches, which they mistook for the tents of their enemy. But both the city and the plain of Sivas were given over to pillage and massacre; streets and countryside were deluged with blood.[47] North, south, and west spread the relentless inundation; at one time the current sets towards the territory of Karin (Erzerum), at another it eddies around the mountains in the south between Diarbekr and Palu.[48]
Armenian patriots of the present day brand the memory of King Senekerim, the Artsrunian, and insult his tomb in the cloister of Varag, overlooking Van. No more lenient judgment is meted out to the Bagratid king of Ani, who, as early as the year 1022, willed away his dominions to the same Cæsar who had supplanted the sovereign of the southern province. But these events are but the outward signs of a general retreat of the Armenians before the advance of Turks and Kurds, battering in the gates of the caliphate and pressing forward into the settled countries.[49] A fairer view might impute it to these Christian kinglets that they failed to stand their ground upon the bulwarks of Eastern Christendom, drawing support from their powerful neighbours of the same faith, who were welded together in a single and magnificent empire. But that empire, so justly respected by the Mussulmans as the realm of the Romans, was an object of particular aversion to the Armenians as the home or the prey of the hated and unorthodox Greeks. On every page of Armenian history is written large the mutual suspicion which envenomed the relations of the two races. Where co-operation might have seemed impossible we may perhaps excuse the abdication of the weaker party, and even justify the usurpation of the stronger. And the judicial historian, who may sift the facts with greater care than the inquisitive traveller, will perhaps conclude that the blame must be laid on wider shoulders—upon the Pan-Greek policy of the Byzantine Cæsars and their masterful hierarchy, and upon the perversity of two cultured and Christian peoples, who, rather than compose or postpone their quarrels, threw this culture and this religion into the maw of savages.
At the time when the Bagratid kingdom of Armenia was suffering from a fresh division of the regal authority under John Sembat and Ashot, the neighbouring Empire was administered by a worthy successor of Nikephorus and of Zimiskes. The Emperor Basil the Second stands out in the Byzantine annals as a monarch who did not disgrace the title of the Roman Cæsars. His personal intervention in the affairs of Armenia dates from the reign of Gagik the First, and was occasioned by the death of the prince of the Akhaltsykh country, David, who had during his lifetime been a fast ally of the emperor, and who had named him heir to his principality. Basil hurried to Armenia to take over his new possessions; he was greeted by the kings of Kars and of Van; but King Gagik excited his displeasure and provoked his resentment by somewhat pointedly remaining away. The Cæsar appears to have made a peregrination of the Armenian country, visiting Shirak, and perhaps occupying some of the fortresses in the south, such as Akhlat, Melazkert, and Arjish.[50] Years later he was again summoned to the scene of his former successes; but on this occasion it was his duty to combat the folly of two Christian princes who had taken up arms against that Empire which alone could save them from their doom. King George the First of Georgia, in concert with King John Sembat of Ani, had been raiding in the imperial dominions. Basil established his camp in the plain of Erzerum, and summoned the Georgian monarch to submit. Upon the failure of his embassies he made his way by the plain of Pasin to the territory of Kars. The armies came together in the neighbourhood of Lake Chaldir; and if the issue of a furious engagement may have seemed uncertain, the result was established by the retirement of the Georgians into their strong places, and by the devastation of their country by the imperial forces, which included contingents of barbarous peoples such as Russians and Bulgarians. The emperor spent the winter in the neighbourhood of Trebizond, where he received an envoy from the king of Ani, no less a person than the patriarch, accompanied by twelve bishops, seventy monks, two scholars, and three hundred knights. The presence no less than the gifts of this distinguished embassy might have appeased the just wrath of the most Christian emperor; but his expectations were perhaps exceeded by the production of a testament in which John Sembat named him the heir to his dominions. This voluntary cession (A.D. 1022) secured the immunity of the kingdom of Ani; and Basil was free to exact his terms from the Georgian. Measures were taken to ensure the future safety of the domains of Akhaltsykh, and the imperial army was paraded upon the extremities of the Armenian country, carrying fear into the hearts of the inhabitants of Azerbaijan. Basil returned to his distant capital, having smoothed the way for the extension of the Empire across the natural bridge of the Asiatic highlands. The masters of Akhaltsykh in the north and of Van in the south could afford to wait for the death of a feeble and childless king.[51]
But the Emperor Basil died in the year 1025, and was followed upon the throne by no less than six sovereigns within the space of seventeen years. His bold policy was committed to feeble hands and incapable brains; and perhaps the testament of King John was forgotten by the Emperor Romanus when he bestowed his niece in marriage upon its author.[52] The bridegroom did not profit by this opportunity of producing an heir who might have rivalled the claims of the heir of Basil. Upon the death of John, which occurred some years after this event, the reigning emperor, Michael, took steps to enforce those claims. One of the most powerful of the Armenian nobles, by name Sargis, supported the cession of the kingdom in accordance with the imperial demand. His proposal was resisted by his compeers, and the imperial forces were despatched into Shirak. Arrived under the walls of Ani, they were surprised by a sally of the garrison, who were led by the chiefs of the faction opposed to Sargis, under the supreme command of the intrepid Vahram (A.D. 1041). The Greek army was routed after incurring heavy losses, and the river of Ani was reddened by the blood of the Greeks. GagikGagik II., A.D. 1042–45., the son of King Ashot, who was then a mere youth, was raised to his uncle’s throne; and the hateful Sargis was taken prisoner by the successful party, but restored to liberty by the clemency of the young king. The imperial anger continued to harass an inexperienced prince who was regarded by the Byzantine court as an usurper; but the death of Michael in the same year suspended the delivery of a decisive blow. His nephew, another Michael, ruled or tyrannised for a few months; the disorders of his reign were followed by those consequent upon his expulsion; and a short period was perhaps necessary for his successor, Constantine Monomachus, to establish himself upon the throne. The revenge which he inherited against the kingdom of Ani was stimulated by the intrigues of Sargis, who suggested that the youthful Gagik should be enticed to Constantinople, in order to smooth the way for the surrender of the city. The promises of the emperor, and the oaths of the nobles that they would conserve his capital during his absence, were successful in drawing the monarch away; but a considerable display of force was rendered necessary before the garrison could be induced to surrender Ani. After a first reverse, measures were taken by the absent emperor to secure the triumph of his arms. A Kurdish emir, who was powerful in Karabagh and the valley of the Araxes, was induced to join his forces to those of the Empire; and matters had become hopeless when the city was delivered over to the emissary of the Cæsar by the notables in concert with the patriarch (A.D. 1045). King Gagik was allotted a territory in Cappadocia and a palace at Constantinople. A Greek governor was despatched to take over Ani and the new possessions, which placed the crown upon the extension of the Roman Empire along the valley of the Araxes and round the shores of Lake Van.[53]
In this manner and by these several stages the protagonists in a world struggle were brought face to face. The Seljuks reinforced the failing energies of Islam, but infused into the body to which they lent new vigour an intractable strain of barbarism which it has retained to the present day. On the high-road of their depredations they were now confronted by a redoubtable adversary, the champion of Christianity and of whatever culture the age possessed. But that religion, become debased, had already sapped the foundations of culture; the winged mind of the Greeks had been imprisoned by a rigorous dogmatism; and their bodies were either crushed by the discipline of the monastery or exhausted by the refinements of the life of sensual pleasure. The greatness of their inheritance and the extent of the resources which they administered had been equal to producing a Nikephorus, a Zimiskes and a Basil; but this grain of Roman genius was allowed to wither by the succeeding princes; and we feel the force of the comparison which is drawn by the Armenian historian between the quiet strength and benignant policy of Basil and the dissolute habits and feeble half-measures of Monomachus.[54] The safety of the provinces was made subordinate to the interests of the Greek hierarchy; the Armenians were irritated by renewed attempts to bring them over to Byzantine orthodoxy; and their resistance was punished by the removal of the strongest characters from the native seats in the defence of which they would have given their lives. The new territories were handed over to Greek eunuchs, to whom was entrusted their administration and defence.[55] In the year 1055 the inhabitants were massacred outside the walls of Ani by an enemy which perhaps consisted of a detachment of Seljuks in concert with the forces of the emir of Karabagh.[56] The final blow was delivered nine years later by the successor of Toghrul, the famous Alp Arslan. After a successful campaign in the Georgian country he arrived before Ani in the summer of 1064. The appearance of the city at that date is described in eloquent terms, if with some exaggeration, by Matthew of Edessa. Such was the number of the population assembled within its ramparts that the Turks believed them to comprise the greater part of the Armenian nation. Mass was celebrated in a thousand and one churches. Precipitous cliffs protected the site for almost the whole circuit, and it was embraced by the sinuous course of the Arpa Chai. On one side only was there level or slightly shelving ground for a distance about equal to the flight of an arrow. It was upon the walls which defended this vulnerable side that the Seljuk sultan directed his attack. After a siege of twenty-five days the Turks penetrated into the city. Each man carried a knife in either hand and a third between his teeth. The garrison had retired into the inner citadel, and the defenceless inhabitants were mown down like grass. One of the barbarians mounted upon the roof of the cathedral, and hurled to the ground the great cross which rose from the dome. A little door gave him access to the interior of the dome, whence he precipitated a crystal lamp, perhaps of Indian origin, which had been presented by King Sembat the Second. The capture of Ani prepared the way for the investiture of Kars; but the king of Kars appeased the victor by attiring himself in black robes, which he affected to be wearing out of respect for the death of Toghrul. From these successes the Seljuks were carried forward into the bosom of the Empire; and the signal defeat near Melazkert of the Cæsar Romanus in 1071 finally decided the long struggle in favour of the Mohammedan world.[57]
From these momentous issues, with which the fortunes of Ani were so closely connected, it is an abrupt descent to the plane of her subsequent history. I have already had occasion to mention the two chief actors in this minor drama, the Bagratid dynasty of Georgia and the Kurdish dynasty of Karabagh.[58] The Georgian Bagratids weathered the storm of the Seljuk invasions; and they attained during the course of the twelfth and the commencement of the thirteenth century a wide dominion over the adjacent lands. A lesser station must be assigned to the Mussulman family of the Beni-Cheddad, who in the decline of the caliphate had established themselves in the valleys of the Kur and the Araxes, and whose kinsmen probably wandered over the mountains of Karabagh, which at the present day still harbour Kurdish tribes. The particular clan to which they belonged is said to have been named Rewadi; but they became possessed of the important town of Gandzak in the valley of the Kur (the modern Elizabetpol), and of Dvin, the ancient Armenian metropolis, in that of the Araxes. I have twice spoken of their prince, a figure of some importance during the reigns of John Sembat and Gagik the Second, at first the ally and then the determined adversary of the Empire and the coadjutor of Alp Arslan. Abulsevar—the Chawir of the Arabs, the Aplesphares of the Greeks—is well known to the Byzantine annalists, and is styled by them, no less than by the Armenian writers, the prince of Dvin.[59] His son and successor, Fathlun, purchased Ani from the Seljuk sultan, and gave it over to his brother Manuchar (A.D. 1072). This ruler appears to have governed with moderation; and he was confirmed in his dignity by the successor of Alp Arslan, the humane Malek Shah, who extended the Seljuk empire to the Mediterranean. After the death of Manuchar in A.D. 1110[60] the inhabitants were much harassed by their Mussulman and Georgian neighbours during the government of his son and successor, another Abulsevar. They appealed for help to the Bagratid king of Georgia, David the Second, and opened their gates to that monarch (A.D. 1124). Abulsevar and his sons were carried off to Tiflis, and the unhappy prince, with two of his children, perished in an unhealthy prison.[61] This revolution restored the city to a Christian administration, after a Mussulman occupation of sixty years. The cathedral, which had served as a mosque, was restored to Christian worship and consecrated anew with great pomp. But David the Second died in the following year; and his son and successor Dimitri was confronted with an investiture of Ani by Fathlun, the eldest son of the deceased ruler, who had been absent at the time of the Georgian conquest and who was thirsting to avenge his father. The issue of a lengthy siege was a happy compromise, by which the Kurdish emir assumed the government under a pledge to reserve the cathedral to the exclusive use of his Armenian subjects (A.D. 1125–26).[62] Fathlun was killed in battle in the year 1132, and was succeeded by his brother Mahmud.[63] The Kurdish dynasty continued to drag on a precarious existence as lords of Ani until towards the close of the twelfth century; but they lost Gandzak to the Seljuks in 1088, and Dvin to the Georgians in 1162.[64] The conqueror of Dvin, George the Third, was twice the conqueror of Ani. His first expedition belongs to the year 1161, when he made himself master of the place after a single day’s siege.[65] But his success exasperated his Mussulman neighbours, and he was confronted in the same year by the emir of Akhlat at the head of an army numbering 80,000 men. The pompous title of this prince, that of Shah of Armenia, serves to accentuate his signal defeat by the Georgian king. But the Mussulmans renewed their attacks under the guidance or at the prompting of Ildigiz, the Atabeg governor of Azerbaijan. About the year 1165 George was constrained to restore Ani to them, and it again came into the possession of the Beni-Cheddad. From these it passed for the third time into the hands of the Georgians in 1173–74.[66] During the reign of Thamar the luckless inhabitants were surprised and massacred by the emir of Ardabil in eastern Azerbaijan. Even at that period, the commencement of the thirteenth century, the city was still rich and populous.[67] But the advent of the Tartars in A.D. 1239 was the occasion of a new catastrophe, the place being sacked by the savage bands of Jenghiz Khan. In 1319 Ani was visited by a severe earthquake, to which Armenian writers ascribe her final abandonment. But there exists evidence to show that this consummation was deferred to a later and uncertain date.
Fig. 70. Walls and Gateway of the City of Ani from Outside, looking East.