Kirakos Gandzaketsi's History of
the Armenians is a primary source for the study of the Armenian
highlands in the 13th century. This lengthy work, which has survived
in 65 chapters is divided thematically into several sections.
Part one is a summary of Armenian church and political history
from the 4th through the 12th centuries. This section, which describes
the lives and times of the heads of the Armenian Church (kat'oghikoi)
is based on earlier Armenian sources, many of which have survived.
The second section describes political and military events in
the 12th century both in Eastern (or Caucasian) Armenia and in
the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia on the Mediterranean. The next
section (chapter 10), resembling the first, contains a biographical
list of the kat'oghikoi of Caucasian Aghbania (modern Azarbaijan).
In chapter 11 and subsequent chapters, Kirakos described the events
of his own day: the period of the Zak'arids, the Mongol invasions
and domination, and their impact on the Armenians and other peoples
of the Middle East. As the author himself was aware, this was
by far the most important part of his History, and he devoted
much of the work to it.
Biographical information about Kirakos
Gandzakets'i is not plentiful. In chapter 33 of his work, after
a description of the activities of the influential Syrian cleric
Raban, the author wrote: "This episode was written down in
the year [ii] 1241 (690 of the Armenian Era)...when I was more
or less forty years old". Consequently the historian was
born in the early part of the 13th century, probably between 1200
and 1210.
Kirakos received his early education
at the monastery of Getik, at that time under the direction of
a student of the great teacher and writer Mxit'ar Gosh (d. 1213)
named Martiros. However, it was with another of Mxit'ar's students,
the historian Yovhannes Vanakan (d. 1251) that Kirakos studied
for a prolonged period. This education commenced at Xoranashat
monastery near Tawush fortress, northwest of Gandzak. When the
Khwarazmian sultan Jalal al-Din ravaged Xoranashat in 1225, Vanakan
fled with his students to a nearby cave, near the village of Lorut,
south of Tawush. He continued teaching there until 1236 when a
Mongol army under Molar-noyin occupied Tawush. Both Vanakan
and Kirakos were taken captive by the Mongols and kept as secretaries
for several months. Eventually, Vanakan was ransomed by the Christians
of Gag for eighty dahekans, and Kirakos escaped secretly
the same night, fleeing to Getik.
Almost nothing is known about the remaining
years of the historian's life. That he participated in a movement
to crush a rebellion in the Church in 1251 is clear from chapter
48 of his work. Around 1255 he interviewed the Cilician Armenian
king Het'um (1224-68 ) at the village of Vardenis near mt. Aragats
upon the latter's return from a visit to Batu-Khan.
[iii] Kirakos' name is mentioned in
1265 by his classmate and fellow-historian Vardan Arewelts'i from
whom the author requested and received a commentary on the Song
of Songs. According to another late 13th century historian, Grigor
Aknerts'i, Kirakos died in 1271/72.
Kirakos was eminently qualified to write
about 13th century Armenia. An intelligent man trained by an intellectual
of Vanakan's caliber, the author was familiar with Church organization
and problems, with prominent contemporary churchmen and their
historical writings. He was acqusinted with important Armenian
naxarars (lords) such as prince Prhosh Xaghbakean, who
participated in the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258/59 and
narrated to Kirakos what he had seen and heard, and prince Grigor
Mamikonean, who informed Kirakos what he had heard from a Mongol
noble about Chingiz-Khan. His detailed information about members
of the Zak' arid family derives in part from Prhosh, himself a
Zak'arid relation. As mentioned above, king Het'um I served as
one informant. Furthermore, during his months of captivity by
the Mongols Kirakos served as a secretary writing and reading
letters, and he learned Mongolian. In chapter 32 of his History
Kirakos Gandzakets'i has left us a priceless treasure, a lexicon
of some 55 Mongolian terms with their Armenian equivalents, one
of the earliest monuments of the Mongolian language. Consequently,
such an individual knew well not only the workings of his own
society, but clearly understood aspects of the society of Armenia's
conquerors and new masters.
[iv] It is not known when Kirakos began
his work. Father Oskean, citing the aforementioned statement in
chapter 33, "This was written down in the year 690 A.E...."
thinks the year 1240 a likely time. The History ends abruptly
with an unfinished description of the war between the Khans Abaqa
and Berke (1266/67). The cause of this sudden termination is unknown.
The critical edition of Gandzakets'
i's History of the Armenians was published by the late
K.A. Melik'-Ohanjanyan in 1961. That text was based on more than
thirty manuscripts housed at the Matenadaran in Erevan, Armenia,
collated with three earlier editions. Translations have been made
into French by M. Brosset (St. Petersburg, 1870); Russian by A,
Khanlarian (Moscow, 1976); and modern Armenian by V. Arhak'elyan.
The present English translation, which was completed in 1975, was made from the
Melik'-Ohanjanyan edition, but omits several lengthy sections
which are of doctrinal or theological, rather than historical,
importance. For a detailed study of the Turco-Mongol invasions
see volume f'ive of the Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge,
1968 ); for Armenia in particular, see R. Bedrosian, The Turco-Mongol Invasions and the Lords of Armenia in the 13-14th Centuries (New York, 1979). The transliteration system employed in this translation
is a modification of the Library of Congress system.
Robert Bedrosian
New York, 1986
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