T'ovma Metsobets'i's History
describes events taking place on the Armenian highlands and in
Georgia during the Turco-Mongol invasions of Timur Leng (1386-87,
1394-96, and 1399-1403). These invasions were made upon a society
which already had been gravely weakened by the preceding decades
of warfare and persecution from Turkmen, Kurdish, and Ottoman
groups now resident in the area, and from Mongols of the Golden
Horde in the north Caucasus.
Information about the author of this
work is found in T'ovma's own History, in the Life of
T'ovma Metsobets'i, written by his student Kirakos Banaser,
and in a number of 15th century colophons. According
to these sources, T'ovma was born in 1378 in the district of Aghiovit,
north of Lake Van. He received his early education at the monastery
of Metsob (or Metsop') north of the city of Archesh, but the invasions
of Timur and the attacks of Turkmen bands obliged him to move
from place to place, frequently fleeing for his life. In 1395
he went to Suxara (Xarabasta) monastery in the K'ajberunik' district
of southern Armenia where he studied for twelve years with the
noted vardapets (doctors of the Church) Sargis and Vardan.
In 1406, together with twelve classmates, he went to one of the
most important seats of learning in Armenia, the monastery of
Tat'ew in the Tsghuk region of the district of Siwnik'. After
a residence of only two years there, T'ovma, his classmates and
their teacher, the great intellectual Grigor Tat'ewats'i were
forced to flee to Metsob monastery to escape the Qara Qoyunlu
Turkmens. Soon thereafter T'ovma's beloved teacher was taken to
the Ayrarat district by other students and T'ovma who set out
after him with his classmates were unable to convince him to return.
According to Kirakos Banaser, Grigor Tat'ewats'i conferred the
vardapetal dignity on T'ovma in Erevan. T'ovma then returned
to Metsob where he engaged in teaching and literary activity,
and participated in the struggle against the influence of Roman
Catholicism within the Armenian church. However, between 1421
and 1437, southern Armenia once again became a theater of warfare
between Turkmens, Mongols and Kurds. In 1430 T'ovma fled for his
life to the island of Lim in Lake Van. In 1436 he and his students
fled to Xlat', Archesh and Artske. T'ovma Metsobets'i was one
of the major protagonists involved in transferring the Armenian
kat'oghikosate from Sis in cilicia back to Ejmiatsin in
Greater Armenia in 1441. After the realization of his dream, T'ovma
returned to Metsob where he died three years later, in 1446.
The History of Tamerlane and His
Successors, although a major source for Armenia in the late
14th and early 15th centuries is, nonetheless,
a rather defective production. Written for the most part from
memory, the work (especially when dealing with events occurring
outside of Armenia) contains historical inaccuracies and frequent
repetitions, jumps episodically back and forth from one decade
to another, and does not, generally seem to be a well-structured
history. T'ovma himself was well aware of its shortcomings. He
wrote: "This event occurred in 1425 more or less. You must
excuse me, for I was old and commenced fifty years later. Therefore
I wrote going backward and forward".
The History begins with the devastations wreaked on the district of Siwnik' by the northern Tatars in 1386. Tamerlane's invasions of 1387, 1388, 1395, 1401 and 1402 on numerous districts of eastern and western historical Armenia and Georgia are described with the blood-curdling immediacy of a terrified eye-witness. The account is more detailed yet for the first three decades of the 15th century. It describes the impact on Armenian economic, intellectual and religious life of this dismal and nightmarish period of mass exterminations, mass deportations, and the forced the voluntary apostasy of the population. For a discussion of Armenia in this period, see R. Bedrosian, The Turco-Mongol Invasions and the Lords of Armenia in the 13-14th Centuries (New York, 1979).
Unfortunately, no critical edition of
T'ovma's work exists. The classical Armenian text was published
by K. Shahnazarean in Paris in 1860. Subsequently it was translated
into French by Felix Neve and appeared in Journal Asiatique
(1855), and as a separate book in 1861. The present translation,
made from the classical Armenian text of 1860, was completed in
1977 in Erevan, Armenia. The transliteration employed is a modification
of the Library of Congress system.
Robert Bedrosian
(New York, 1987)
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