Little is known about the author of this
work. The village of Lastivert whence he hailed, is believed to
have been located near the city of Arcn in the district of Karin/Erzerum.
It is clear that he was well-versed in the Bible, which he cites
frequently. His religious worldview leads him to attribute everything
to God's design, and makes him blame the Armenians for the massacres
committed against them by the Byzantines and Saljuqs. Unlike earlier
Armenian historians, Aristakes had no patron and was not writing
a eulogistic account of the role of a particular noble family
in Armenia's history. Rather he was a patriotic historian who
heaps scorn on those clerical and lay Armenian lords whose actions
he considered detrimental to Armenia's national church and to
the preservation of Armenian states. The History displays
equal aversion to Armenia's foreign overlords, Byzantine and Saljuq.
The present translation was completed in 1978. It was made from the critical edition of the classical Armenian text, published by K. N. Yuzbashyan, Patmut'iwn Aristakisi Lastivertc'woy (Erevan, 1963), to which is appended a full bibliography by H. A. Anasyan. Additional bibliography is available in a French translation by M. Canard and H. Berberian, Recit des malheurs de la nation armenienne (Paris, 1973) as well as in Yuzbashyan's article, "The Daylamites in the History of Aristakes Lastivertc'i", in the Armenian Review 31 (1979). For a discussion of the Saljuq invasions of Armenia, see 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 Hubschmann-Meillet system.
Robert Bedrosian
(New York, 1985)
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