ARMENIA AND IRAN i. Armina, Achaemenid province. ii. The pre-Islamic period. iii. Armenian religion. iv. Iranian influences in Armenian Language. 1. General. 2. Iranian loanwords in Armenian. v. Accounts of Iran in Armenian sources. vi. Armeno-Iranian relations in the Islamic period. See also: ARMENIANS IN MODERN IRAN.
i. Armina, Achaemenid Province
A province (satrapy) of the Achaemenid empire; the inhabitants are called Arminiya- “Armenian.” As a by-form of the country’s name, the form Arminiya-, is attested six times in DB 2.33-63, but only in the locative form Arminiyaiy (on this word see R. Schmitt, Acta Antiqua 25, 1977, p. 96 n. 16). Armina is the source of Greek Arménioi “Armenians,” Armeníē, Armeníā [scil. Khṓrā] “Armenia;” it is rendered phonetically in Elamite as Har-mi-nu-ya (-ip), etc. The inscriptions’ Babylonian versions, however, use KURú-ra-áš-ṭu “Urartu” and LUú-ra-áš-ṭa-a-a “Urartean,” i.e., the name of the kingdom (and its inhabitants), mighty in former times in nearly the same region; the old name was preserved by the indigenous pre-Achaemenid cuneiform tradition. The Armenians’ name for themselves, attested from the 5th century A.D., is Hay, plural Haykʿ, with Hayastan “Armenia” and other derivatives. The references to Armina in the Bīsotūn inscription (DB) from about 520 B.C. are the earliest. But these and the other Old Persian lists of peoples and countries (DPe 12, DNa 27, DN XX, DSe 27, DSm 8 [?], XPh 20, A?P 20; see Kent, Old Persian, pp. 136ff., M. Mayrhofer, Supplement zur Sammlung der altpersischen Inschriften, Vienna, 1978, pp. 13f.) do not indicate the exact area inhabited by that people. Bordering on Media, Cappadocia, and Assyria, the Armenians settled, according to classical sources (beginning with Herodotus and Xenophon), in the east Anatolian mountains along the Araxes (Aras) river and around Mt. Ararat, Lake Van, Lake Rezaiyeh, and the upper courses of the Euphrates and Tigris; they extended as far north as the Cyrus (Kur) river. To that region they seem to have immigrated only about the 7th century B.C. Afterwards Armenia was part of the Median and Persian empires (see, e.g., Xenophon, Cyropaedia 2.4.22). About the Armenians’ nationality in Achaemenid times we can say almost nothing. The ethnonym itself and all other names attested with reference to the rebellions against Darius in Armina (the proper names Araxa, Haldita, and Dādṛšiš, the toponyms Zūzahya, Tigra, and Uyamā, and the district name Autiyāra) are not connected with Armenian linguistic and onomastic material attested later in native Armenian sources. They are also not Iranian, but seem related to Urartean (see Schmitt, “"Armenische" Namen in altpersischen Quellen”). Armina, a great and wealthy land (Xenophon, Anabasis 3.5.17; cf. Herodotus 5.49.6) on the so-called “Royal Road,” was part of the 13th tax district (nomós) according to Herodotus (3.93.1). The Armenians, who are called in this connection “descendants of the Phrygians” are equipped like the Phrygians and stand together with these under the order of Darius’ son-in-law Artochmes in the military review before King Xerxes in Thracian Doriscus (Herodotus 7.73). While so-called “Western Armenia” belonged to a governor Tiribazus in 401/400 B.C. (Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.4), the satrap of Armenia at the same time was Orontes (Xenophon, Anabasis 3.5.17); one of the Armenians’ leaders in the battle at Gaugamela, hence the presumed satrap of that province under Darius III Codomannus, is also called Orontes (Arrian, Anabasis 3.8.5). From the fact that at different times homonymous persons served as satraps of the same province, it may be inferred that this satrapy was (at least partly) hereditary within one family, in fact a family which can be traced to the famous “Seven Persians.” Bibliography : V. Bǎnǎţeanu, “Les arméniens des inscriptions de Behistūn,” Studia et Acta Orientalia I, 1957 [1958], pp. 65-81. R. Schmitt, “‘Armenische’ Namen in altpersischen Quellen,” Annual of Armenian Linguistics 1, 1980, pp. 7-17.
(R. Schmitt)
ii. The Pre-Islamic Period 1. The Achaemenid period. The Armenians probably originated from Phrygia (Herodotus 3.19, and see below; Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnika, ed. A. Meineke, Berlin, 1849 [repr. Graz, 1958], s.v. Armenia). In the first half of the 6th century B.C., when they were subjugated by the Medes, they were newcomers in the territory to which they were to give their name. The conquests of Cyrus the Great made them subjects of the Persians. They seceded at the time of Darius I’s accession, but two expeditions, the first led by Dādarši, himself an Armenian, the second under Vahumisa, a Persian, ended their rebellion (DB 2.37-63). At Babylon an Armenian named Arxa, son of Haldita, passed himself off as a son of Nabunaita (Nabonidus), causing a new rebellion there (DB 3.78f.). In connection with the accounts of these events in Darius’s inscription at Bīsotūn the names Armina (= Armenia) and Arminiya (= Armenian) appear for the first time. The Greek authors also use them. They bear no relation to the names Hay (pl. Haykʿ) and Hayastan which the Armenians gave, and still give, to themselves and their country. Armina under Darius and Xerxes had much narrower boundaries than the future Armenia of the Artaxiads and the Arsacids. The “Armenians” with the inhabitants of Paktyikē (?) and other peoples of the northwest formed the 13th satrapy, whose tribute was fixed at 400 talents (Herodotus 3.93). The Armenians in the strict sense must then have lived in areas between Cappadocia, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the lake of Van. They are clearly distinguished from the Alarodians ( = Urartians) who occupied the future province of Ayrarat ( = Urartu) on the Araxes and with the Saspires (further northeast) and the Matienians (further southeast) formed the 18th satrapy (ibid., 3.94, cf. 7.79). Because the Babylonian version of the Bīsotūn inscription gives Uraštu ( = Urartu) as the translation of the words Armina and Arminiya of the Persian text, it appears that the conception of Armenia was already tending to become confused with memories of Urartu. Probably during Darius’s reign, Aramaic was introduced into Armenia, as the language of the imperial administration, where it continued for centuries to be used in official documents (see below), and knowledge of Persian also began to spread among the Armenians, as attested by Xenophon (see below). In the “Tribute procession” carved on the Apadāna friezes at Persepolis, the Armenians bring a horse and a vase of precious metal. Their costume resembles the Median dress of the first delegation (G. Walser, Die Völkerschaften auf den Reliefs von Persepolis, Berlin, 1966, pp. 74-75, pls. X, XXXVI, XXXIX). In the army of Xerxes the Armenians were marshaled with the Phrygians and were similarly dressed (Herodotus 7.73). The royal road passed through Armenia for a length of 46 parasangs with 15 post-stations (Herodotus 5.52), and a different road crossing Armenia southeast to northwest was taken by Xenophon in 401 B.C. He mentions the province’s division into Eastern Armenia and Western Armenia, separated by the Teleboas (Kara-sū) river (Anabasis 4.4.3); the former was governed by Orontas (Persian Arvand, Armenian Ervand), regarded by many writers as the ancestor of the Orontids of Armenia; he was a son-in-law of Artaxerxes I (ibid., 2.4.8f. and 5.40; 3.4.13 and 5.17; 4.3.4; for his career see R. D. Wilkinson in Revue des études arméniennes, N.S. 7, 1970, pp. 445-50 and M. J. Osborne in Historia 22, 1973, pp. 515-51 ), the latter by Tiribazes, a favorite of the Great King (ibid., 4.4.4). Xenophon has also left observations about the inhabitants, mainly those of Western Armenia. The villages were administered by local notables called comarchoi who mediated between the people and the Achaemenid authorities. Although the lifestyle was rough, the countryside showed signs of prosperity. Horse breeding flourished, and the annual tribute to the Great King was paid in foals (ibid., 4.5.24 and 5.34). According to Strabo (11.14.9), the satrap of Armenia annually delivered 20,000 colts to the Great King. Significantly there is no mention of urban life. Another interesting fact noted by Xenophon is that the Persian language was understood and spoken in remote villages of Western Armenia (Anabasis 4.5.10, and 5.34). Interestingly, Darius III Codomannus governed Armenia for several years before his accession in 336, having been rewarded with the post for his victory over the Cadusians (Justin, 4.3.4). At the battle of Issus in 333, the Armenian contingent is said to have numbered 40,000 infantry and 7000 cavalry (Quintus Curtius 3.2.6; these figures are perhaps exaggerated). At Gaugamela (Arbela), the Armenian cavalrymen were, with the Cappadocians, on the right wing under Mithraustes and Orontes (Arrian, Anabasis 3.8.5 and 11.7; Quintus Curtius 4.12). These commanders were evidently the satraps of the two Armenias. There is no proof that this Orontes had a family connection with the earlier bearer of the name; but he survived the fall of the Achaemenid monarchy, and probably it was he who was the first of the Orontids, the hereditary satraps of Armenia. 2. The Hellenistic period. Armenia was annexed to Alexander’s empire but not really subdued. The governorship was given to Mithrenes (Mithrana), a Persian who had been the satrap of Sardis (Diodorus 17.21.7 and 64.6; Arrian, Anabasis 3.16; Quintus Curtius, 6.14.9). A Macedonian, Neoptolemus, is mentioned as holding the office soon after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C. but there are indications that he failed to quell an Armenian revolt, which may have been led by the former satrap Orontes. Reports speak of the reappearance of Orontes in 316 B.C. when he was on good terms with the Macedonian generals Eumenes and Peucestas (the satrap of Persis), and add interestingly that he used Aramaic in his correspondence with Eumenes (Diodorus 19.27.3; Polyaenus, Strategmata 4.8.3). Toward the beginning of the 3rd century B.C., a certain Ardoates (probably a misspelling for Aroantes or Aroandes, see J. Marquart, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte von Eran I, Leipzig, 1895, p. 27 n. l23) is mentioned with the title “king of Armenia” (Diodorus 31 .19.5); he may well have been an Orontid. Artabazanes, the satrap of Media Atropatene (Āturpātakān), though forced to submit to Antiochus II in 220 B.C., appears to have considerably extended his domain by seizing parts of eastern and northern Armenia (Polybius 5.55.7). It is perhaps around this time that the Orontes mentioned by Strabo (Geography 11.14.15) as the last of his line should be placed. One of the Greek inscriptions from the Hellenistic period found at Armavir in Soviet Armenia preserves a letter addressed by a king named Mithras to another named Orontes (on the text, see K. Trever, Ocherki po istorii i kul’ture drevneĭ Armenii, Moscow and Leningrad, 1953, p. 134 and fig. 28; J. and L. Robert, Bull. Epigr. 176, 1952, p. 183). This suggests that several dynasts then coexisted in the Araxes region. The inscriptions also show that Hellenism had penetrated into this Iranized land. One of the Orontids, called Ervand in the Armenian sources, chose a site at the confluence of the Araxes and Akhurean rivers for the construction of a town which he named Ervandašat (Arvandašat), i.e. “Ervand’s Joy;” apparently he intended that it should replace the old capital, Armavir (q.v.; see also Movsēs Xorenacʿi, Patmutʿiwn Hayocʿ [History of Armenia, Venice, 1865, Tiflis, 1881, tr. R. W. Thomson, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1978] 2.49; see also J. Saint-Martin, Mémoires historiques et géographiques sur l’Arménie, 2vols., Paris, 1818-19, I, pp. 116-17; H. Hübschmann, Die altarmenischen Ortsnamen, Strasbourg, 1904 [ = IF 16, pp. 197-490], p. 426; M. Hovhannessian, Les forteresses de l’Arménie, Venice, 1970, pp. 116-17). Ervand is also reputed to have ordered the construction of the fortress of Bagaran (a compound of Bag = God) and the removal of all the idols of Armavir thereto (Movsēs Xorenacʿi, 2.40), but this tradition should be treated with caution. In reality the Orontids were satraps under Seleucid suzerainty despite their claim to the title “king.” Insufficient evidence does not allow a reliable dynastic list and does not support the claim that leading Armenian families of the Christian period were descended from the Orontids (see K. Toumanoff, “A Note on the Orontids,” Le Muséon, 1959, pp. 23f.). A contemporary line of dynasts, of Persian origin but also vassals of the Seleucids, ruled in Sophene (the southwest of Armenia). That they were Orontids is uncertain. One of them named Arsames (Aršāma) is known to have received the fugitive throne-claimant Antiochus Hierax at his court some time before 226 B.C. (Polyaenus 4.17). The assumption that he is the “King Arsames” of certain coins (E. Babelon, Numismatique des rois de Syrie, d’Arménie et de Commagène, Paris, 1880, p. 211 and pl. XXXIX, 2) has now been strongly contested. He is thought to have been the founder of the city of Arsamosata (Aršamašat, i.e. “Joy of Arsames,” see H. Hübschmann, Ortsnamen, p. 406; N. Adontz, Armenia in the Period of Justinian, ed. N. Garsoïan, Lisbon, 1970, pp. 28f.; Hovhannessian, Forteresses, pp. 80f.). Whether this was the Arsames mentioned among the ancestors of Antiochus of Commagene in the Nīmrōd Dāğ and Arsameia inscriptions (see Th. Reinach, Revue des études grecques 3, 1890, p. 369; E. Honigmann, in Pauly-Wissowa, Supp. IV, col. 981; F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, Oxford, 1957 ff., II, p. 99; F. K. Dörner, Istambuler Forschungen 23, 1963, p. 72). One of the satrap kings of Sophene (possibly the same Arsames) refused to pay tribute to his Seleucid overlord, but besieged in Arsamosata by Antiochus III the Great in 212 B.C., his son Xerxes came to terms and recognized Seleucid suzerainty (Polybius 8.23.1f.), but a few years later he was murdered at the behest of his wife, who was sister of Antiochus III (John of Antioch, frag. 53, ed. C. Müller, Fragmenta historicorum graecorum, 5 vols., Paris, 1841-70, IV, p. 557). Coins of this prince show him wearing the Sophenian tiara; the legend reads “King Xerxes” (Babelon, Rois de Syrie, p. 212 and pl. XXXIX, 6-7). 3. The Artaxiad dynasty. About 190 B.C. Artaxias (Arm. Artaxšas) in Armenia and Zariadris (Arm. Zareh) in Sophene ruled as vassals of the Seleucids, bearing the Greek title sratēgós, but they used Antiochus’ defeat at Magnesia in 189 B.C. to rise—with Roman help—to independence (Strabo, Geography 11.14.15). a. The reign of Artaxias. Aramaic inscriptions on boundary stones which have been discovered in Soviet Armenia, mainly around Lake Sevan (see below), name Artaxias as the son of a certain Zariadris (Zariatr) and one of the Orontids (Arvandakān). Thus the founder of the Artaxiad dynasty was, or claimed to be, an Orontid. Like the kings of Pontus and the line of Ariarathes in Cappadocia, the Artaxiads adhered in the main to the Achaemenid monarchical tradition, though they were not untouched by the influence of Hellenism which began to gain ground in Armenia. Before long they formed links with the Arsacid dynasty by means of matrimonial alliances. Artaxias and Zariadris of Sophene who may perhaps have been close relatives, joined forces to conquer a vast area. The domains of Artaxias, at first limited to the Araxes valley, were greatly enlarged at the expense of Iberia and, above all, of Media Atropatene, which lost its Caspian seaboard and the districts of Phaunitis (Siunia ?) and Basoporeda (Vāspūrakān, east of Lake Van). At the same time Zariadris annexed Acilisene (Ekeleacʿ) and Taraunitis (Taron) (Strabo 11.14.5 and 15). The peoples who were thus brought together in the kingdoms of Armenia and Sophene all spoke one and the same language: Armenian (Strabo, ibid.); yet imperial Aramaic (with a quite strong admixture of Persian terms) was still the language of the government and the court, a survival of Achaemenid practices in Armenia down to the first half of the 2nd century B.C. Artaxias gave orders for the delimitation of villages and fields. The report of this action by Movsēs Xorenacʿi (2.65) has been confirmed by the recent discovery of boundary stones with Aramaic inscriptions (J. Naveh, Die Welt des Orients, 1971, pp. 42-46; J. Teixidor, Syria, 1969, p. 120; 1972, p. 142; 1973, pp. 433-34). Among Artaxias’ numerous flattering epithets on these stones we find ʾxšhsrt, an unexplained Persian term (see J. Teixidor, Syria, 1973, p. 434). Artaxias built a fortress city at a site on the left bank of the Araxes, near the present Khorvirap, which was to remain the seat of the Armenian monarchy until the 2nd century A.D. (see below); it was named Artaxšas-šāt (Joy of Artaxias), abbreviated to Artašat in Armenian and Artaxata in Greek (see H. Hübschmann, Armen. Etymologie, p. 28, 211, and Ortsnamen, pp. 362, 408; H. Manandian, The Trade and Cities of Armenia in Connection with Ancient World Trade, Lisbon, 1965, index, p. 232; Hovhannessian, Forteresses, pp. 869-79). It is hard to believe the statements of Strabo (11.14.6) and Plutarch (Lucullus 31.5) that Hannibal took refuge at the Armenian court and that the city was designed and built on his advice. Excavations, still in progress after several years, have already yielded amongst other things a lapis-lazuli plate, an enamel spoon with Aramaic letters, and a fragment of stucco with an Aramaic graffito (see B. N. Arakelian, Artashat I. On Results of Excavations in 1970-77 = Arkheologicheskie raskopki v Armenii, No. 16, Erevan, 1982). b. Tigranes the Great. In 165/64 B.C. Artaxias was defeated and captured by Antiochus IV (Diodorus 31.17a; Appian, Syrian War 45-; Hieronymus, Comment. ad Danielem 11.49), but he managed to aid Timarchos, Satrap of Media, in 161/60 B.C. (Diodorus 31.27a). At the end of the 2nd century B.C., another Armenian King, Artavazdes (Artoadistes in Justin 43.2) was defeated by Mithridates II of Parthia. Probably a grandson of Artaxias, Artavazdes delivered his brother or son Tigranes (Tigrana) as hostage (Justin, loc. cit.; Strabo 11.14.15). The relationship is uncertain, because Appian (op. cit., 83) describes Tigranes as the son of another Tigranes. After spending many years at the Parthian court, Tigranes was sent back with the support of Mithridates II, who in return exacted the cession of the Seventy Valleys (Strabo 11.14.15; Justin 43.3.1 ) and, despite the silence of the sources, no doubt also the recognition of Arsacid suzerainty. The Seventy Valleys were long to be a bone of contention between Armenia and Parthia; they probably lay on the border with Atropatene and may have been part of the area taken from Atropatene by Artaxias (see Markwart, Ērānšahr, pp. 109, 173). The accession of Tigranes I (Tigranes II according to certain authors) is usually dated to 95 or 94 B.C. (F. Geyer, “Tigrane (no. 1),” in Pauly-Wissowa, VI A/1, col. 970; H. Seyrig, Revue numismatique, 1959, p. 117 n. 40; H. A. Manandian, Tigrane II et Rome, Lisbon, 1963, p. 22), but should perhaps be moved back by a few years. He was already of a ripe age, having been born ca. 140. His first move was to attack Sophene, then ruled by Artanes, which he conquered without resistance and united to the kingdom of Greater Armenia, thereby gaining a big territorial extension to the southwest and the west. He then (ca. 93 B.C.?) became an ally and son-in-law of the king of Pontus, Mithridates Eupator. On the latter’s behalf he invaded Cappadocia, which adjoined Sophene, and evicted its king Ariobarzanes, who was a protégé of the Romans. The Roman commander, Sulla, soon reinstated Ariobarzanes, and then met Mithridates II’s envoy on the bank of the Euphrates (Plutarch, Sulla 5.4; N.C. Debevoise, A Political History of Parthia, Chicago, 1938, p. 46 n. 67). Tigranes, whose troops had just been driven out of Cappadocia, probably viewed these Parthian-Roman talks with suspicion, but he remained the ally of Mithridates II, one of whose wives was Tigranes’ daughter Aryazate, surnamed Automa (parchment from Awrōmān dated year 225 of the Seleucid era = November, 88 B.C.; see ibid., p. 47 and E. Sullivan in H. Temporini and W. Haase, eds., Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II/9, Berlin, 1976, pp. 911-14). When Mithridates II’s position grew weaker in his last years Tigranes invaded Parthia, recovered the Seventy Valleys probably some time after 90 B.C., and took Atropatene, Adiabene, Gordyene, Osrhoene, and Upper Mesopotamia including Nisibis (Strabo 11.14.15). From Atropatene, Tigranes pushed into Media Major as far as the gates of Ecbatana, where he burned down the Parthian court’s summer residence (Adrapana in Isidore of Charax, Parthian Stations 6, to be corrected into Apadana, see Th. Reinach, Mithridate Eupator roi du Pont, Paris 1890, p. 311 n. 6). According to Plutarch (Lucullus 21.6), no previous adversary had dealt such blows to Parthian power. The campaigns of conquest are said to have been terminated by the conclusion of an alliance between Tigranes and one of Mithridates II’s successors (Justin 40.1.3; see below). In or around 84/83 B.C., Tigranes attacked the remnant of the Seleucid kingdom, took Commagene, Cilicia Pedias, and Phoenicia; Syria including Antioch came to him either by force (Strabo 11.l4.15; Appian, Syr. 48f., 69; Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 13.16.4; Eutropius, Breviarium ab urbe condita 6.14.2), or voluntarily (Justin 41.1.1-3; on the successive conquests of Tigranes, see Reinach, Mithridate, pp. 3l1f.; P. Asdourian, Die politischen Beziehungen zwischen Armenien und Rom l90 v. Chr. bis 428 n. Chr., Venice, 1911, pp. 19-20; F. Geyer, in Pauly-Wissowa, VIA/1, cols. 970f.; Manandian, Tigrane II, pp. 41f.). The local kings of Atropatene, Adiabene, Osrhoene, Gordyene, and Commagene were left in office as vassals of the Armenian crown. The Nisibis district, perhaps with the enhanced status of a satrapy, was put under the command of Gouras, a brother of Tigranes. The governorship of Syria went to a certain Megadates or Bagadates (Bagadāt, Arm. Bagarat) (Appian, op. cit., 48); the view that this dignitary was the ancestor and eponym of the great Armenian family of the Bagratids seems speculative. Having thus become the master of a vast empire and the overlord of many kings, Tigranes deemed himself worthy of the title “king of kings” (on his coins with this title, see Babelon, Rois de Syrie, pp. cciii and 213-15; G. Macdonald, NC, 1902, pp. 196f.; Kh. A. Mushegian, Trésors monétaires d’Arménie, pp. 78-80 and plate; P. Bedoukian, “A Classification of the Coins of the Artaxiad Dynasty of Armenia,” The American Numismatic Soc. Museum: Notes 16, 1968, pp. 12f. and 47f.). He thus presented himself as the successor of Mithridates II, the Arsacid king who had first (ca. 109/108) assumed this title. Nevertheless on his coins minted at Antioch he was generally content with the simple designation of king. The court ceremonial maintained by Tigranes was on lines inherited from the Achaemenids with borrowing of Parthian features. The Roman envoy who was sent by Lucullus and received in audience at Antioch in 70 reported that Tigranes was served by four kings who always stood submissively to attention in his presence (Plutarch, Lucullus 21.6). J. Markwart thought that these four persons might be the four vitaxes (Arm. bdeašx; on the office, see below); but the context suggests that they were more probably kings who had been reduced to vassalage (see A. von Gutschmid, Geschichte Irans und seiner Nachbarländer, Tübingen, 1888, p. 85). Just as the regal style of Tigranes conformed to the authentic Persian tradition, his religion, like that of Mithridates Eupator of Pontus, undoubtedly hinged on Mazdaism. Nevertheless he promoted the spread of Hellenism in his dominions and even designated himself “Philhellene,” evidently in imitation of the Parthian kings who since Mithridates I had happily assumed that title. Wishing to have a worthy capital, he laid the foundations of a huge city on the Hellenistic plan and named it Tigranocerta (Arm. Tigranakert) after himself (see H. Hübschmann, Ortsnamen, pp. 473-75). Greek deportees from Cappadocia and Cilicia were the economically active elements in this city’s population (Strabo 11.14.15; Appian, The Mithridatic War 67.84; Plutarch, Lucullus 26.1 ). In spite of its characteristics of an Hellenistic city, Tigranocerta retained some aspects of an Iranian royal residence, i.e., vast parks and hunting grounds around its suburbs (Appian, op. cit., 84). The location of Tigranocerta is uncertain. Discussion has centered on Amida, Arzen Seʿert, Mayyāfāreqīn, Tell Ermen, and other sites in southern Armenia and northern Mesopotamia. Though C. F. Lehmann-Haupt’s weighty arguments (e.g. in Pauly-Wissowa, VI A/1, cols. 981-1007) in favor of Mayyāfāreqīn (Martyropolis, Arm. Nephrkert) gained wide acceptance, the case for Tell Ermen in northeastern Mesopotamia has more recently been advocated with vigor by L. Dillemann, (La Haute Mésopotamie orientale et les pays adjacents, Paris, 1962, pp. 247f. and passim). In 70 B.C. Mithridates Eupator, having been defeated in Pontus, took refuge in the dominions of Tigranes, who refused to deliver him to the Roman general, Lucullus. In the spring of 69 B.C. Lucullus marched into Armenia and laid siege to Tigranocerta. Close to the city’s walls, one of the most memorable battles of antiquity was fought, with disastrous results for Tigranes. The Romans soon took and sacked Tigranocerta, which was still in the process of construction (Appian, op. cit., 83-86; Memnon, secs. 56-57 = Fragmenta historicorum graecorum III, pp. 555-56; Dio Cassius 36.1bf.; Sallust, Historiarum fragmenta 4.61f. See also K. Eckhardt, Klio 10, 1910, pp. 91 f.; P. Asdourian, op. cit., pp. 31-32; J. van Ooteghem, Mémoires de l’Académie Royale de Belgique 43, 1959, pp. 117-33; H. Manadian, Tigrane II, pp. 93f,). This defeat sounded the knell for the empire of Tigranes. He subsequently made an alliance with Mithridates Eupator, and on the latter’s advice sent an embassy to the Parthian king, Phraates III, offering to retrocede Adiabene, northern Mesopotamia, and the Seventy Valleys and arguing that assistance to the allied kings would be in the Parthian interest (Appian, op. cit., 87; Memnon, sec. 58 = Fragmenta p. 556f.); but Phraates, who had also been approached by the Romans, hesitated to commit himself to either side. The Armenians, with some aid from Pontic troops, continued to fight in southern Armenia and northern Mesopotamia (battle of the Arsanias river in 68 B.C.; capture of Nisibis by Lucullus in the winter of 68-67). The appointment of Pompey to the supreme command of the Roman army in the east in 67 brought the war to the phase of decision. Mithridates of Pontus was defeated at Dasteira (Nicopolis) in the spring of 66 and then fled to Armenia. At about the same time Tigranes had to deal with the revolt of his son Tigranes “the Younger.” Eventually the latter, together with his supporters, found shelter at the Parthian court, where he married the daughter of Phraates (Appian op. cit., 104; Dio Cassius 36.50.1 and 51.1). Phraates invaded Armenia, but failed to capture Artaxata. Tigranes the Younger was soon beaten off by his father and left with no choice but to take refuge with Pompey, who had already penetrated into Armenia. Accompanied by this prince, Pompey advanced to the neighborhood of Artaxata and obtained the submission of Tigranes the Great at minimal cost. The king presented himself voluntarily and in full regalia at the Roman camp (Plutarch, Pompeius 33.2.4; Appian, op. cit., 104; Dio Cassius 36.52.1-4. See also H. Manandian, Tigrane II, pp. 170-75). Tigranes had to renounce all his conquests, while Tigranes the Younger received Sophene (and Gordyene?) as apanages (Plutarch, op. cit., 33.5; Appian, op. cit., 104-05; Dio Cassius, 36.52.2). This turn of events enabled the Parthians to recover many of the territories which Tigranes had taken from them. Tigranes the Younger soon incurred the displeasure of Pompey, was arrested and sent to Rome; his father-in-law Phraates pleaded in vain for his release (Plutarch, op. cit., 33.7). King Tigranes, on the other hand, received several tokens of the victor’s respect. Pompey restored Gordyene (Plutarch, op. cit., 36.1) and even part of Upper Mesopotamia (Strabo 16.2.24) to Tigranes and apparently went so far as to reserve the title “king of kings” for him while withholding it from Phraates (Dio Cassius 37.6.2, where Tigranes is obviously confused with Tigranes the Younger). Having thus become the ally and protégé of the Romans (Dio Cassius, 36.53.5), Tigranes stayed on the Armenian throne until his death in 55/54 B.C. c. The successors of Tigranes the Great. Artavazdes I (55/54-34 B.C.), the son and immediate successor of Tigranes the Great, was a very cultured prince with a sufficient mastery of Greek to write discourses, tragedies, and historical treatises in that language (Plutarch, Crassus 33.2). Throughout his reign he wavered between the Romans and the Parthians. He was allied to the former by virtue of his father’s treaty with Pompey, but being himself of Iranian extraction, had deep-rooted ties with the latter. Each power aspired to dominate Armenia. On his coins Artavazdes styled himself “king of kings” (H. Seyrig, Revue numismatique, 1956, p. 119, and 1964, pp. 138-40; Kh. Mushegian, op. cit., pp. 25-27 and plate; P. Bedoukian, op. cit., pp. 25-27, 69-70, and plate 6), but this title was purely nominal and also used by his Arsacid contemporary, Orodes II. When Crassus set out on his campaign against the Parthians in 53 B.C., Artavazdes was unable to provide the Romans with promised reinforcements because Orodes II had swiftly occupied Armenia (Plutarch, Crassus 22.2). Crassus’s army met with crushing defeat at Carrhae in June 53 B.C. Meanwhile Orodes and Artavazdes had come to terms and sealed their compact with the betrothal of the Armenian king’s sister to the Parthian king’s eldest son, Pacorus. When the news of the victory at Carrhae was brought, together with Crassus’s head, to Artaxata, the two kings were attending a performance of one of the tragedies of Euripides (Plutarch, Crassus 33). In the following years, Roman authorities (notably Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 5.16.4 and ad familiares 15.3.1) suspected Artavazdes of collusion with the Parthians, but apparently he did not depart from a policy of strict neutrality. In 36 B.C. Artavazdes joined Mark Antony’s expedition against the Parthians and the king of Atropatene. The Romans advanced to Phraaspa (in Atropatene), which they unsuccessfully besieged, but Artavazdes and all his troops withdrew at the first Roman setback (Plutarch, Antonius 39; Dio Cassius 49.25.4). He thereby incurred Antony’s enmity. Two years later, Antony returned to Armenia and captured the king and his family (Dio Cassius 49.39.3-5). Artavazdes was taken to Egypt and put to death by order of Cleopatra in 31 B.C.; his head was sent to the king of Atropatene, another Artavazdes, who had become Antony’s ally. After the capture of King Artavazdes of Armenia, one of his sons, who had escaped from Antony’s clutches, was proclaimed king by the people, and given the name Artaxias II. He was soon driven out when the Romans occupied the whole country, but he was able to escape to the Arsacid court and, a few years later (ca. 30 B.C.), to recover his throne with Parthian help (Dio Cassius 49.44.4, 51.16.2). During his reign the Parthian influence in Armenia remained strong. At Rome, however, power passed to the emperor Augustus, who was determined that the Roman suzerainty should be reestablished and that only candidates acceptable to him should be allowed to reign in Armenia (on the Armenian policy of Augustus, see P. Asdourian, op. cit., pp. 74-77; M. L. Chaumont, “L’Arménie entre Rome et l’Iran,” in Temporini and Haase, eds., op. cit., pp. 75f.). He therefore sent out his stepson Tiberius with orders to enthrone Tigranes II (or III), who was probably one of the surviving sons of Artavazdes II. Before the arrival of Tiberius, Artaxias II was assassinated, undoubtedly at the instigation of the pro-Roman party (Tacitus, Annals 2.3.4; Suetonius, Tiberius in Vitae Caesarum, Tübner ed., 1908, 9.1; Dio Cassius 55.9.5). Tigranes II had a short reign and was succeeded by his son Tigranes III (or IV), whose sister Erato shared power with him. This prince, who had been crowned without Roman approval, definitely leaned toward the Parthians. Being determined to assert Roman authority at any price, Augustus then supported the claim of a certain Artavazdes, probably another son of Artavazdes II; but the pro-Parthian faction restored Tigranes III, who eventually, under the pressure of the circumstances, acknowledged Roman suzerainty (Dio Cassius 55.10.20). On the death of Tigranes III, Augustus instructed his grandson Gaius to place Ariobarzanes, a son of King Artavazdes of Media Atropatene, on the Armenian throne (Res Gestae Divi Augusti 27; Tacitus, Annals 2.4.3; Dio Cassius 55.10a.5). The dynasty of Atropatene had long been linked by marriages to the Artaxiads (Strabo 11.13.1; see R. D. Sullivan, Eastern Dynastic Network, in Temporini and Haase, eds., op. cit., II/8, 1977, pp. 916-18). Augustus’ action provoked an Armenian uprising, and Gaius had to prepare for a siege of the fortress of Artagira (Artagerkʿ in the province of Ayrarat), where an insurgent leader named Addon had entrenched himself; during this operation Gaius was ambushed and mortally wounded (Strabo 11.14.6; Tacitus, Annals 1.3.3; Velleius Paterculus 2.102.2; Dio Cassius 55.10a.6-8; see N. C. Debevoise, op. cit., pp. 149-50). Ariobarzanes was succeeded by his son Artavazdes III. After the latter’s death, the Armenians wanted no more of the Atropatenian line (Tacitus, Annals 2.4.2). One of Herod the Great’s grandsons, Tigranes IV (V), was then appointed king of Armenia; he made himself disliked by his subjects and was deposed after a very short reign (Tacitus, Annals 6.40.2; Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 17.1.2; Res Gestae Divi Augusti 27.2, ed. Gagé, pp. 130-31 ). After a brief spell in which the Artaxiad Erato, sister and widow of Tigranes III, was restored while the country sank into anarchy, the vacant throne was offered about A.D. 12 to Vonones; a son of Phraates IV whom Artabanus II had just driven out of Parthia. Although he was romanized and romanophile, the Roman authorities shortly withdrew their support and ordered him back to Syria (Tacitus, Annals 2.3.2 and 4.4-5; Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.2.4, see R. Hanslik, in Pauly-Wissowa, Suppl. IX, cols. 1865-(7). The dynastic issue was again in deadlock. 4. The Parthian period. a. The efforts of the Arsacids. For a long time the Arsacids had set their eyes on Armenia, a former territory of the Achaemenid empire. Proof of this had been given by Mithridates II’s war against Artavazdes I (see above). Hitherto, however, they had not succeeded in permanently imposing their authority on this warlike and independent-minded nation. No credence can be given to the Armenian sources which date the foundation of the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia back to Vałaršak, or Arsaces the Lesser, a brother of a Parthian king Arsaces the Great, in the 2nd century B.C. (This tradition, said to have come down from a secretary of Vałaršak named Mar Abas Katina, is cited by the Pseudo-Sebeos, ed. Patkanean, 1879, p. 9 = V. Langlois, Historiens I, p. 199, and by Movsēs Xorenacʿi 1.9, 12, 31 and 2.1-9 = Langlois II, pp. 28, 56, 62, 65, 76, 80-85.) Vonones was the first of his line to wear the Armenian crown, but it was only from the time of Artabanus II (long known as Artabanus III) of Parthia that the Arsacids entered the struggle for the throne of Armenia in real earnest. In A.D. 18 the emperor Tiberius’ commissioner, Germanicus, crowned a foreign prince, Zeno, at Artaxata with the consent of the Armenian nobles. Zeno, who was a son of King Polemon of Pontus, adopted the Irano-Armenian name Artaxias (III) and, having acquired some knowledge of Armenian customs, reigned peacefully until his death in 35 (Tacitus, Annals 2.56.2-4). It was then that Artabanus II resolved to make his eldest son Arsaces (Aršak) king of Armenia. At the same time he demanded restitution of treasures left in Syria by Vonones and restoration of “the frontiers of the Achaemenids and the Macedonians” (Tacitus, Annals 6.31.12; Dio Cassius 58.26.1). In reply, Tiberius immediately put up his own candidate Mithridates, a brother of King Pharasmanes of Iberia. Mithridates the Iberian soon contrived to have Arsaces assassinated and to take possession of Artaxata (Tacitus, Annals 6.32.3 and 33.1 ). Thereupon Artabanus assumed the role of avenger of Arsaces and sent another of his sons, Orodes (Vorod), with a strong force to seize power in Armenia. Mithridates could only maintain his position by calling in the Albanians and also nomad tribes living beyond the Caucasus. The Parthians were defeated and had to leave Armenia to Mithridates, who kept control until he was summoned to Rome by the emperor Caligula. The emperor Claudius released him in 42, but he had to fight for repossession of his kingdom, where the Parthians had again won a foothold (Dio Cassius 60.8.1; Tacitus, Annals 11.8.1, 9.1-2). Their king Vardanes, who had temporarily ousted his brother and rival Gotarzes, at first intended to recover Armenia, but soon desisted under the threat of Roman intervention (Tacitus, Annals 11.10.1; Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.3.4). The Parthian dynastic troubles gave some years of respite to Mithridates the Iberian, whose cruelty made him odious to the Armenians. In 51, however, the Armenian throne was snatched from him by his nephew and son-in-law Rhadamistus with the connivance of the latter’s father, King Pharasmanes. Mithridates escaped to the fortress of Garni and eventually fell through treachery into the hands of his adversary, who put him and his family to death (Tacitus, Annals 12, 45-47). The decisive phase in the struggle for Armenia began with the accession of the Parthian king Vologeses (Valagaš) I ca. 5l. Resuming the policy of Artabanus II but without flinching before obstacles, he resolved to place one of his brothers, Tiridates, on the throne of Armenia. Thanks to the unpopularity of Rhadamistus, he had no difficulty in occupying Artaxata and Tigranocerta (Tacitus, Annals 12.50.1-2). The Iberian king, however, escaped. In 52 Tiridates was able to establish himself at the capital. In the face of this Parthian coup, the emperor Nero and his advisers decided to intervene. An expedition under the command of Cnaeus Domitius Corbulo was mobilized. Notwithstanding the withdrawal of the Parthian troops, Tiridates, who cherished his royal vocation, remained at Artaxata (see P. Asdourian, op. cit., p. 89 n .1). In the spring of 58 Corbulo marched into Armenia at the head of some 30,000 men. His main targets were Artaxata and Tigranocerta. After Tiridates had fled, Artaxata surrendered without resistance but was sacked and burned down (Tacitus, Annals 13.41.1-3; Dio Cassius 62.20.1). In the spring of the following year, 59, it was the turn of Tigranocerta to open its gates to the Romans. (On this point, the account of Frontinus, Strategmata 2.9.5, differs considerably from that of Tacitus, Annals 14.24.5-6. On the whole campaign see E. Egli, “Feldzüge in Armenien, von 41-63,” in M. Büdinger, Untersuchungen zur römischen Kaisergeschichte I, Leipzig, 1868, pp. 265-363, esp. pp. 321f.; J. G. C. Anderson, in CAH X, 1934, pp. 760f.; L. Dillemann, Haute Mésopotamie, pp. 268-71; K. Gilmartin, Historia 12, 1973, pp. 594f.). In the wake of Corbulo’s successes, Nero designated Tigranes V (or VI), a descendant of Herod the Great and nephew of Tigranes IV (see above) formerly detained in Rome as a hostage, to be Armenia’s next king. He was not well received because the Arsacids still had many supporters (Tacitus, Annals 14.26.1-2). Moreover he rashly ventured on raids into Adiabene, a Parthian dependency. The complaints of the aggrieved king of Adiabene, Monobazes, and the reproaches of Tiridates who was intent on regaining his throne, together sufficed to persuade Vologeses to take up arms (Tacitus, Annals 15.1.1-5). At the same time Vologeses solemnly crowned Tiridates in the presence of the Parthian assembly of nobles, thereby formally making his brother his vassal. (There is reason to suppose that the ceremony, which Tacitus briefly describes, was normal practice at investitures of vassal kings of Arsacid descent.) Armenia was placed third in the hierarchy of the Parthian monarchy’s dependencies, the second rank having already been assigned to Atropatene, whose king was Pacorus, the brother of Vologeses and Tiridates (Tacitus, Annals 15.1-4). Having made up his mind to support his brother’s cause, the Parthian king quickly sent forces under Monaeses and King Monobazes against Tigranocerta, where Tigranes V had established himself under the protection of a Roman garrison. When their siege of the town failed, Vologeses agreed to an armistice, which apparently included a secret clause requiring both parties to withdraw their troops (Tacitus, Annals 15.5.46; Dio Cassius 62.20.3-4, see K. H. Ziegler, Die Beziehungen zwischen Rom und dem Partherreich, Wiesbaden, 1964, pp. 69-70). It was a shaky truce, and hostilities soon recommenced. The Romans under a new commander in chief, Paetus, were surrounded in their camp at Rhandeia (Erand) on the Arsanias river and forced to capitulate (Tacitus, Annals 15.14-16; Dio Cassius 62.21.1-4). Paetus misreported this defeat as a victory. The Parthians were in fact not fully in control of the situation. It was again time for negotiations. A Parthian embassy to Rome (Spring 63) remained without practical results. But shortly after his return to Armenia the Roman general Corbulon (restored to the command of the army of the east) received the envoys of Vologeses and Tiridates. It was agreed to hold a conference at the same spot where Paetus had capitulated (Tacitus, Annals 15.28.2-3). During the talks on the future of Armenia, Tiridates made much of the nobility of his lineage but consented to travel to Rome and “bring to Caesar a new glory, that of a supplicant Arsacid” (Tacitus, Annals 15.28.5-6 and 29.1-2). A few days later, the Roman camp was the scene of a ceremony in which, before the onlooking Parthian cavalrymen and Roman legionaries, the Arsacid prince laid his crown at the feet of a statue of Nero (Tacitus, Annals 15.29.3-5 and 30.12). Under the treaty which was then signed at Rhandeia, investiture of Armenia’s kings was to be reserved to Rome’s emperors. Nevertheless Armenia had become an Arsacid fief, because the actual choice of its kings lay with the Parthian monarch. The situation has rightly been described as a “co-suzerainty” (Ziegler, op. cit., pp. 75f.). b. The Arsacid dynasty: Tiridates I and his successors. Tiridates made the journey to Rome with much pomp and circumstance and in the company of his wife and children and two of his brothers. His escort included 3,000 Parthian cavalrymen, several sages, and also a large number of Romans. (For a detailed account of Tiridates’ journey and stay at Rome see Dio Cassius 63.1-7.) The Romans went to great expense in their reception of the prince, whom everybody wanted to see. Kneeling before Nero, Tiridates said in a short speech in Greek that he was the emperor’s slave and had come to worship the emperor in the same way as he worshipped Mithras, whereupon Nero gave him the accolade and crowned him with the diadem (Dio Cassius 63.4, 5; Suetonius, Nero 13.3). It has been suggested that this scenario was inspired by an episode in the legend of Mithras (F. Cumont, “L’iniziazione di Nerone da parte di Tiridate d’Armenia,” Rivista di filologia 61, 1933, pp. 147f.). It is perhaps more likely that the kneeling and the wording of Tiridates’ speech were borrowed from the ritual in use at the Parthian court when the Arsacid king of kings, under the aegis of Mithras, the god of contract, invested a vassal king. In this context, the Greek doulos (slave) was probably the equivalent of bandak, which meant vassal in the terminology of Iranian feudalism. Tiridates left Rome with some architects and a subsidy for the reconstruction of Artaxata (Dio Cassius 63.6.5-6); the town was to be officially renamed Neroneia (Dio Cassius 63.7.2), but the new name appears to have fallen very quickly into disuse. In A.D. 72 hordes of Alans overran Atropatene and Armenia. This invasion caused concern at Rome and prompted the emperor Vespasian to strengthen the defenses of Harmozica, the capital of Iberia, where there was a Roman garrison. Tiridates, while fighting the invaders, ran into great danger and narrowly escaped being taken prisoner (Flavius Josephus, Bellum judaicum 7.7.4). This is the last mention of him in the sources. The date of the end of his reign is not known. The names and dates of the successors of Tiridates can only be conjectured, as little or no information is available from either literary or numismatic sources. It would appear that the Arsacids of Armenia did not possess the royal privilege of minting coins; this must indeed have been the case if they were strictly subordinate to their suzerain, the Arsacid great king of Iran. Through careful collation of various texts (by U. Ph. Boissevain, Hermes 25, 1980, pp. 328-29, and in his ed. of Dio Cassius, vol. 3, pp. 218-19, notes), sufficient evidence has been obtained to justify inclusion of the name of Sanatroces (Sanatruk), who must have reigned at the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries, in the list of Armenia’s kings (see Markwart, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte von Eran II, pp. 221-22; Asdourian, op. cit., pp. 100f.; H. Manadian, The Trade and Cities of Armenia, p. 83). Arrian in his Parthica praises this ruler’s merits and equates him with the most illustrious Greeks and Romans (Parthica, fragment 47, ed. A.G. Roos and G. Wirth, Teubner ed., 1968, p. 247). The Armenian authors mention him as the founder of the town of Mcurkʿ (Pʿawstos Buzand 4.14 = Langlois, I, p. 250; Mar Abas Katina apud Pseudo-Sebeos = Langlois, I, p. 195; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 2.36 = Langlois, II, p. 99). He was buried in a tomb of cyclopean construction at Ani (Pʿawstos 4 = Langlois, I, p. 261). Probably he is the same person as the King Sanatruk whom the hagiographic tradition blames for the martyrdoms of the Christian missionary St. Thaddeus and of his own daughter Sandukht (on problems arising from this tradition, see F. Tournebize, Histoire politique et religieuse de l’Arménie, Paris, 1910, pp. 410-413; L.S. Koyan, L’Ēglise arménienne jusqu’au Concile de Florence, 1961, pp. 29 f.; also M. van Esbroek, Revue des études arméniennes, N.S., 1972, pp. 243-92, who against all probability argues for the identity of this king of Armenia with the Arab king of Hatra, Sanatruk I (ca. 177/178), son of ʿAbd Simayā. The supposition that Sanatruk survived until the time of Trajan’s campaign is contradicted by the fact that the throne of Armenia was held about 110 by Axidares, a son of the Parthian monarch Pacorus II. When Pacorus was supplanted by Osroes (i.e. Ḵosrow), the latter deposed Axidares and installed that prince’s brother Parthamasiris without consulting the Roman emperor. This breach of the treaty of Rhandeia gave Trajan a pretext for war. The Roman expeditionary force left Antioch in the autumn of 114. Trajan marched straight into Armenia, the territory in dispute, halting at Satala (in Lesser Armenia) and then at Elegeia (near Erzurum). There, before the assembled Roman troops, he gave an audience to Parthamasiris, who had come in the hope that Trajan would crown him in the same way as Nero had crowned Tiridates. Trajan, however, rejected his claim and then and there declared Armenia to be a Roman province (Dio Cassius 68.19.2-5 and 20.1-3). Thus the Arsacid dynasty’s rule in Armenia was brought to an end. Not long after the meeting, Parthamasiris was killed in obscure circumstances which did not exclude the possibility that Trajan was responsible (Fronto, Principia historiae, Loeb ed., II, pp. 212-14; Arrian, Parthica, fragment 39; Dio Cassius 68.17.4; see also A. V. Gutschmid, op. cit., p. 105; N.C. Debevoise, op. cit., p. 224). Armenia was attached to the province of Cappadocia, which already comprised Lesser Armenia. Trajan left the task of taking Artaxata to one of his generals (on the presence of a Roman garrison at Artaxata in 116, see Année épigraphique, 1968, nos. 510 and 511). He himself proceeded to Nisibis and thence to Edessa. His triumphant expedition culminating in the capture of Ctesiphon in the summer of 116 will not be discussed here. The Roman conquests were too rapid, and from the spring of 116 onward revolts broke out in all the annexed territories. Armenia was one of the main trouble-spots. Among the rebel leaders a certain Sanatroces/Sanatruk is mentioned (Malalas, Chronographia, ed. L. Dindorf, Bonn, 1831, XI, pp. 270 and 273-74, where he is wrongly described as “king of the Persians”), and attempts have been made to identify him with the king of Armenia discussed above. Also mentioned is Vologeses son of Sanatroces, who concluded an armistice with the Roman governor Lucius Catilius Severus and received from him “a part of Armenia” (Dio Cassius 74.9.6; see also U. Ph. Boissevain, Hermes 25, 1890, pp. 329f.). It must have been a big concession to the opposing side. This step was ratified and implemented by the emperor Hadrian, who renounced all his predecessor’s conquests in the east and “permitted the Armenians to have a king” (Vita Hadriani 23.10). Thus Parthian suzerainty over Armenia on the terms of the treaty of Rhandeia was again formally acknowledged; it was at the same time given practical expression through the investiture of Vologeses. This king, the Vałarš of the Armenians, was certainly the founder of Vałaršapat, the town “made populous by Vałarš” (H. Hübschmann, Ortsnamen, p. 470); somewhat later this town (the future Echmiadzin) was made the kingdom’s capital instead of Artaxata (on the foundation of Vałaršapat, see P. Asdourian, op. cit., p. 110; H. Manandian, The Trade and Cities of Armenia, pp. 84-86). Vologeses/Vałarš was still reigning in 136 when hordes of Alans burst into Atropatene and Armenia, pushing as far west as Cappadocia; apparently he and the governor of Cappadocia made a joint effort to check the advance of the barbarians (Dio Cassius 79.15.1-2). The account of a campaign of Vałarš against the peoples of the north given by Movsēs Xorenacʿi (2.65 = Langlois, II, pp. 163-64) is probably an echo of these events. The following years are obscure, apart from some evidence of a Parthian move to impose an Arsacid on Armenia. This was apparently the prince Pacorus (Pakur), who is mentioned in some sources (Fronto, Epistulae 2.1; Asinius Quadratus, fragment 9, apud Stephanus of Byzantium) and on a silver cup (K. Trever, Ocherki, pp. 242-45 and fig. 35). He may perhaps be identical with Aurelius Pacorus “king of Greater Armenia,” who is known from a Greek inscription found at Rome (Corp. Inscr. Gr., III, 6559; see Trever, op. cit., pp. 237f.) and was the brother of Aurelius Tiridates. In 161 Marcus Aurelius decided to make war on the Parthians and put his co-emperor Lucius Verus in charge of the campaign. The task of restoring order in Armenia was entrusted to the governor of Cappadocia, Statius Priscus. He successfully occupied Artaxata and installed a garrison at Vałaršapat, which was then renamed Kainepolis (Dio Cassius 71.2.3). According to a Roman source (Fronto, Epistulae 2.1), there were then three claimants to the throne: a certain Vologeses/Valagaš, who no doubt enjoyed Parthian support, and a Syrian prince, Sohaemus, as well as Pacorus who had apparently just been deposed. Eventually Sohaemus won the day. At a later date, Martius Verus had to march into Armenia to suppress troubles instigated by a satrap who bore the name Tiridates (Dio Cassius 71.14) and may have been an Arsacid. It was then that Kainepolis/Vałaršapat became the capital by order of the Roman general (ibid., 71.1.4). An inscription gives evidence of Roman presence in this town in the reign of Commodus (180-192) (Corp. Inscript. Lat., III, 6052; cf. K. Trever, op. cit., pp. 267f.). In 214 the emperor Caracalla arrested the king of Armenia—an unnamed Arsacid—whom he had invited to Rome for the ostensible purpose of reconciling him with his sons. When news of this perfidy reached the Armenians, they rose up in arms and inflicted a severe defeat on Theocritus, the general who was sent to quell them (Dio Cassius 77.12.1-2 and 21.1). Under the treaty of 217 which ended the Roman-Parthian hostilities of the two previous years, Caracalla’s successor Macrinus agreed to confer the diadem on Tiridates II, to return his mother to him, and to recompense the Armenians for booty taken from them (Dio Cassius 78.27.4). Tiridates II was the son of the king detained at Rome; no further information about him has come down. Weakened by constant internal dissension, the Parthian empire was soon to be overthrown by a petty provincial king. In 224 the ruler of Persis (Fārs), Ardašīr son of Pāpak and grandson of Sāsān, defeated the Parthian monarch Artabanus (Ardavān) and proclaimed himself king of kings. This dynastic upheaval in Iran transformed the political scene in Armenia. The Armenian sources state that the country’s king at the time was Khosrov (Ḵosrow) “the Great.” He was probably a close relative of the last Parthian monarchs, and he evidently wanted to make his realm an Arsacid bastion against the Sasanians (Agathangelos 9-12 = Langlois, I, pp. 114f.). Since his own forces were too weak, he needed Roman support and remained resolutely pro-Roman. Shortly after his accession, Ardašīr made a first attempt to subjugate Armenia but was thwarted by the joint resistance of the Armenians and their allies, the Atropatenians, who were led by sons of Artabanus (Dio Cassius 80.3.2-3). The task of conquering Armenia had to be left to Ardašīr’s son and successor Šāpūr I.
5. The Sasanian period I: Armenia between Rome and Iran. a. Armenia as a Sasanian province. At Misikhe on the Euphrates in 244, Šāpūr I defeated the young emperor Gordian III. The latter’s successor Philip the Arab sued for terms and undertook not only to pay a ransom and an annual tribute but also to renounce the Roman protectorate over Greater Armenia. The country was thus left with no security against Sasanian designs. Lacking Roman support, King Khosrov lost prestige and a few years later was murdered. Armenian tradition generally names the murderer as Anak, a member of the Parthian Suren family (e.g., Agathangelos 13 = Langlois, I, pp. ll8f.), but this story should be treated with caution; the surmise of Ełišē Vardapet (3.48 = Langlois, II, p. 206) that Khosrov was killed by his own brothers is more likely to be true. Various pieces of evidence indicate that Šāpūr I’s conquest of Armenia took place ca. 252/253. Khosrov’s son Tiridates, who was still a child but had perhaps by then succeeded his father, was forced to take refuge in the Roman empire. Presumably Šāpūr was helped by the complicity of certain members of the royal family (Ełišē Vardapet, loc. cit.; the account given by Zonaras 12.21 = ed. Dindorff, III, p. 137, is dubious). The kingdom of Greater Armenia was simply abolished. Its territory became a new province of the Sasanian empire, though its southern or “Transtigritan” districts may perhaps have been detached and incorporated in the province of Arbāyestān (Persian Arabia), as they certainly were in 363 (see below). Šāpūr gave the governorship of Armenia to his son and heir Hormizd-Ardašīr, who received the title Vazurg Šāh Arminān, i.e., “Great King of the Armenians” (trilingual inscription of Šāpūr I on the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt at Naqš-e Rostam, Mid. Pers. lines 23 and 25, Parth. lines 18 and 20, Greek lines 41 and 48 = A. Maricq, Classica et Orientalia, Paris, 1965, pp. 59, 61). When Hormizd-Ardašīr succeeded his father in 272, Armenia remained under the rule of Sasanian viceroys, notably Šāpūr’s youngest son Narseh (see M.L. Chaumont, Iranica Antiqua 8, 1968, pp. 81-93 and H. Humbach and P.O. Skjærvø, The Sassanian Inscription of Paikuli, Wiesbaden, 1983, III/1, pp. 28, 32, 45; III/2, pp. 10f., 36, 72). By curbing the quarrels of the feudal chiefs, Sasanian rule undoubtedly gave Armenia a period of internal peace. In the field of religion, the Persian authorities made great efforts to bring the local gods and cults into line with orthodox Mazdaism, for instance by prohibiting certain forms of idolatry and by smashing divine and royal statues (Movsēs Xorenacʿi 2.77 = Langlois, pp. 119-120; see M. L. Chaumont, Recherches sur l’histoire de l’Arménie, Paris, 1969, pp. 70f.). The “king of the Armenians named Artabasdes,” who according to the Historia Augusta (Vita Valeriani 3) addressed a letter to Šāpūr pleading for the captive emperor Valerian, is evidently a legendary figure (see A. Alföldi, in Beiträge zur Historia Augusta-Forschung, Antiquitas 4, Bonn, 1964. While in exile in Cappadocia, the Arsacid Tiridates received a Roman education and acquired a good knowledge of Greek and Latin (Life of St. Gregory, Gk. version 159, 183 = Ar. version 145, 176 = G. Garitte, Documents pour l’étude du Livre d’Agathange, Vatican, l946, pp. 97, 110). His restoration appears to have been the result of a compromise agreed by Vahram II and Diocletian at some uncertain date around 286-287. Under its terms the Persians must have kept possession of the greater part of Greater Armenia, because in 293 the Sasanian Narseh was still in residence in Armenia as its “king” (Humbach and Skjærvø, op. cit., and W. B. Henning, BSOAS 14, 1952, pp. 517f.). It was only after the defeat of Narseh, now the king of kings, by the Caesar Galerius at Osxa (Oskikʿ in the canton of Całkotn) in Armenia that the whole of the territory passed out of Persian control and the Arsacid dynasty was definitely reinstated in Armenia under Roman suzerainty. Under another clause of the treaty signed at Nisibis in 297, the five old “Provinces” or districts of southern Armenia—Sophene, Ingilene, Arzanene, Gordyene, and Zabdicene—were ceded to the Romans (Petrus Patricius, fragment 14 = Dindorf, Hist. Gr. Min. I, p. 434; cf. Ammianus Marcellinus 25.7.9; see below). b. The Christian Arsacids: Tiridates III and his successors until the partition. The reign of Tiridates II was marked by an event of far-reaching importance for Armenia’s future, namely this king’s adoption of Christianity as the state religion at the urging of St. Gregory the Illuminator (i.e. Baptist). The latter was probably a Greek from Cappadocia (Life, Gk. version 40 = G. Garitte, Documents, p. 37) rather than a nobleman of the stock of the Suren family, as Armenian tradition maintains. At the king’s behest, Gregory went to Cappadocia with an escort of naxarars to receive consecration as bishop. (The Armenian church remained dependent on the see of Caesarea until the reign of King Pap—see below). The chronology of Armenia’s conversion presents a problem. The event used to be dated about 300, but more recent scholars (notably P. Ananian “La data e le circostanze della consecrazione di S. Gregorio Illuminatore,” Le Muséon 84, 1961, pp. 43-73, 317-60) tend to change the date to 314/315—a surmise which seems probable but cannot be proved. B. MacDermot’s arguments for 294 (in Revue des études arméniennes, N.S., 1971, pp. 281-358) are ingenious but not convincing. The war of Maximinus Daia in 311-312 (Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 9.66.3) might provide a terminus ante quem if it could be proved that “the Armenians allied to the Romans” were subjects of King Tiridates. In any case, Christian communities had unquestionably existed in Armenia before the official conversion. In a passage in the church history of Sozomenus (Historia ecclesiastica 2.8.2) it is stated that the Persians began to become Christian as a result of their contacts with the Armenians and the Osrhoenians; but as far as the Armenians are concerned, this is not wholly true, because the first penetration of Christianity into Iran was definitely not by way of Armenia (see M. L. Chaumont, La diffusion du christianisme en Iran au IIIe siècle, in Temporini and Haase, op. cit., II, forthcoming). Christianization tended to strengthen Armenia’s links with the Roman empire and to set back the Iranian cultural influence. Tiridates III, the St. Tiridates of the Armenians, worked closely with St. Gregory to spread Christianity through his kingdom and to suppress the pagan cults (described below), which nevertheless did not disappear altogether. While remaining a loyal ally of the Roman emperor, Tiridates did not break off all links with the Sasanians. Presumably he was on good terms with the prince Hormizd, who after the death of his father Hormizd II in 309 had been excluded from the throne and kept in prison until he escaped to the Armenian court (Zosimus, Historia nova, [ed. Mendelssohn, 1887] 2.27; see P. Peeters, in Bulletin de l’Académie Royale de Belgique 17, 1931, p. 37). Tiridates is said to have been killed in a plot hatched by his adversaries (text published by Alishan = Langlois, pp. 193-94; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 2.92 = Langlois, I, p. 131 ). From the sources, his death would appear to have occurred not later than 320 (see Peeters, op. cit., pp. 17, 37), but some (Markwart, Untersuchungen I, p. 220; R. Grousset, Histoire de l’Arménie des origines à 1071, 2nd ed., Paris, 1947, p. 120; Ananian, op. cit., p. 353) hold that his reign lasted until 330 or even later (Asdourian, op. cit., p. 143, places his death in 337). The view of H. Manandian reiterated by K. Toumanoff (in Revue des études arméniennes, 1969, pp. 263f.) that Tiridates III was succeeded by another king of the same name, Tiridates IV, seems unfounded. Information about the successors of Tiridates, namely his son Khosrov Kotak (Ḵosrow the Lesser) and his grandson Tiran, is available only from the Armenian sources. Khosrov chose a site north of Artaxata on which to build a new capital, Dvin, and an aparankʿ (Parthian apadān) or royal palace (Pʿawstos 3.8 = Langlois, I, pp. 216-18; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 3.8 = Langlois, II, pp. 136-37). The statement of Movsēs Xorenacʿi that dvin was a Persian word meaning “hill” was generally doubted until V. Minorsky (“Transcaucasica,” JA, 1930, pp. 41f.) drew attention to the use of dovīn with the sense of “hill” in Persian place names. Khosrov Kotak had to contend with an invasion by the Massagetae of Balāsagān, whose king, named Sanesan or Sanatruk is said to have been related to him (Pʿawstos 3.7 = Langlois, I, pp. 215-16; Movsēs Xorenacʿi, 3.9 = Langlois, II, pp. 137-38). Another problem is said to have been the defection of the vitaxes (bdeašx) of Arzanene, who sought to become a vassal of the Persian king (Pʿawstos 3.9 = Langlois, p. 216; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 3.4 = Langlois, II, p. 135); but this defection, the date of which is unclear, cannot really have affected the king of Armenia because Arzanene had not been Armenian for many years, having been annexed to the Roman empire under the treaty of Nisibis. King Tiran (incorrectly called Tigranes VII) seems to have had serious conflicts with the Christian clergy and is said to have put St. Gregory’s successor, the catholicos Yusik, to death. In his foreign policy he was mainly concerned to placate Šāpūr II of Iran. The latter made no secret of his designs on Armenia (Libanius, Orationes 59.71-72; Eusebius, Vita Constantini 4.56), where he could count on support from some of the naxarars. Probably ca. 334/335 or perhaps a little later, Šāpūr succeeded in capturing King Tiran, his queen, and the crown prince Aršak (according to the rather picturesque account given by Pʿawstos 3.20 = Langlois, I, pp. 229f.). Tiran is said to have been betrayed by his chamberlain (senekapet) Phisak, who delivered him to the satrap of Arzanene, Šāpūr-Varāz (on the chronology of these events, see N. H. Baynes, “Rome and Armenia in the Fourth Century,” English Historical Review 25, 1910, pp. 627-28; E. Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire I, Paris, 1959, p. l30). In 338, however, Šāpūr after his first reverse outside Nisibis agreed to the release of the royal family of Armenia and to the enthronement of Aršak, apparently at the special request of the emperor Constantius II; the matter is the subject of oracular comments by Julian (Orationes 1.20d; ed. J. Bidez, p. 34 in which the personal name of the king of Armenia is not mentioned). From the deductions of leading scholars (J. A. Saint-Martin, ed. C. Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-Empire I, Paris, 1824, p. 412; H. Gelzer, “Die Anfänge der armenischen Kirche,” Berichte der Königlichen Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1895, p. 118 n. 2; Baynes, op. cit., p. 629; Peeters, op. cit., pp. 10f.; Stein, op. cit., p. 137) it may be taken that the accession of Aršak II occurred about 338/339. This dating is implicitly confirmed by an Armenian chronogram which makes the first year of Aršak’s reign coincide with the second year of the reign of the sons of Constantine, i.e. 338 (Pseudo-Sebeos, ed. Patkanean, Moscow, 1979, p. 16; tr. F. Macler, JA, 1905, p. 141). During Aršak’s reign, St. Nerses was consecrated as catholicos and before long the two came into conflict. Weak and indecisive, the king wavered between the Persians and the Romans, leaning now to one side, now to the other. His relations with Šāpūr II (309-379) are outlined by Pʿawstos. He first visited the Sasanian court sometime in the years 338-340 (Pʿawstos 4.16-17 = Langlois, pp. 224-25). Later, at an uncertain date and in unclear circumstances, he gave armed help to the Persians in the Nisibis region (Pʿawstos 4.20 = Langlois, pp. 256-57). In 358 Šāpūr through diplomatic channels sent a demand to Constantius II for restitution of (Upper) Mesopotamia and Armenia (Ammianus Marcellinus 17.5.6). Despite the arguments of N. Garsoian (Quidam Narseus, in Armeniaca, Venice, 1969, and Revue des études arméniennes, 1973, pp. 123-24), Šāpūr’s ambassador Narseh can not have been the same person as the Armenian catholicos Nerses, as the Sasanian dignitary appears as a general of the Parthian army in 363 (Ammianus Marcellinus 14.6.12). Aršak still showed susceptibility to Šāpūr’s influence when he was interviewed and taken to task by Constantius at Caesarea in Cappadocia in 362 (Ammianus Marcellinus 20.11.1). In 363 he was instructed to lead a raid into Persian territory in conjunction with the emperor Julian’s expedition. After Julian’s defeat and death, the new emperor Jovian made peace later in the same year and, amongst other things, undertook not to intervene in the affairs of Armenia, thereby laying the country open to Šāpūr’s schemes (Ammianus Marcellinus 25.7.12; Pʿawstos 4.21 = Langlois, pp. 258-59). Armenia soon fell into anarchy. At the Persian monarch’s instigation, the Armenian naxarars gradually deserted their own king, who finally had to flee to the Sasanian court. Although Šāpūr provided a “sworn and inviolable” safe-conduct, in writing and stamped with the royal seal (Pʿawstos 5.53 = Langlois, pp. 268-69; Procopius, Persian Wars 1.5.16-17), Aršak was placed under surveillance as soon as he arrived; subsequently, after a dispute over precedence, he was arrested and sent on Šāpūr’s command to the notorious “castle of oblivion.” Having thus eliminated Aršak, Šāpūr sent troops into Armenia. The Persians had to fight particularly hard at Artagerkʿ, an old royal fortress where Queen Pharandzem and her son Pap held out with the help of two Armenian noblemen, Cylax or Cylaxes and Artabanus, who had rallied to her cause; only after a long siege did she surrender early in 370 (Ammianus Marcellinus 27.12.5-8; Pʿawstos 4.54 = Langlois, pp. 273-74). After being taken prisoner, the queen of Armenia was put to death in Persia. Pap escaped from Artagerkʿ before the end of the siege and took refuge in Pontus. He returned and ascended the throne in 371 with the aid of the emperor Valens. In 372 Šāpūr again marched into Armenia, but the Roman forces, supported by Armenian contingents, decisively defeated the Persians in a battle at Bagavan, on the Arsanias river at the foot of Mount Niphates (Ammianus Marcellinus 29.1.2; Pʿawstos 5.4 = Langlois, pp. 281-83; Life of St. Nerses 11 = Langlois, II, pp. 34-35). King Pap, however, caused offence with his dissolute morals and was thought to be possessed by demons (dēv). Being unable to endure the reproaches of the catholicos Nerses, who after a long absence had been recalled to the court, he caused this saint to die by poison (Pʿawstos 5.24 = Langlois, pp. 290-91; Life of St. Nerses 12 = Langlois, II, p. 36; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 3.38 = Langlois, II, p. 153). The next catholicos, Yusik, was consecrated outside the jurisdiction of the see of Caesarea, then held by St. Basil, and the breach soon became absolute. Not long after this, King Pap, who was veering toward alliance with the Sasanians, was assassinated in 374 at a reception in the Roman camp, apparently at the behest of the emperor Valens (Ammianus Marcellinus 30.1.18-21; Pʿawstos 5.32 = Langlois, pp. 295-96). After Pap’s death, another Arsacid, Varazdat, was designated by Valens. He procured the assassination of his own chief adviser, the general Musheł Mamikonian, and was then driven out by Manuel, his victim’s brother. The latter, who had inherited the office of sparapet, took charge of affairs and made Pap’s two very young sons, Aršak (III) and Vałaršak, joint kings with the elder in the paramount position. As regent, Manuel was assisted by Queen Zarmandukht, the mother of the two princes. Having failed to obtain support from the emperor, Manuel sent a “message of submission” to the aging Šāpūr II. In reply, Šāpūr sent diadems to Zarmandukht and her sons and appointed Suren to be governor of Armenia with the title marzbān (Pʿawstos 5.37-38 = Langlois, pp. 300-01). The dispatch of a marzbān suggests that the Sasanians now considered Armenia to have been annexed to the Persian empire as a vassal state. Only the western part of the Armenian kingdom remained under Roman protectorate. (For more details, see M. L. Chaumont, in Pomperini and Haase, eds., op. cit., III, forthcoming.) Naturally Manuel soon clashed with the marzbān Suren; but the statement of Pʿawstos (5.38-43 = Langlois, pp. 302-06) that Manuel succeeded in completely freeing the country from the Persians is hard to believe. c. The partition of Armenia and the end of the Arsacid dynasty. The Sasanian king Šāpūr III (383-387), who was more disposed to compromise than his predecessors, opened negotiations with the emperor Theodosius for settlement of matters in dispute, particularly the Armenian question. Agreement was reached on partition of the country into two zones, which amounted to confirmation of the status quo. The demarcation line ran through Karin (Erzurum) in the north and Amida (Diyarbakir) in the south, and thus left to the Persians most of the Armenian territory, including the northern and northwestern provinces adjacent to Iberia and Colchis (Pʿawstos 6.1 = Langlois, p. 307; Łazar Pʿarbecʿi 5 = Langlois, II, p. 262; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 42 = Langlois, II, pp. 155-56). The date of this treaty remains uncertain; it is placed by most scholars in 387, but by some in 384 or even in 389/390 (see Saint-Martin, ed. Lebeau, IV, p. 429; Markwart, Ērānšahr, p. 114; Asdourian, op. cit., pp. 166-67; J. Doise, in Revue des études anciennes 47, 1945, pp. 274f.; Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire I, pp. 205-06; K. Stock, Studia Iranica 7, 1978, pp. 179f.). Aršak III decided for religious reasons to leave Persian Armenia and went to Acilisene, where he reigned under Roman protection. When he died, his realm was annexed to the Roman empire. In Persarmenia the throne passed to another Arsacid, Khosrov III. After a few years this king incurred the disfavor of the Sasanian Vahrām IV, who replaced him with his brother Vṙamšapuh (392-415); the name is the armenianized form of the Pahlavi Vahrām-Šāpūr. Vṙamšapuh’s reign (Łazar Pʿarbecʿi 8-12 = Langlois, II, pp. 265-68; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 3.50-55 = Langlois, II, pp. 159-63; Koriun, Life of St. Mesrop = Langlois, II, p. 10) coincided with the rise of the catholicos St. Sahak (Sahak the Great) and with an event of great consequence, namely the invention of an Armenian alphabet. Hitherto the Armenians had not written their language and had therefore been obliged to use foreign languages, mainly Greek and Syriac, for religious teaching and for official documents. The Armenian alphabet, consisting of modified Greek characters and a number of signs borrowed from Semitic scripts, was invented by the monk Mesrop Mashtotz with the approval of the king and the catholicos. Thanks to vigorous encouragement by St. Sahak, its adoption prompted a great translation effort; in addition to the Bible, many liturgical books, canons of church councils, and patristic texts were rendered into Armenian (Koriun, Life or St. Mesrop = Langlois, II, pp. 9-16; see P. Peeters, “Pour une histoire des origines de l’alphabet armenien,” Revue des études arméniennes 9, 1929, pp. 203-37; F. Feydit, Considérations sur l’alphabète de St. Mesrop, 1964). It must in fairness be added that this singular upsurge of Armenian literature could not have occurred if Vahrām IV and, above all, Yazdegerd I had not pursued a policy of religious toleration which left the Armenian clergy completely free to maintain contact with Constantinople. After Vṙamšapuh’s death, the ex-king Khosrov III had a second reign of not more than one year before he too died. Thereupon Yazdegerd I, following old precedents, made his own son and heir, Šāpūr, governor of Armenia; and Šāpūr, like his Sasanian forerunners in the 3rd century, assumed the title “Great King of Armenia” (Vazurg Šāh Arminān). This arrangement lasted until the death of Yazdegerd I in 420, when Šāpūr left Armenia; after his return to Iran, he fell in battle with an opposing faction (Łazar Pʿarbecʿi 12 = Langlois, II, p. 268; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 3.55-56 = Langlois, II, pp. 163-64). Yazdegerd’s successor was another of his sons, Vahrām V Gōr (see A. Christensen, Iran Sass., pp. 274f.). At the request of the naxarars, Vahrām V appointed Artašēs, a son of Vṙamšapuh, to be the king of Armenia, reportedly on condition that he gave his name the Pahlavi form Ardašīr (Movsēs Xorenacʿi 3.50 = Langlois, II, p. 166). It was probably in his reign that the catholicos Sahak went to Ctesiphon seeking changes in the order of precedence at the court of Armenia (see M. L. Chaumont, JA, 1966, pp. 485f.). In the event, the Armenian noblemen did not find Artašēs/Ardašīr to their liking, and regardless of Sahak’s remonstrances they complained to Vahrām Gōr, who deposed the king and ousted the catholicos (Łazar 13-15 = Langlois, II, pp. 268-74; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 3.58 and 63-64 = Langlois, II, pp. 166, 169-70). Thus ended the rule of the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia, founded in the 1st century A.D. by Tiridates, the brother of Vologeses I, king of the Parthians. Thereafter the government of Armenia was conducted by marzbāns, who were sometimes picked from the Armenian nobility. The first marzbān appointed by Vahrām was Vēh-Mihr-Šāpūr. After a few years, the office passed to an Armenian nobleman, Vasak, prince of Siwnikʿ, who must have had a tricky task during the troubles of Yazdegerd II’s reign (439-457). d. The privileges of the Armenians at the Sasanian court. According to Pʿawstos (4.54 = Langlois, p. 271), the king of Armenia had the privilege of sharing the seat (taxt) of the king of kings at the royal banquets. On the other hand Movsēs Kałakatuarecʿi (History of the Albans 2.1; tr. C. J. F. Dowsett, London, 1961, pp. 61-62) relates that Šāpūr II changed the order of precedence and of the cushions at the royal table as to admit the great Armenian naxarars. Thus Andok, prince of Siwniʿ received the fourteenth cushion. We have to make reservations on these statements. Nevertheless it is not unlikely that the Armenian king preserved at the Sasanian court some of the privileges which he had enjoyed under the Parthian monarchy—as a member of the Arsacid family—and that the Armenian Greats could in certain cases be admitted in the Sasanian gāh-nāmag. It is also noteworthy that, according to an ancient custom, whenever a contingent of the Armenian cavalry with its general came to the Sasanian residence it was received by a delegate of the king who inquired about the welfare and the situation of Armenia. The question was repeated three and four times. Afterwards the Armenian cavalry was reviewed and then presented to the court. One of them would then relate the deeds of courage of their ancestors (Ełiše 264 = Langlois, II, p. 196-97). It is likely that this custom was a survival from the Parthian period. 6. The Sasanian period II: Persarmenia. From the political viewpoint, which alone is relevant here, “Persarmenia” has the broader meaning of the whole Armenian area under Persian rule (as opposed to the Roman Armenia). It must not be confused with the late geographical term of Parskahaykʿ or “Persarmenia,” a province which lay north and west of the lake Urmia and bordered on Adiabene and Atropatene (see J. Markwart, “La province de Parskahaykʿ,” Revue des études arméniennes, 1966, pp. 252-314). a. The religious policy of Yazdegerd II and Pērōz. In 444 twenty Armenian prelates gathered in a synod at Šahapivan to condemn the doctrine of the Messalians, i.e. Paulicians (F. Tournebize, s.v. Arménie, in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique IV, 1930, cols. 301-02; G. Garitte, Narratio de rebus Armeniae, Louvain, 1952, pp. 88-90; J. Mercerian, Histoire et institutions de l’église arménienne, Beyrouth, 1965, p. 54). A more acute danger threatened Armenian Christianity when Yazdegerd II, in the eighth year of his reign, was persuaded to take steps against the Persian empire’s Christian subjects by his minister Mihr-Narseh, an intransigent upholder of Mazdaism. One step in this connection was a royal edict requiring the Armenians and other nations of Caucasia to renounce Christianity and perform Mazdean rites (summaries of the edict in Łazar 20 = Langlois, II, p. 281; Ełišē 2.19-25 = Langlois, II, pp. 190-91). In response to these arbitrary commands, another synod met at Artašat and roundly condemned Mazdaism (Tournebize, loc. cit.). The naxarars, including Vardan Mamikonian and Vasak of Siwnikʿ, were summoned to the royal court. Though determined not to apostatize, they finally consented, for the sake of avoiding a worse fate, to show outward respect for certain practices of the Persian religion such as bowing to the sun (Łazar 24-27 = Langlois, II, pp. 283-88; Ełišē 2.61 f. = Langlois, II, pp. 196f.). Yazdegerd then sent them back to Armenia in the company of numerous (according to Ełiše, 700) magians headed by a mowbed (Arm. mogpet). The magians had received precise orders: they were to close the churches and turn them into fire-temples, forcibly secularize the monks and nuns, compel the wives of the satraps and the children of the Armenians to receive instruction in the doctrines of Zoroaster, and impose strict observance of various Mazdean practices (Ełiše 2.81-87 = Langlois, II, pp. 199-200). In concert with Vindoy, the chief of the magians, one of the Armenian magnates, Šavasp of the Artsruni clan, built temples of Ormizd at Artaxata and Dvin; the fire-temple at Dvin was put under the care of Vindoy’s son, Široy (Thomas Artsruni 2.1, tr. M. E. Brosset, Collection d’historiens arméniens I, St. Petersburg, 1874, p. 70; John Catholicos, Histoire d’Arménie, tr. J. Saint-Martin, Paris, 1841, p. 50). From the Armenian people, however, the Persian magians encountered constant hostility; they were ill-received almost everywhere, and in some cases, as at Zarehavan, they were massacred. Vardan Mamikonian, despite his outward apostasy, took the lead in this revolt. In often brutal fighting, Vardan clashed with the marzbān Vasak of Siwnikʿ, who presented himself as a mediator but was hated by his compatriots for his real or alleged Mazdean sympathies. The rebels captured several important places, including Artašat, Artagerkʿ, and Garni. At Dvin, Vindoy and his son Široy were executed. In the spring of 451, a strong army commanded by Muškan Niusałavurt broke into Armenia from Atropatene, and Vardan set out to meet it. The decisive encounter took place on 2 June 451 in the plain of Aravayr in the district of Artaz, at the foot of Mount Masis (Ararat). Being inferior in number, the Armenians could not withstand the assault of the Persian “immortals” (gundn matean or matenik gundn) and were cut to pieces. Most of their leaders, including Vardan, fell in the battle (Łazar 34-36 = Langlois, II, pp. 296f.; Ełiše 6.1-9 = Langlois, II, pp. 220f.; see Saint-Martin, ed. Lebeau, op. cit., VI, pp. 258-318; S. Weber, Die katholische Kirche in Armenien, ihre Begründung und Entwicklung vor der Trennung, Fribourg (Brisgau), 1903, pp. 439-47; Tournebize, op. cit., pp. 80-82; Grousset, op. cit., pp. 189-206; C. Sanspeur, Revue des études arméniennes, 1975-76, p. 140). Armenian insurgency continued in the form of a war of ambuscades, mainly in the mountains of northern Armenia. Eventually Yazdegerd II decided again further open persecution and charged a new marzbān Ādur-Hormizd-Aršakān, to calm the tempers. Nevertheless the leading Armenian clerics and nobles we summoned to appear before the king of kings and answer for their conduct. Being unable to justify it, they were detained and deported initially to Hyrcania (Gorgān) whence they were transferred to the fortress of Nīšāpūr in Khorasan. In 454 some of the clerics, including the catholicos Joseph and the priest Leontius, were by royal command put to death at Revand near Nīšāpūr in the “martyrdom of the Leontian saints” (Łazar 38-51 = Langlois, II, pp. 300-19; Ełiše 7.1-45, 8.1-100 = Langlois, II, pp. 225-43). The imprisoned naxarars were sent to Herat (Hrev), where the prince (or satrap) Šnūm-Šāpūr became their friend and protector. After the accession of Pērōz in 459, they were released at the request of Šnūm-Šāpūr and another Persian dignitary, Yazd-Gušnāsp, but it was not until the sixth year of Pērōz’s reign that they were able to return to Armenia (Łazar 53 = Langlois, II, pp. 319-20; Sanspeur, op. cit. pp. 85-87). Despite the more tolerant attitude to Christians, the magians in Armenia won a fairly large following thanks to the support given by Persian officials and high-ranking apostates. The catholicos Giwt strove to counteract this trend and was denounced in a report to the king by the małxaz Godišoy, nobleman who had gone over to Mazdaism. Giwt traveled to Ctesiphon and appeared before King Pērōz, who dismissed him from his office as catholicos but left him in liberty. During his stay at Ctesiphon, he contacted local priests and even performed ordination. He ended his days in Armenia (Łazar 54-58 = Langlois, II, pp. 322-27; Sanspeur, op. cit., pp. 90-94). From ca. 480 the Armenian revolt gained fresh vigor under the leadership of Vahan, a nephew of the national hero Vardan Mamikonian. The Persians were beaten by rebel troops at Nersehapat in the Artaz district in 482, but afterward got the better of them in a battle in Iberia in 483. The defeat and death of Pērōz in the land of the Hephthalites in 484 forced the Persian generals to evacuate Armenia and thus changed the scene to the advantage of Vahan Mamikonian, who became the virtual master of the country. Pērōz’s successor, Valāš, who was pacifically inclined and ready for a compromise, sent a high official to negotiate with Vahan. The latter set the following conditions: freedom to practice the Christian religion, absolute prohibition of Mazdean worship in Armenia, and empowerment of naxarars to appeal directly to the king of kings. Valāš, who needed Armenian military help to put down the revolt of his brother Zareh, conceded all these demands. After the brief marzbanate of Andigān, Vahan himself was appointed marzbān of Armenia. b. The political and religious situation in the reigns of Kavād and Ḵosrow Anōšīravan. Kavād I’s treatment of the Christians of Armenia was relatively tolerant aside from passing lapses. Vahan Mamikonian was confirmed in the marzbanate, which passed on his death to his brother Vard. In 505-506 the catholicos Babgen convoked a synod at Dvin, which the marzbān Vard attended; also present was a Persian priest, Simon of Beth Arsham, who came unexpectedly for the purpose of denouncing the Nestorians (Book of Letters, Tiflis ed., pp. 41-47; see Tournebize, op. cit., IV, col. 303, s.v. Arménie; Mercerian, op. cit., pp. 61-66; and especially V. Inglesian, apud A. Grillmeier and H. Bacht, Das Konzil von Chalkedon II, Würzburg, 1953, pp. 364f.). The synod’s decisions were written down “in Armenian and Persian.” Vard Mamikonian was subsequently dismissed, and the governorship of Persarmenia was for a time in the hands of Persian officials until it reverted to an Armenian, Mjej Gnuni. The latter did his best to satisfy the king’s requirements, particularly for regular delivery of the tribute due from the Armenians. He was apparently still in office in the 23rd year of Ḵosrow I’s reign when a synod, convoked by the catholicos Nerses II and again held at Dvin, formally repudiated the decisions of the council of Chalcedon, which it deemed to be tainted with Nestorianism (Book of Letters, p. 72, and the “History of the Councils” attributed to John of Odzun, ibid., p. 221; Stephan Asołik 2.2, tr. H. Gelzer and A. Burckhardt, Leipzig, 1907, pp. 58-59; Diegesis 60-76, ed. Garitte, Narratio, pp. 34-36; see Tournebize, loc. cit.; Garitte, Narratio, pp. 130f.; Mercerian, op. cit., pp. 66f.). According to the “letter” of the patriarch Photius (Patrologia graeca 102, col. 705), one result of this synod was that King Ḵosrow designated Nerses II as the adoptive father of one of his sons. Mjej Gnuni’s successor as marzbān was a Persian, Dēn-Šāpūr. He harassed the Christians and kindled a fire of Aramazd (Ōhrmazd) in the country of the Reštunikʿ in the district of Vaspuragān (Stephan Asołik 2.2, ed. Gelzer and Burckhardt, p. 59). Eventually Ḵosrow dismissed Dēn-Šāpūr at the request of emissaries from the catholicos. The next governor, Gušnāsp-Vahrām, was sent to Persarmenia with orders to stop interference with Christian worship and permit reversion to Christianity by Armenians who had been compelled to profess Mazdaism, but definitely not to allow Persians to become Christians. A notable victim of this rule was Yazdbozit, whose real name may perhaps have been Makhosh. The converted son of the chief of the magians of Dvin, he was crucified at Dvin after refusing to abjure. The fame of Yazdbozit spread throughout oriental Christendom (“The passion of Yazdbosit,” ed. P. Peeters, in Acta Sancta Nov. IV, pp. 191 f.; Menander Protector, Bonn ed., pp. 432, 434; John Catholicos, tr. Saint-Martin, p. 53; Samuel of Ani, Tables chronologiques, tr. Brosset, op. cit., II, pp. 34f.; see Saint-Martin, ed. Lebeau, op. cit., pp. 82-84). The appointment of Čihr-Gušnāsp, a member of the powerful Suren family and a relative of the king, again set a match to the powder-keg. The new governor not only took stern measures against naxarars suspected of collusion with the Byzantines; claiming to act on a royal command, he also made persistent efforts to impose Mazdaism on the Armenians and caused a fire-temple to be built at Dvin. This conduct soon provoked a popular uprising, in which Vardan Mamikonian took the lead. Late in 571 or early in 572, Vardan captured Dvin and put the marzbān “Suren” to death (Stephan Asołik 2.2, tr. Gelzer and Burckhardt, p. 60; Sebeos, History of Heraclius 1, tr. F. Macler, Paris, 1905, pp. 4, 5. On the chronological problem, see G. Garitte, Narratio, pp. 184f.). The insurgents appealed to the emperor Justin II, who promised assistance. With help from troops sent by the emperor, Vardan defeated the Persian general, Mihrān Mihrewandak, who had 20,000 men under his command (Sebeos I, tr. Macler, pp. 5, 6). Later he fought side by side with the Romans at the battle of Melitene in 575, when the Persians suffered a disastrous defeat. The emperor Tiberius, however, was anxious to make peace with Ḵosrow. A truce which was arranged in the same year guaranteed possession of Persarmenia and Iberia to the Persians, but the emperor Tiberius II refused to hand over the Armenians who had taken refuge in Roman territory (see P. Goubert, Byzance avant l’Islam, Paris, 1951, pp. 70-71). c. Armenia between Iran and Byzantium. During the reign of the emperor Maurice (582-602), favorable circumstances enabled the Romans to regain territory in Armenia. After the deposition and death of Hormizd IV in 590, the latter’s son and heir Ḵosrow II (later named Aparvēz “the Victorious”) was challenged by an eminent general, Vahrām Čōbēn of the Mihrān family. When Vahrām seized the throne, the young Ḵosrow fled to Roman territory and put himself under the protection of the emperor. In return for big territorial concessions in Armenia and (Upper) Mesopotamia, Maurice promised him military aid. Despite offers from Vahrām Čōbēn, the leading Armenian naxarars such as Mušeł Mamikonian and Sembat Bagratuni remained loyal to Ḵosrow and provided him with contingents amounting to 15,000 men. Armenian troops under the command of John formed the left wing of the combined force which decisively defeated Vahrām Čōbēn at Bałaraṭʿ, not far from Ganzak in Atropatene, in the autumn of 591 (Theophylactus Simocatta 5.10; Sebeos 3, tr. Macler, pp. 18-22; John Mamikonian, History of Taran 1 = Langlois, I, pp. 363-64; on the campaign, see Saint-Martin, ed. Lebeau, op. cit., pp. 326-32; Grousset, op. cit., pp. 250-51; Goubert, op. cit., pp. 141-62). Ḵosrow after his restoration promptly fulfilled all his obligations and ceded to Rome the western part of Persian Armenia up to the river Azat (Garnī-Čāī) in the north and lake Van in the south, as well as part of Arbāyestān (Persian Arabia) as far as Nisibis, which remained in Persian possession (Sebeos 2-3, tr. Macler, pp. 15, 27; Thomas Artsruni 2.3, tr. Brosset, in Collection I, p. 78; see Hübschmann, Ortsnamen, pp. 229-30; Grousset, op. cit., pp. 251-53; Gaubert, op. cit., pp. l67-70). In Byzantine Armenia, the emperor Maurice in 602 ordered deportations of the people for resettlement elsewhere. To escape this calamity, many Armenians moved to the Persian zone, where the local authorities took care of them. King Ḵosrow himself showed concern for their lot when he ordered the tax collector (see below) of the province of Vaspuragān to give financial help to the fugitive chiefs, whom he wished to win to his side. Nevertheless this official was molested by one group of the Armenians (Sebeos 6, tr. Macler, p. 31 ). The Armenian nobility split into several factions, and the Persians had to deal with sporadic revolts. Among the powerful naxarars, Mušeł Mamikonian apparently always wavered between the emperor and the king of the kings (see Grousset, op. cit., pp. 253-55; Goubert, op. cit., pp. 191-97), whereas Sembat Bagratuni finally entered the service of Ḵosrow, who appointed him marzbān of Hyrcania (Gorgān) and honored him with the title Ḵosrow-Šnūm (Ḵosrow’s joy). At the head of an Armenian force, Sembat warred victoriously against the Kushans and Hephthalites and was rewarded by Ḵosrow with the highest honors (Sebeos 14.17-19, tr. Macler, pp. 42-43, 45-52; see Goubert, op. cit., pp. 197-204). The same Sembat sponsored the convocation of a church council at Dvin in 596 which categorically rejected the Chalcedonian doctrines and confirmed the Armenians in their monophysite belief (Goubert, op. cit., pp. 213-14). Sembat’s son Varaztirots was educated at the Sasanian court and later appointed marzbān of Armenia with the proud title Javitean-Khosrov (eternal Ḵosrow) (Sebeos 28-29, tr. Macler, pp. 87, 92). After the overthrow and murder of Maurice by Phocas in 602, Ḵosrow II launched a general offensive against the Byzantines on the pretext of avenging the emperor who had been his benefactor. Persistent efforts were made to regain the lost territory in Armenia. In 605 Ḵosrow’s troops under the command of Datoyean defeated a Byzantine force in the plain of Širak in the district of Ayrarat. Later another Persian general, Senitam-Khosrov, won a victory in the sub-district of Tsałkotn, not far from the fortress of Angeł on the Arsanias river; the naxarar Theodosius Khorkhruni then delivered the fortress to the Persians and decamped to Ḵosrow’s court (Sebeos 12, tr. Macler, pp. 57-69). In 607-08 the Byzantines were severely defeated by Aštat Yestayar (Yazdayār) in the sub-district of Basean, and the city of Karin (Erzurum) surrendered to the Persians, who pushed on the Satala in Little Armenia. Ḵosrow then sent the patgosapan Šāhēn who was also šarayeanpet (āyēnbed of the empire) to Armenia, the latter in the capacity of marzbān at Dvin. After Šāhēn had defeated the Romans at Karin, the city’s inhabitants were deported to Hamadān in Media (Sebeos 13, tr. Macler, pp. 63-65). Subsequently Caesarea in Cappadocia and Melitene (Malatya) fell to Šāhēn. These military successes enabled the Persians to recover the territory which they had ceded to the emperor Maurice. According to Sebeos (13, tr. Macler, p. 66), the marzbāns at Dvin after the šarayeanpet Šāhēn were successively the parseanpet (āyēnbed of Fārs), Faršenazdat, Šahrapłaken, and Ṙoč-Vehan (Rhazates). In 610 Heraclius, who may perhaps have been of Armenian origin, seized the throne at Constantinople. In 623 he began a stubborn campaign, indeed a veritable crusade, to reconquer Byzantine Armenia. After passing through Armenia by way of Karin, Dvin, and Naḵčevān, he entered Atropatene, where he destroyed the great fire-temple of Ādur Gušnāsp. In the following year 624, he came up against the famous Persian general Šahrvarāz and routed him in a battle near the small town of Tigranakert (in the northeast of Armenia). Somewhat later, Heraclius returned to Armenia by way of the sub-district of Širak. After crossing the Araxes river and marching through the sub-districts of Gogovit, Hēr, and Zarevand, he set his course toward Ctesiphon and crushed the army of Ṙoč-Vehan in a battle on the plain of Nineveh (Sebeos 26, tr. Macler, pp. 81-84; Theophanes, Chronography, ed. J. Classen and I. Bekker, Bonn, 1939-41, p. 475). These clear victories led to the deposition of Ḵosrow Aparvēz and enabled Heraclius to insist on Persian consent to restoration of the frontier lines fixed in 591 (Lebeau, op. cit., pp. 130-57; Grousset, op. cit., pp. 273f.). When danger from the Arabs first appeared, the Armenian naxarars were engaged in futile quarrels among themselves, some looking to Persia, others to Byzantium. Nevertheless there are mentions of Armenians in the service of the Sasanian monarchy right up to its fall. Mušeł Mamikonian and Gregory of Siwnikʿ fought under the Persian general Rustahm (Rostam) and were killed with him at the battle of Qādesīya in 636. d. Internal organization. The capital of Persarmenia was Dvin, the town reputedly founded by Khosrov II Kotak (see above). It was the seat of the Sasanian administration and the repository of the state archives (dīvān), which presumably comprised the official records of all the “provinces” of districts of Armenia. This was certainly so in the case of the archives of Siwnikʿ until Ḵosrow Anōšīravān, at the request of Prince Vahan, ordered their transfer from Dvin to Phaitarakan, a town then and subsequently belonging to Atropatene (Sebeos 1, tr. Macler, p. 5). Recent excavations at the site of Dvin have identified the premises where the archives were kept. Among the unearthed objects are remnants of tapes used for tying parchments together and numerous seals of civil and ecclesiastical functionaries (K. G. Kafadarian, “Les fouilles de la ville de Dvin,” Revue des études arméniennes, 1965, pp. 283-302, and “Vestiges des archives administratives de Dvin,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs, 1974, pt. 2, pp. 101-11; A. A. Khalantharian, “Les bulles sassanides de Dvin,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs, 1977, pt. 3, pp. 195-205). As a Sasanian province, Armenia was governed by a marzbān, a title meaning literally “guardian of the frontier” but given from the 4th century onward to almost all provincial governors. The marzbān of Armenia was in command of all the local Persian garrisons and had authority also in administrative, judicial, and even religious affairs. He was assisted by a hazārbed (Armenian hazarapet), literally “chiliarch,” whose exact functions are not clear. There was also a mowbed (Arm. mogpet), i.e., chief of the magians, who resided at Dvin and had jurisdiction over all the scattered magians in the province. Tax collection was supervised by the āmārgar (q.v.). There must have been one of these officials in every district of Persarmenia. Sebeos (6, tr. Macler, p.31) mentions a Vaspurakan-hamarakar, i.e. āmārgar of Vaspuragān, the district east of lake Van. Another important office was the management of the gold mines of Armenia, which was held in Pērōz’s reign by a Syrian (Łazar 58 = Langlois, II, p. 325; Sanspeur, op. cit., p. 95) and later by an Armenian nobleman (see above). This system, which must have been common to all the Sasanian provinces governed by a marzbān, was supplemented—or encumbered—with a structure of hereditary offices held by members of the Armenian aristocracy. Chief of these was the office of sparapet or asparapet (see below), which belonged to the Mamikonian family. It should be noted, however, that the decree (fravartak, Arm. hrovartak) whereby each holder of such an office was appointed came from the sovereign Sasanian monarch himself (Łazar 85 = Langlois, II, p. 365). The troops of the Armenian naxarars were commanded by the sparapet but of course at the disposal of the marzbān; they formed the contingents which were required from the annexed districts in time of war. Not even the head of the Armenian church was immune against the authority of the king of kings. In 428 Vahrām V deposed the illustrious catholicos Sahak and nominated a successor for him (see above), and in like manner Pērōz removed the catholicos Giwt (see above). In short, the Armenian holders of every kind of high office, and likewise the great naxarars were strictly subordinate to the Sasanian central government. Only in the period in the reigns of Pērōz and Kavād when Vahan Mamikonian was the marzbān, did Armenian enjoy a special autonomous status. e. The prosperity of Armenia. The historian Procopius, in his account of affairs in the first half of the 6th century, paints a bright picture of the salubrity and prosperity of the area around Dvin, with its dense population, many villages, and plains well-suited for horses. Merchandise was brought to the town from neighboring Iberia, from the Roman empire, from almost all regions of Persia, and even from India (Procopius, Persian Wars 2.25.1-3; see A. Baumgartner in Pauly-Wissowa, V/2, col. 1751, s.v. Doubios; Manandian, The Trade and Cities of Armenia, pp. 81-82). Among the strangers who came regularly to do business in Persarmenia, Syrians and Jews were notably active but Persians, being the masters of the country, had the biggest stake. In the early part of the 6th century there was a castle in Persarmenia which stood on an almost unassailable site and was therefore used by the merchants from Persia as a safe repository for their gains (Malalas, Chronography, p. 469). The large scale of Persarmenia’s commercial activity in the later decades of the 6th century and early decades of the 7th century has been confirmed by discoveries of a great variety of coins: in one excavation at Dvin, 31 gold pieces of Justin II, Phocas, and Heraclius (V. V. Kropotkin, Byzantine monetary treasures (in Russian), Moscow, 1962, No. 336; cf. M. Raschke in Temporini and Haase, eds., op. cit., II/9, 2, 1978, p. 734 n. 362); again at Dvin, a hoard comprising 136 drachmas of Ḵosrow I, Hormizd IV, and Ḵosrow II together with 84 silver coins of Heraclius (Kropotkin, op. cit., No. 365; cf. Raschke, op. cit., p. 735, No. 365); at Echmiadzin, 20-30 coins of Heraclius found in 1908 (Kropotkin, op. cit., No. 387; cf. Raschke, loc. cit.); at Leninakan (Alexandropol), 92 drachmas of kings from Kavād to Ardašīr III and 16 coins of Heraclius and Constans II (M. I. Kamera and K. V. Golenko, in Vizantiĭskiĭ vremennik 29, Leningrad, 1958, pp. 172-93). Also among the finds at Dvin are Sasanian seals which give ample evidence of Persarmenia’s close links with the rest of the Sasanian empire (Khalantharian, in Patma-banasirakan Handēs, 1977, pp. 195-205). Persarmenia was not only a country of transit; it also possessed considerable resources in its own soil. Particularly important were the gold mines of Pharangion, which lay near the frontier with Roman Armenia (Procopius, Persian Wars 1.15.26-29; Malalas, Chronography, pp. 455-56) and had been famous since early times (Strabo 11.14.9). Kavād’s insistence that the Romans must return these mines (530-31) indicates that their exploitation yielded large profits for the Sasanian government. Apparently part of the output was exported. Dvin was the main center of economic life. Around the palaces of the marzbān and the catholicos stood the abodes of the principal naxarars. Craftsmen in a wide range of industries, such as weaving, pottery, and jewelry, worked hard to satisfy the demands of not only local customers, such as Persian officials and Armenian nobles, but also external markets.
7. Iranian influences on Armenia. a. Religion. Armenian polytheism had indigenous roots but shows signs of considerable borrowing from the religion of ancient Iran. Probably it was in the Achaemenid period that Iranian influences first made themselves felt. Strabo (11.4.16) who describes the situation in the 1st century B.C., states that the Armenians worshipped the same gods as the Persians and particularly venerated Anaïtis (see also Anāhīd iii). There is evidence that from a very early times Anaïtis (the Anāhitā of the Avesta and the Persian inscriptions, Anahit of classical Armenian) was worshipped at Erēz (Eriza) in western Armenia (Strabo, loc. cit., Pliny, Natural History 33.82-83; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 2.14 = Langlois, II, p. 88). This town, where the goddess was adored in the guise of a gold statue, appears to have remained the chief center of her cult in Armenia until the demise of paganism. Also mentioned are gold idols of Anahit at the capital, Artaxata, and at Artašat in the Taron district. The “great Lady Anahit and daughter of Aramazd” (Agathangelos 22 = Langlois, I, p. 127) was the preferred object of devotion of the Arsacid kings, who made annual visits to her temple at Erēz (Agathangelos 21 = Langlois, I, pp. 125-26; Garitte, Documents, p. 78). This custom may be compared with the homage which the early Sasanian kings paid to the same goddess at Eṣṭaḵr in Fārs (see M. L. Chaumont, JA, 1965, pp. 167-81 ). Despite Anahit’s importance, the first place in the Armenian pantheon belonged to Aramazd (the Armenian form of Ahura Mazdā/Ōhrmazd. Being “the great and mighty,” the creator of heaven and earth, and “the father of the gods,” he was assimilated to Zeus but had all the attributes of his Iranian prototype (see Hübschmann, Armen. Etymologie, pp. 24-25; H. Gelzer, “Zur armenischen Götterlehre,” Berichte der Königlichen sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1896, pp. 102f.; Tournebize, Histoire politique, p. 766). He was the first in the triad to which Tiridates III initially prayed, coming before Anahit and Vahagn (Agathangelos 133 = Langlois, I, p. 167). A temple and statue of Aramazd stood in the fortress of Ani in Upper Armenia, which also sheltered the tombs of the Arsacids (Agathangelos 133 = Langlois, I, p. 167). There were probably also temples of Aramazd at several other religious centers, in particular Bagaran and Bagavan (see below). The third in the above-mentioned triad was Vahagn, the Vərəθraγna of the Avesta and Varθagan of the Parthians. However, this hero-god whose original name was Vahevan, and who was commonly confused with Heracles, differs from Vərəθraγna in many respects. The legend about his birth (Movsēs Xorenacʿi 1.31) recalls an Anatolian myth. He is the most popular deity of the Armenian pantheon. Under the name of višapakał “the dragon-puller” he presided in his temple (Vahevanean mehean) of Aštišat over a sort of triad which included the goddesses Ahahit and Asṭłik, the last-named being a local equivalent of Aphrodite (Agathangelos 141 = Langlois, I, p. 173; see Gelzer, op. cit., pp. 104f.) or, rather, of the Semitic Astarte. The cult of Mithras (Mihr) was probably first brought to Armenia in the Achaemenid period. The annual festival of Mithras was the occasion on which the satrap of Armenia sent to the Great King the 20,000 colts which the people had to deliver as tribute (Strabo 11.14.9). Liability for such contributions was of course not peculiar to Armenia. At the time of the conversion to Christianity, there was a temple of Mihr at Bagayaṙič or Bagayarinǰ in the Derdjan district of Upper Armenia (Agathangelos 134 = Langlois, I, p. 168); the local people assimilated him to Hephaestus or sometimes to Dionysus (see Gelzer, op. cit., p. 137; Garitte, Documents, p. 110). In view of the scarcity of evidence on the Mithras cult in ancient Armenia, it seems likely that he played a secondary role compared with the other Iranian deities, particularly Anahit and Aramazd. Still, one should note that the Armenian term for idol-temple, mehean, is a derivative of the name Mithra/Mihr (see A. Meillet, MSL 17, 19l1, p. 246, and Revue des études arméniennes I, 1921, p. 234). Also imported from Iran was Tiur, whose prototype was the Persian god Tīr (with features of the Assyrian Nabû). His name is attested mainly in compounds such as Tiridates/Trdat (Tīr-created). Tiur, “the scribe of Ormizd,” was assimilated to Apollo and worshipped principally in a temple at Erazamoyn not far from Artaxata (Agathangelos 129 = Langlois, I, p. 164; see Gelzer, op. cit., pp. 109f.). His oracular pronouncements were based on interpretation of dreams—a peculiarity which can hardly be traced to Iranian religion. Another notable borrowing is sandaramet/spandaramet, modified from Spəntā Ārmaiti (Pahlavi Spendarmat); in Armenian the word means “infernal region” or “hell” and makes compounds such as sandarametakan (infernal dungeon), sandarametapet (lord of the lower world), etc. (cf. A. Meillet, ibid., pp. 234-35, and see Ārmaiti). Also mentioned are idolatrous cults of the Sun (Arev, Aregakn) and the Moon (Lusin) (Movsēs Xorenacʿi 2.8 and 77), but no exact equivalent of this cult is known in Persian religion. The accounts of Armenian paganism before the conversion contain no mention of Ahriman, the adversary of Ahura Mazdā and one of the two central figures in Mazdean dualism. Belief in pernicious beings, however, was general. Most of these personifications of evil were derived from Iranian demonology, particularly the dews and the višaps. Dews, i.e. demons, were the most harmful; any human possessed by a dew was doomed to the worst misfortune. Armenia’s soil seems to have been particularly productive of višaps, i.e. dragons (Av. višāpa). Preeminent among the dragons was Àdahak (Av. Àidahāka), whom Armenian legend assimilated to a king of the Medes; his wife Anoyš was “the mother of the dragons.” There are even mentions of dragon-temples. Clearly the višaps were the objects of a form of devil-worship. Movsēs Xorenacʿi (1.24-31 = Langlois, II, pp. 72-76) contrasts the Àdahak legend and the dragon cult with the worship of good gods, and remarks that, in this respect, Tigran, the supposed father of Vahagn “the dragon-strangler” had played a beneficent role. Popular superstitions, still persisting in the Christian period, were pinned on genies of many kinds, mostly maleficent. Their names, if not attributes, were borrowed from Iranian lore: e.g. pariks, huškapariks (“ass-bulls” who haunted ruins), hambaruks, nahangs (sorts of crocodiles), etc. There were also beings called kaǰ and aṙlēz (q.v.), from the original stock of Armenian lore. (The various genies and visaps are described by Eznik of Kolb, Against the Sects, Venice ed., 1821, pp. 97-98, and in the “Questionnaire de S. Grégoire,” apud N. Adontz, Revue de l’orient chrétien, 1925-26, pp. 330f.; see also A. Christensen, Essai sur la démonologie iranienne, Copenhagen, 1941, pp. 87ff.). In addition to the words quoted above, other loan-words from the Iranian religious vocabulary that entered Armenian are, e.g., bagin, a derivative of bag, Persian bag, “god” (Hübschmann, Armen. Etymologie, p. 114). Bag also appears in several old Armenian place-names (Hübschmann, loc. cit. and Ortsnamen, pp. 410-11), which cannot be definitely dated from before or after the establishment of the Arsacid dynasty: e.g. Bagavan, a place in the Bagrevand sub-district of the Ayrarat district, whose name is correctly explained in the Armenian version of the Book of Agathangelos (144 = Langlois, I, p. 176) as meaning “town of the idols” in Parthian; Bagaran, the name of two different places in Ayrarat; Bagayaṙič or Bagayarinǰ, the center of the Mithras cult (see above). On the other hand, the term for a pagan priest, kʿurm (pl. kʿurmkʿ) is an Armenian modification of the Aramaic kumrā and must have entered the religious vocabulary in the period when imperial Aramaic was the main governmental language in Armenia. Despite so many borrowings from Iranian cults, the frankly polytheistic and idolatrous religion of pagan Armenia was very different from the orthodox Mazdaism which took shape in Iran, mainly under the Sasanians. As A. Meillet (op. cit., p. 236) justly observed, the Armenians absorbed Iranian cults but knew nothing of the teachings of the Avesta. One of the grounds for this view is the fact that the texts containing material on Armenian paganism never refer to fire-worship. On the other hand, the discovery of remains of fire-temples under some Christian churches during recent excavation (see S. A. Nigosian, “Zoroastrism in the Fifth Century,” Studies in Religion 7, 1978, pp. 425-30; written communication from J. P. Mahe) points to a certain diffusion of this essential component of Mazdaic worship in pre-Christian Armenia. It cannot be disputed, however, that the priests of pagan Armenia, the kʿurmkʿ, were fundamentally different from the Mazdean priests, the magians (see Chaumont, Recherches sur l’histoire de l’Arménie, p. 80). b. Institutions: the court and senior officials. According to Movsēs Xorenacʿi (2.6.8 = Langlois, II, pp. 82-85), the institutions and procedures current in the court and kingdom of the Arsacids of Armenia were introduced by Valaršak, a son of the Parthian king Arsaces. This anachronistic story can be interpreted as referring to reforms implemented by Tiridates I and his successors for the purpose of parthianizing the preexistent feudal and official institutions. Since Armenia had for several centuries been subject to Iranian influence in this respect, it is not always easy to tell how much was due to Arsacid initiative and how much was derived from earlier, particularly Achaemenid, times. The royal residence was called the aparan-kʿ (Parth. apadān < Old Persian apadāna), which also served as a place-name (Hübschmann, Ortsnamen, pp. 332, 401). Banak, properly meaning “camp” or “army,” in some contexts denotes “the court” (banak arkʿuni “the royal court”). The royal palace was the tačar (Old Persian tačara) or darapas; the throne was the taxt or the gah. The word for the crown or more precisely the diadem, was ṭʿag (Parthian and Pahlavi tāg), and ṭʿagawor was synonymous with arkʿay, the Armenian word for king. The crown and all the other regalia were kept in the tun patmučakcʿn “house of those in charge of the royal wardrobe,” also referred to as the tun ṭʿagacʿ, “house of the crowns” (Pʿawstos 5.6 = Langlois, I, pp. 285). The titles ṭʿagadir and ṭʿagakap were in principle synonymous, as both meant “bestower of the crown” (Hübschmann, Armen Etymologie, p. 153), the latter more precisely “he who affixes the diadem.” Affixation of the diadem, the symbol of kingship, had doubtless been originally the highest of all court functions. Under the Arsacids it appears to have always belonged to the “general of the cavalry;” it was hereditary in the Bagratid family in Armenia and the Suren family in Iran (see M. L. Chaumont, JA, 1961, pp. 98f.). The presence of a hazarapet (hazārbed) or “chiliarch” at the court of the Arsacids of Armenia is well attested. He was a sort of prime minister; it is not known whether he kept the military responsibilities of the chiliarchs of the Achaemenids, particularly the command of the royal bodyguard. The office must be distinguished from that of the hazārbed, the representative of the Sasanian government (see above). The term for the Armenian royal bodyguard was ṭʿiknapah, an exact equivalent of pʿuštipan (Pahlavi puštīgbān). Also in service at the palace of the kings of Armenia were the pahapankʿ dran arkʿuni, “guards of the royal court” consisting of four companies called gundkʿ (Movsēs Xorenacʿi 2.7 = Langlois, II, p. 83); they were probably comparable with the darīgān corps known to have been maintained at the court of Šāpūr I (trilingual inscription of Šāpūr, Mid. Pers. line 33, Parth. line 27, Greek line 65 = Maricq, Classica et Orientalia, p. 71)—an institution which Šāpūr must have taken over from his Arsacid forerunners. In the 4th century A.D. the eunuch-chamberlain bearing the title mardpet seems to have been one of Armenia’s most powerful dignitaries. He was called “the father of the king.” According to Pʿawstos (5.6 = Langlois, I, pp. 285-86), he was responsible for the custody of the treasures in the royal castles in Ingilene and Sophene. The presence of the title mardpet on a seal from the early Sasanian period (V. G. Lukonin, Iran v èpokhu pervykh Sasanidov (Iran under the early Sasanians), Leningrad, 1961, p. 219) proves that the office was of Iranian and probably Parthian origin and belies the interpretation of the word as a territorial label meaning “chief of the Mardi” (e.g. by N. Adontz, in Armenia in the Period of Justinian, the Political Foundations based on the naxarar system, ed. Garsoïan, Lisbon, 1970, pp. 249-50). (On the uncertain etymology of mardpet, see J. Harmatta, Acta Antiqua Academiae Hungaricae, 1961, p. 424). Entirely distinct was the office of the senekapet (from seneak “room”), also a royal chamberlain of very high rank, whose functions are said to have included custody of royal treasures and carriage of the royal sword and signet-ring (Pʿawstos 4.3 = Langlois, I, p. 235; Life of St. Nerses 3 = Langlois, II, p. 23). Also worthy of mention are the spaskapet, “major-domo” (Agathangelos 165 = Langlois, I, p. 187), who as head of the servants held an important court position obviously patterned on an Iranian prototype, the axoṙapet (master of the stable), the barapan or darapan/darapet (guardian of the door), etc. The dignitaries and officials residing at the court were graded, especially at the royal table, in an order of precedence which was recorded with great precision in a gahnamak (from gah (throne or rank) and namak (document). The practice, like the term, was unquestionably of Iranian origin and was probably introduced when Tiridates I and his immediate successors reorganized the Armenian court. Later the order of precedence was rearranged several times, notably on the initiative of St. Nerses, in whose time the number of seats (cushions) at the royal table was 400 (Life of St. Nerses 5 = Langlois, II, pp. 25-27; Pʿawstos 4.2 = Langlois, I, p. 236, raises the number to 900; on the gāh-nāmag of the Sasanians, see A. Christensen, Iran Sass., pp. 62f.). c. The feudal system. Feudal organization was a common characteristic of many Indo-European peoples with no history of mutual contact. In the case of the Armenians, however, there can be no doubt concerning the decisive influence of Parthian Iran on the introduction and shaping of their feudal system and, in particular, the naxarar system. It may be taken for certain that there was no link between this institution and the division of Armenia into 120 administrative districts called strategoi (Pliny, Natural History 6.27)—a division probably dating from the time of Tigranes the Great. N. Adontz (Armenia, pp. 304f.) argues that the tribal system of the komarchoi, as described by Xenophon, was the original frame from which the strategoi and the naxarars evolved, and (op. cit., pp. 311f.) that the tribal background was reflected in titles locally given to comarchoi such as małxaz (said to be borrowed from the Assyrian malxazu), aspet (said to mean “clan chief”), mamak (said to be an Armenian form of the Iberian mama “father”), tēr (said to be an elided form of ti-ayr); but the word malxazu does not exist in Assyrian, and the real meaning of aspet is “cavalry commander” (see below). In any case Xenophon’s komarchoi (see above), who were modest village headmen and low-ranking agents of the Achaemenid government, are not comparable with the strategoi of the Hellenistic period or with the naxaras. One fact is undisputed, namely that the word naxarar comes from the Parthian naxvadār, which appears together with the word for satrap in an inscription from the time of Ardašīr and means “senior representative of the local nobility” (W. B. Henning, JRAS, 1953, pp. 135-36); its literal translation is “holder of the primacy” (see Hübschmann, Armen. Etymologie, p. 154; Meillet, Revue des études arméniennes, 1922, pp. 1-3; E. Benveniste, ibid., 1929, p. 5; Henning, Mitteliranisch, p. 42. The etymology given by N. Adontz in Armenia, p. 514, is incorrect). Use of the word “satrap” to translate naxarar has often been found convenient but is not entirely correct, because a satrap’s function was at first purely administrative. The title naxarar, here rendered as such, occurs very frequently and is applied to all members of the feudal nobility; this may well have been the case in Parthian Iran also, though there is no proof. Other titles used in Armenia which came from the feudal nomenclature current in Parthian Iran were: nahapet, apparently from nāfapati, Parthian nāfapat (see Meillet, loc. cit., and Benveniste, loc. cit.). Nahapet, literally “head of a clan or line,” must have been in principle a title reserved for heads of great feudal families; it occurs much less frequently than naxarar, but sometimes seems to have the same meaning as far as legal and political status are concerned. Išxan, literally “king” but more nearly “chief prince” (see Benveniste, op. cit., pp. 7-9), a title applied like nahapet to leading feudal noblemen but apparently also sometimes synonymous with naxarar. Sepuh, a word long recognized as a mangled derivative of vis-puθra (see Benveniste, op. cit., p. 9; Christensen, Iran Sass., p. 100 n. 1; A. Perikhanian, Revue des études arméniennes, 1968 p. 19). The Parthian and Sasanian form is vispuhr, which to judge from 3rd-century inscriptions was mainly a title of members of the royal family, i.e. “royal prince.” In like manner Aršak II’s nephew Gnel is designated “great Arsacid sepuh” (mec sepuhn Aršakuni, Pʿawstos 5.15 = Langlois, I, p. 252). The Armenian term, however, also means “nobleman” or “gentleman” and appears to denote all members of great families other than the heads; it must have undergone a semantic evolution in the local aristocratic and feudal context. Azat “free” or “noble.” In Parthian and Sasanian Iran, the āzād(ān) formed the fourth and last class of the feudal nobility. In Armenia, the plural noun azatkʾ acquired a broader sense and normally seems to mean members of the nobility in general. (On the use and meaning of this word in Armenian, see Hübschmann, Armen. Etymologie, p. 91; Adontz, Armenia, pp. 342-43; A. Perikhanian, Revue des études arméniennes, 1965, pp. 11f.; see also Āzād). In contrast with the azatkʿ, the lower or non-noble ranks of Armenian feudal society are most often described as the ṙamik-kʿ, i.e., “common people,” and the šinakan-kʿ, i.e., “peasants” (cf. Arm. šēn “village”) (see Hübschmann, op. cit., pp. 213, 233; G. Widengren, Der Feudalismus im alten Iran, 1969, p. 113 n. 46, 123; Adontz, op. cit., pp. 333, 354, 361-62, and index). Both terms are Iranian and probably belonged to the vocabulary of Parthian feudalism. On the other hand, the only term for vassal (an important concept) is the Armenian word caṙay; the Iranian word bandak, which had the same sense, is not found in Armenian. d. Military organization. At the top of the military hierarchy stood two officers, the sparapet and the aspet, with functions and titles manifestly borrowed from Parthian Iran. The sparapet or asparapet (Parthian spādapat, Pahlavi spāhbed; see Hübschmann, op. cit., p. 240) was the “general in chief” who commanded all the troops, both infantry and cavalry, and in wartime gave orders to all the naxarars (Greek Life 98 = G. Garitte, Documents, pp. 72-73). He was responsible for organizing military expeditions and arranging royal journeys. The office became hereditary in the Mamikonian family and contributed to the growth of their influence and power. The aspet (lit. “master of the horses”, q.v.) was the “general in command of the cavalry” (see Hübschmann, op. cit., p. 109), corresponding to the aspapat of the Parthians, whose existence as early as the first years of the 1st century B.C. is attested in the texts found at Nisa. In the order of precedence, the aspet normally came before the sparapet (see M. L. Chaumont, JA, 1966, pp. 472, 473, 475, 486); this reflected the original primacy of the office in the Parthian system. Concurrently with the office of ṭʿagadir (“bestower of the crown”—see above), it became hereditary in the Bagratuni family, just as in Iran it belonged to the Suren family. Among the less exalted military offices, those of gundapet or gundsałar “corps commander” or “colonel,” and gamapet, roughly “captain,” are mentioned as important. The terms zawrapet and zawravar, meaning “force commander,” do not appear to be designations of any particular rank. The office of bdeašx (Parthian bitaxš) falls into a different category because it was not solely military. The word is found in varying forms in several languages—Latin as vitaxa; opinions on its etymology differ but incline to the interpretation “viceroy” (see Henning, Mitteliranisch, p. 62; W. Hinz, Altiranische Funde und Forschungen, Berlin, 1969, p. 152 n. 22; for a different view, E. Benveniste, Titres et noms propres en Iran ancien, Paris, 1967, p. 65 n. 2). The Armenian vitaxes had the attributes of sahmanakał or a marzbān (see Hübschmann, op. cit., pp. 119-20; Markwart, Ērānšahr, pp. l65f.). Conceivably, among the Parthians the bearer of this title had the same status. It was a hereditary dignity. The title “great vitaxes“ was reserved for the prince of Arzanene, who held a very high position at the royal court of Armenia (Pʿawstos 3.9 = Langlois, I, pp. 217-18). The extent to which the Armenian, modeled their military system on that of the Parthians is shown by examples of the relevant vocabulary such as aspar (shield), asparakir or sparakir, asparawor (shield-bearing), asparapʿak or sparapʿak (shield-protected), aspandak (stirrup), asparēz (racecourse), aspastan (stable), aspatak (cavalry raid), aspatakawor (mounted raider), aspazēn (harness), all derived from asp “horse” (Hübschmann, op. cit., p. 108); ašteay (spear, lance), awer, awerak (ruined, ruination), drawš (banner), drawšakir (standard-bearer), gund (corps, detachment), hamaharz (bodyguard), kaparckʿ (quiver), nizak (spear), nizakawor (spearman), nšan (ensign), nšankir (ensign-bearer), pah and pahak (guard, guard corps, garrison), pahak also with a geographic meaning, pass, “Gates”), pahakapan (guard corps, garrison), pahapan (guard, guardian), pahpanak (armor, cuirass), parsawor (slinger), paterazm (encounter, fight), patkandaran (quiver), payik (foot-soldier), pešopay (he who marches ahead), ṙazm (flight, battle), ṙazmik (warlike), ṙazmanat (he who breaks through the battleline; see Hübschmann, op. cit., p. 233), ṙočik (subsistance, keep), saławar (helmet), saławaṛławor (helmeted), smbak (horse’s hoof, whence the phrase smbakakox aṙnem, “to trample under the hoofs of the horses”), spah (army), sparazēn (fully armed), tēg (spearhead), ṭʿošak (rations, food), vahan (buckler), vahanak (small buckler), vahanakir (buckler-carrying), vahanapʿak (buckler-protected), varawand (part of a horse’s trappings), varawandaspas (groom, stableman), varapanak-kʿ (coat of mail), zawr (army, forces, troops), as in zawr pešopay (vanguard), zēn (weapon or armor), zrahkʿ (breastplate), zrahapat, zrahawor (wearing iron armor, see Hübschmann, op. cit., p. 152 and R. Schmitt, “Iranisches Lehngut im Armenischen,” Revue des études arméniennes, 1983, pp. 89-90). e. Law. The stock of legal terms which came into Armenian from Iran is remarkably large. Examples relating to the law of personal status, property, and obligations are apaharzan (repudiation of wife), gir apaharzani (deed of repudiation), arzēkʿ (countervalue, price), baš-kʿ (share, tax), baž (compensation), darman (administration, management), dastakert (landed estate or immoveable property, literally “hand-made;” on this important word, see Hübschmann, op. cit., pp. 135, 139), graw, grawakan (pledge, security), jok (group, association), kamkʿ (consent, volition), kamay, kamakar (acting with full discretion, voluntarily, cf. Pahlavi kāmkār), payman (limit, condition, clause, contract), partkʿ (debt, undertaking), partapan (bound by an obligation, debtor), partawor (creditor), partbaxši (discharge of an obligation, exchange), paštatakan (apanage), patwast (adoption), sak (tribute), tohm (ancestry, family), tohmankʿ (fruits, revenue), uxt (oath, contract, treaty), varj (salary), vašx (interest, usury), včar (reward, remuneration), vnas (loss, damage), xostak-kʿ (possessions, patrimony). The vocabulary of inheritance law includes andarz (testament), bag, bazin (inheritance share), bazanord (joint inheritance), payazat (inheritor, successor). Among the words relating to judicial processes are band (prison), bandakan (prisoner), bandapan (jailer), dat (which may mean administration of justice, legal action and especially trial, or judicial decision) and derivatives of dat such as dataran (law court), datawor (judge), datapart (legally bound, convicted), datastan (trial, sentence), and many more (see Hübschmann, op. cit., p. 136), pʿursišn (suit, prosecution, complaint), hraparak (market place, forum, with the connotations of tribunal, jurisdiction), ǰatagov (defender, advocate), včiṙ and datavčtiṙ (judgement, sentence), toyž (sanction, penalty), patuhas (penalty). Also noteworthy is the stock of terms for a written document or proof of title: namak and yetkar (both meaning document, title-deed), murhak (sealed deed or writ), uxt (as explained above, but sometimes with a material sense, e.g. uxt haštuṭʿean “certificate of manumission”), paṭčen (copy, duplicate), etc. Loan-words are very numerous in the terminology of administration and general public law, e.g. bašxkʿ (tribute, taxes), dahič (policeman), dašn (treaty), dehkan and dehpet (village headman), despan (messenger), dpir (scribe), drapapet (head of the scribes), diwan (public records), ganj (treasure, treasury), ganjawor (treasurer), hambar and ambar (store, public granary), hamarakar (chief accountant, tax collector), handerjapet (administrator, manager), hramatar (director, overseer), hreštak (emissary, ambassador), hrovartak (letter, warrant, edict), matakarar (superintendent), nahang (province), ostan (country, also crown land), pēšapik (runner, courier), šahastan/šahstan (city, capital), sahman (limit, competence), šahap (satrap, governor), sak (tribute, tax), vičak (fate, lot, and by extension ecclesiastical district). f. Cultural legacies. In the cultural field, Armenia’s reception of Iranian influences took place in three main phases: 1. The Achaemenid Persian influence began with the annexation of Armenia to the Achaemenid empire and lasted long after that empire’s fall, probably in the end merging with the Arsacid influence. Achaemenid practices were maintained under the Orontid satraps and the Artaxiad kings. Strabo (Geography 11.13.9) indicates that the Armenians got their customs from the Medes; no doubt he confused the Medes in the strict sense with the Medes of Atropatene. The Armenians certainly had greater affinities with the inhabitants of Atropatene, their immediate neighbors and trading partners, than with the Persians. Moreover the kings of Armenia and Atropatene are known to have made marriage alliances (Strabo 11.13.1). One attested and interesting fact is that three languages were current in Armenia in the mid-Achaemenid period: (a) Armenian (or proto-Armenian), the unwritten vernacular; (b) a dialect, probably Persian or Medo-Persian, which was spoken not only at the court of the satraps but also (according to Xenophon, Anabasis 4.5.10 and 5.34) in quite humble classes of society, and perhaps was already being written in Aramaic characters; (c) imperial Aramaic, the language of government and international relations, which was still used for official documents as late as the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. (cf. above). 2. The Arsacid Parthian influence was the strongest and most durable, beginning with the rise of the Parthians in the 2nd century B.C. and reaching its apogee after the installation of the Arsacids on the Armenian throne in the mid-1st century A.D. Thereafter the kings of Armenia tried to make their court a replica of the court at Ctesiphon, while the Armenian nobles forged close links with the Parthian aristocracy (some of whose families migrated to Armenia) and took its customs as their model. As long as Armenian remained a mere vulgar tongue, the Parthian language prevailed at the court and in the upper class. Most of the Iranian loan-words in classical Armenian stem from this period. The Parthian influence left distinct marks on several aspects of Armenian civilization. Thus the gusan (plur. gusankʿ), a kind of bard or minstrel, whom the Armenian authors sometimes mention, is a replica of the gōsān of the Parthians (see M. Boyce, “The Parthian gōsān and Iranian Minstrel Tradition,” JRAS, 1957, pp. 20ff., C. J. F. Dowsett, tr., The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movsēs Dasxuranċi, London and New York, 1961, p. 52 n. 5). During the Sasanian period, Christian Armenia remained on the whole faithful to the Arsacid Iranian tradition. 3. The Sasanian influence was the last to be felt and appears to have been strong enough, though fluctuating with the shifts of Persian political and religious attitudes. At the time of the invention of the Armenian alphabet, Pahlavi was the language of the royal administration and of the court (Movsēs Xorenacʿi. 3.52), when the Greek and the Syrian languages were used in the Church. The promotion of the Armenian writing reduced considerably the importance of Pahlavi. However, in Persarmenia this language remained in use for the official documents and sometime together with the Armenian language (see above about the acts of the Council of Dvin). On the other hand, despite the Armenian hostility to Mazdaism the close links between the aristocracies of the two countries were never broken and the Armenians did not remain indifferent to some profane aspects of the Sasanian culture. In the 6th century, Sasanian tolerance of Christians and the presence of many Christians at the Sasanian court made Armeno-Persian relations easier. It is certainly significant that (as mentioned above) the last marzbān of Armenia, Varaztiroc Bagratuni, was educated at the palace of the king of kings. Bibliography : See also the following recent publications: B. N. Arakelian, “Artashat I. On the Results of Excavations in 1970-1977” (in Russian), Archeological Excavations in Armenia 16, Erevan, 1982. M. L. Chaumont, “Tigranocerte. Données du problème et état des recherches,” Revue des études arméniennes, 1982, pp. 98-110. Idem in Histoire des Arméniens, ed. G. Dedeyan, Toulouse, 1982, chap. 3, “Tentations de l’Iran et du monde gréco-romain;” ibid., chap. 4, “Affirmation de l’Arménie chrétienne” (collaboration). R. L. Manasyrian, “The Formation of the Empire of Tigrane II” (in Russian), VDI, 1982, no. 2, pp. 122-40. G. A. Tiratsian, “The Armenian Tiara. A Historico-cultural Interpretation” (in Russian), VDI, 1982, no. 2, pp. 90-96.
(M. L. Chaumont)
iii. Armenian Religion
The Armenian people, whose language is related probably to the Thraco-Phrygian branch of the Indo-European family, invaded the Armenian Plateau from the west. Stephen the Byzantine (5th century) cites Eudoxus (ca. 370 B.C.): “The Armenians are a people from Phrygia and in their speech resemble Phrygians.” Herodotus calls the Armenians “Phrygian colonists” (7.73). The origin of Arm. hay “Armenian” is uncertain, but it may come from the name of the Hittites, through whose territory the early colonizers passed: Proto-Arm. *hatiyos yields *hayo, shortened to hay (I. M. D’yakonov, Predystoriya armyanskogo naroda, Erevan, 1968, p. 236). Others suggest that hay comes from the name of the inhabitants of the Hayasa-Azzi region in Armenia itself. Apparently subduing the Hurrian autochthons of the province of Arme-Šupria, a mountainous region to the west of Lake Van with a large Semitic colony, the Armenians became a ruling class from which were appointed satraps of the land when it was conquered by Media, early in the 6th century B.C. In this formative period the Armenians appear to have absorbed Hurrian, Hittite, and Urartian elements in their religious beliefs. Iran, however, was to be the dominant influence in Armenian spiritual culture. The Orontid, Artaxiad and Arsacid dynasties were all Iranian in origin, and the greater part of the Armenian vocabulary consists of Mid. Ir. loanwords. The Armenians preserved strong regional traditions which appear to have been incorporated into Zoroastrianism, a religion adopted by them probably in the Achaemenid period. Despite the conversion of the Armenians to Christianity early in the 4th century, numerous survivals of Armenian Zoroastrianism remain to this day. Evidence for the study of ancient Armenian religion comes primarily from the works of 5th-century Armenian Christian historians, although later medieval sources provide valuable information as well. Recent archeological expeditions in Soviet Armenia at sites such as Artašat and Gaṙni have provided important new material, and ethnographical studies have been pursued since the mid-19th century. Aramazd was the principal divinity of pre-Christian Armenia. The name is a loan from Parthian, cf. Gk. Aramasdēs in the Awrōmān documents (A. Meillet, “De quelques noms propres parthes,” BSL 20, 1916, p. 25). The fusion of the two words Ahura Mazdā “Lord Wisdom” into one occurred in Achaemenid times. Like the Iranians, the Armenians seem to have referred to adherents of Zoroastrianism as Mazda-worshippers, Av. mazdayasna-, Arm. mazdezn (Ełišē, Patmutʿiwn Vardanay, Erevan, 1957). A native form, mazdēacʿikʿ “Mazdeans,” is attested in an Armenian magical text of A.D. 1611 from Marsovan, Turkey (B. M. Or., MS 6471, fol. 133a). Aramazd is called “manly” (Arm. ari), and his temple held an image probably resembling the eidōlon tou andriantos (Dios) “image of the manly (Zeus)” destroyed by St. Acindynus (N. Marr, Bogi yazycheskoĭ Gruzii po drevne-gruzinskim istochnikam, St. Petersburg, 1901, p. 11). The Armenians made statues of their gods, or brought Greek images from the west which they installed at bagins “shrines” (probably a Parth. loanword; on Arm. loanwords with the element baga-, and on the Zoroastrian image cult, see below). Aramazd is a god of thunder, Arm. ampropayin. At Mcʿxeṭʿa in Georgia there stood an image of Zeus Keraunios “the Thunderer” (Zampropayin patkern Aramazday, Movsēs Xorenacʿi, History of the Armenians, tr. R. W. Thomson, Cambridge, Mass., 1978, II, p. 86). This is probably a function derived from a non-Zoroastrian weather god. Baʿal Šamīn, the North Semitic “Lord of Heaven,” was often characterized as keraunios in inscriptions (J. Teixidor, The Pagan God, Princeton, 1977, pp. 12-14; J. G. Fevrier, La religion des palmyréniens, Paris, 1931, p. 105; Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum II, 3912). Baršam(in) had a temple at Ṭʿordan in the Armenian province of Daranałi, northeast of the temple of Aramazd at Ani (Movsēs 1.14, 2.14). He has the epithet spitakapʿaṙ “of white glory,” and is said to have fought another weather god, the Armenian Vahagn, in an ancient tale retold by Anania of Širak (Tiezeragituṭʿiwn ew tomar, Erevan, 1940, p. 30). Aramazd is the “father of all” (Agathangelos, History of the Armenians, tr. R. W. Thomson, Albany, 1976, p. 785); Anahit is called his progeny (cnund), Mihr is his son (ordy) and Nanē is his daughter (dustr) (Agathangelos 53, 790, 786). He is the hospitable one, Arm. Hiwrənkal dicʿn Vanatri (Agathangelos 836). The temple of Aramazd was located at Ani, the site of the Artaxiad royal necropolis, where Mažan, the brother of king Artašēs, served as high priest (Movsēs 2.14, 53); it seems that the royal family presided over the cult of the supreme God, while local dynasts, the naxarars, attended to the lesser yazatas. As the center of power in Armenia shifted eastwards to Ayrarat province in the Arsacid period, the temple of Aramazd was relocated to Bagawan, where his feast was celebrated on Nawasard, the New Year (Agathangelos 836). (On the word nawasard, a loanword from Old Pers., see H. Hübschmann, Armen. Etymologie, p. 202; on the date of the festival, see S. H. Taqizadeh, “The Iranian Festivals Adopted by the Christians and Condemned by the Jews,” BSOAS 10, 1940-42, p. 640.) A number of modern Armenian customs appear to be survivals of ancient rites of Nawasard (A. A. Ōdabašyan, “Navasardyan tonaxmbuṭʿyunneri verapruknerə,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs, Erevan, 3, 1974). Movsēs Xorenacʿi refers to four Aramazds, including one called kund “bald” (1.31). The “bald” Aramazd may be the Zeus phalakros “bald” of Argos (Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 2.39, cited by Thomson, Movsēs 122 n. 1; on the Arm. loanword kund and its Iranian origins, see H. W. Bailey, “Indo-Iranian Studies III,” TPS, 1955, p. 72). The four Aramazds may refer to the four days of the Zoroastrian month named after Ahura Mazdā (under the influence, according to H. S. Nyberg, of the four-fold Zurvān); or they may be the four seasonal faces of the Semitic god Tammuz, called čʿorekʿdimean “four-faced” by the 5th-century Armenian translator of St. Ephrem Syrus (Galust Ter-Mkrṭčʿyan, Hayagitakan usumnasiruṭʿyunner I, Erevan, 1979, pp. 124-25). Armenian writers distinguish the native form Aramazd from Pers. Ormizd, the latter representing the god of the proselytizing Sasanian state church for Ełišē and the god of the Zurvanite cult of the Persians for Eznik. Anania of Širak states, “Belos yunarēn Dios, heyerēn Aramazd, parskerēn Ormizd” (Bel is Greek Zeus, Armenian Aramazd and Persian Ormizd; Mnacʿordkʿ banicʿ, St. Petersburg, 1877, p. 31 ). Anahit was called “the Lady,” Armenian [Agathangelos] Anahit tikin, Gk. [Agathangelos] Artemis despoina (E. Benveniste, Titres et noms propres en iranien ancien, Paris, 1966, 46); inscriptional Pahl. ʾnhyt ZY MRʿTʾ ( = bānūg “lady”) in the inscription of Kartīr KZ line 8; the “golden mother” (Arm. oskemayr, Agathangelos 809). The exact meaning of this epithet is unclear; it may refer to the golden corn and to fertility, or to a golden cult statue. Anahit possessed a great temple at Erēz, Gk. Eriza, in the province of Acilisene (Pliny, Natural History 5.34, 83; Strabo 11.16; Cassius Dio, 36.48, 53.5, calls the entire region Anaitis chōra); a hellenistic bronze head, believed to be from a statue of Anahit but more probably from a Roman temple, was found at Satala and is kept in the British Museum (B. N. Aṙakʿelyan, Aknarkner hin Hayastani arvesti patmuṭʿyan, Erevan, 1976, p. 21, pl. 21; on the temple of Anahit at Zela, see A. Perikhanian, Khramovye ob’edineniya Maloĭ Azii i Armenii, Moscow, 1959, p. 48; a dubious theory on temples of Anāhīd and Armenian manuscript painting, is advanced by C. Trever, “A propos des temples de la déesse Anahita en Iran Sassanide,” Iranica Antiqua 7, 1967, p. 121). The 19th day of the Armenian month is named after Anahit, and she was worshipped on the water-holiday of Vardavaṙ; until recently, cattle bearing the brand of a star or half moon were slaughtered during the festival by the Armenians of Dersim, in Turkey, and it is probable that Anahit had absorbed these cult symbols of the Mesopotamian goddess Ištar (K. V. Melikʿ-Pʿašayan, Anahit dicʿuhu paštamunkʿə, Erevan, 1963, p. 147; Ł. Ališan, Hin hawatkʿ kam heṭʿ anosakan krōnkʿ, Hayocʿ, Venice, 1910, pp. 157-58). Cattle were sacrificed down to the 19th century at the shrine of Bānū- Pārs, probably to Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā—who is likewise a water-goddess in origin—in the Zoroastrian community of Šarifābād, Iran (M. Boyce, Stronghold pp. 250, 255). Another feminine divinity, Inanna the “Lady of Heaven” of Uruk, was worshipped in Armenia as Nanē (on Inanna generally, see H. W. F. Saggs, The Greatness that was Babylon, London, 1962, p. 21). Her cult had become established in Elam (W. Hinz, The Lost World of Elam, London, 1972, p. 97) and was probably spread by the Achaemenid armies to eastern Iran (on her cult in Sogdia, see W. B. Henning, “The Date of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” BSOAS 12, 1948, pp. 601-15; in Kušan and Bactria, see J. Rosenfield, The Dynastic Art of the Kushans, Berkeley, 1967 and G. Azarpay, “Nanā, the Sumero-Akkadian Goddess of Transoxiana,” JAOS 96, 1976, pp. 536-42). To the west, in Phrygia, Nanā was revered as the daughter of the river Sangaris and the mother of Attis (Arnobius 5.6.12), a possible clue as to the meaning of numerous mother-and-child figurines found at Artašat (Gk. Artaxata) (B. N. Aṙakʿelyan, op. cit., pls. 84-86). Nanē had a temple in Armenia at Ṭʿil (Agathangelos 786); she may appear as a luminous, supernatural being in a medieval Armenian love story, “Yovhannēs and Aša” (G. Šerencʿ, Vanay saz II, Tiflis, 1899, pp. 112-17). Mihr, whose name is a Mid. Ir. form of Av. Mithra, had a temple in the Armenian town of Bagayaṙič (Agathangelos 790). His is the seventh month and the eighth day of the month in the Armenian calendar, and in Armenian Christianity the twenty-first day of Mehekan, Greater Mihragān in the Zoroastrian calendar, is devoted to St. George the Soldier (Taqizadeh, op. cit., p. 642). Similarities have been noted between the Mithraic tauroctony and aspects of the cult of the saint (M. Schwartz, “Cautes and Cautopates, the Mithraic Torchbearers,” Mithraic Studies, ed. J. R. Hinnells, Manchester, II, p. 417 and F. Cumont, “St. George and Mithra, "The Cattle Thief", Papers Presented to Sir Henry Stuart Jones, London, 1937, pp. 62-71 ). It has been proposed that the Armenian word for a pagan temple, mehean, comes from a Mid. Ir. derivative of OIr. *māithryāna- or *mithradāna- (A. Meillet, “Sur les termes religieux iraniens en arménien,” Revue des études arméniennes 1, 1920, pp. 233-36; I. Gershevitch in Mithraic Studies II, p. 357, suggests a Mid. Ir. derivation, which is unlikely as the word was a generic term by the 5th century in Armenian; but note the use of NPers. Dare-e Mehr for any Zoroastrian temple in the Islamic period). King Tiridates I of Armenia invoked Mithra, the Zoroastrian guardian of contracts, in his pact with Nero (Cassius Dio 63.5; Pliny 1.6; Dieterich, “Die Weisen aus dem Morgenland,” ZNTW 3, 1902; F. Cumont, “L’iniziazione di Nerone da parte di Tiridate d’Armenia,” Rivista di filologia 61, 1933), and referred to himself in a Greek inscription at Gaṙni as Hēlios “the Sun,” with which Mithra was identified by the Parthians. M. L. Chaumont’s reading of Hēlios as Aurēlios, despite the title Aurēlios Pakoros Basileus Megalēs Armenias on an alter in Rome (S. T. Eremyan, “Vałiarš II kʿałakʿakan haraberuṭʿyunnerə Hṙomi ew Parṭʿevneri het,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs 4, 1976, p. 37; Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, ed. A. Breckhins, Berlin, 1828-77, no. 6559), is not justified by the dimensions of the inscription (M. L. Chaumont, Recherches sur l’histoire d’Arménie, Paris, 1969, p. 179; on the inscription and the mehean excavated nearby, see B. Aṙakʿelyan, “Excavations at Gaṙni, 1949-50, 1951-55,” Contributions to the Archaeology of Armenia III/3, Cambridge, Mass., 1968, pp. 13-199; K. V. Trever, Nadpis’ o postroenii armyanskoĭ kreposti Garni, Leningrad, 1949; A. G. Abrahamyan, Hay gri ev gṛčʿuṭʿyan patmuṭʿyun, Erevan, 1959, p. 30). The classical Armenian historians four centuries later recognized Mihr not as Hēlios but as Hephaistos, the Greek god of fire, and his prominence seems to have been eclipsed by Vahagn. Mihr is called Hephaistos by Movsēs Xorenacʿi (3.17); Ṭʿovma Arcruni later identified Hephaistos with the Sun (Erevan, 1978, pp. 5l, 53, 54), but added that he had hur vars “flaming locks,” recalling the hur her “flaming hair” of Vahagn (Movsēs 1.31). The Armenian hero who fought Alexander is called Mithraustēs (presumably a Gk. form of OIr. Mithra- Vahišta-) by Arrian and Vahē by the Armenians; the latter name is probably a shortened form of Vahagn (cf. the naxarardom Vah(n)uni and the vahevahean mehean, or temple of Vahagn; L. Pʿ. Sahinyan, “Movses Xorenacʿu ʿPatmuṭʿyanʾ meǰ hišatakvoł Vahei masin,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs 4, 1973, p. 173). It appears that Mithra was identified with Kummarbi, the Hurrian god who created the monster Ullikummi to destroy his son Tešub (whom the Armenians identified with Vahagn) and was vanquished by Tešub (see Schwartz in Mithraic Studies II, p. 416, on pseudo-Plutarchus’ story of Diorphos, a Greek version of the Hurrian myth in which Kummarbi is called Mithra; on the apparent conflict between the cults of the two yazatas in Armenia, see J. R. Russell, “Zoroastrian Problems in Armenia: Mihr and Vahagn,” in Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Classical Armenian Culture, University of Pennsylvania, November, 1979, ed. M. Stone). The ancient Iranian festival of fire, *Āθrakāna-, Arm. Ahekan, which is celebrated by Zoroastrians with the kindling of a bonfire outside the Dar-e Mehr, is still solemnized by the Armenians under the new name of Teaṙn and aṙaǰ, the Presentation of Our Lord to the Temple, on the evening of 13 February. Originally, the feast was celebrated in Ahekan, the ninth month, corresponding to Ātar, the ninth month of the Av. Zor. calendar, when the feast of Sada is celebrated (see M. Boyce, “The Two Dates of the Feast of Sada,” in Yādgār-nāma-ye Pūr-Dāvūd, Farhang-e Īrān-zamīn, 21, 1976). Ahekan renders Gk. Xanthikos in the Septuagint, which is equivalent to February (A. G. Abrahamyan, ed., Hovhannes Imastaseri matenagruṭʿyunə, Erevan, 1956, p. 81). The Armenians therefore celebrated the feast towards the middle of winter (see also M. Y. Ananikean, “Teaṙnandaṙaǰ ew erknayin hurə,” Kʿnnakan usumnasiruṭʿiwnner, New York, 1932), and certain aspects of it may be related to observances in honor of Mithra. The name of the god Vahagn probably comes from Parth. *V(a)rhragn (Av. Vərəθraγna) compare Artagnēs-Heraklēs-Arēs at Nimrud Dagh in Commagene. Sogd. Vašaγn-, Saka Varlaagn (E. Benveniste and L. Renou, Vṛtra et Vṛθragna, Paris, 1934; V. N. Toporov, “Ob otrazhenii odnogo indoevropeĭskogo mifa v drevnearmyanskoĭ traditsii,” Patma-banasirnkan Handēs 3, 1977). The 27th day of the Arm. month is named after him. He is called kʿaǰ “brave” (Agathangelos 127). The kʿaǰkʿ, a race of supernatural beings mentioned frequently in both Arm. and Georgian historical texts and folklore, inhabit mountainous wildernesses, hunt, and live in palaces. S. Haykanun has suggested that some of the legends of the tun kʿaǰancʿ “house of the brave ones” in the Armenian epic of Dawiṭʿ of Sasun relate to the Arsacid house (Ēminean azgagrakan žołovacu II, Moscow and Vałaršapat, 1901; Ararat amsagir, Vałaršapat, 1901), and the epithet of the Artaxiads in inscriptions, Aram. ṬBʿ, may be translated as Arm. kʿaǰ “brave” (cf. Movsēs 2.61; Azgagrakan Handēs, 1895, pp. 325, 338, 340; Manuk Abełyan, Erker, Erevan, 1966-75, I, p. 153; VII, p. 85; Atišan, op. cit., p. 208; M. Boyce, “The Parthian gōsān and Iranian Minstrel Tradition,” JRAS, 1957, 14; Ē. Pivazyan, ed., Hovhannes Ṭʿlkurancʿi: Tałer, Erevan, 1960, 10.36, 13.7; G. Charachidze, Le système religieux de la Géorgie païenne, Paris, 1968, pp. 533-37 on the kʿaǰkʿ; on possible etymologies, see O. Szemerényi, “Iranica III,” W. B. Henning Memorial Volume, London, 1970, pp. 424-26 and H. Ačaṙean, Hayerēn armatakan baṙaran, Erevan, 1926-35, s.v. Kʿaǰ; on the Aramaic inscriptions, see A. Perikhanian, “Une inscription araméenne du roi Artašēs trouvée à Zanguezour (Siwnikʿ),” Revue des études arméniennes, N. S. 3, 1966; idem, “Arameĭskaya nadpis’ iz Garni,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs 3, 1964, p. 126; VDI 2, 1946; 2, 1955; 1, 1959; and Syria 25, pp. 1-2; G. Tiracʿyan, “Artašes I-i evs mek noragyut arameakan arjanagruṭʿyun,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs 4, 1977; A. M. Danielyan, “Artašes I-i hastatvac sahmanakʿareri iravakan nšanakuṭʿyunə,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs 3, 1977). It is likely that the sharing of this epithet with the yazata of strength and victory was deliberate; his cult was second only to that of Aramazd himself. Armenian writers identified Vahagn with the sun (Abetyan, Erker I, p. 75; Movsēs 2.14; Nor baṙgirkʿ haykazean lezui, s.v. Vahagn), and he is hailed as višapakʿał “the Dragon-Reaper,” an attribute he seems to have acquired from the Hurrian divinity Tešub, who was second in the Urartian pantheon only to Ḫaldi and after whom the cities of Tušpa (the Urartian capital, now called Van) and Teišebaini (Karmir Blur, near Erevan) were named. (On višaps, see Benveniste and Rénou, op. cit., p. 79 n. 1; Benveniste, Revue des études arméniennes, 1927, pp. 7-9; M. Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 91 n. 42; N. Marr, Ya. Smirnov, Les Vichaps, Leningrad, 1931; on the epithet višapakʿał; see Agathangelos 809 and Movsēs 2.12; on the legend of the birth of Vahagn, his višap-slaying and hur her “flaming hair,” see Movsēs 1.31. On the legend of Tešub’s conquest in his ox-drawn chariot of Ullikummi, see E. Porada, Ancient Iran: The Art of Pre-Islamic Times, London, 1965, pp. 96-101, figs. 63-64, pl. 24; on the oxen and their role in the reaping up of višaps, see Eznik of Kołb, Ełc ałandocʿ, ed. and tr. A. G. Abrahamyan, Erevan, 1970, p. 81. Modern Armenian folklore preserves the legend of a weather god—the angel Gabriel—who plucks up višaps when they grow dangerously large and hurls them into the sun; see Azgagrakan Handēs I, p. 351, cited by Abetyan, op. cit., I, p. 88; Ałišan, op. cit., p. 73 n. l.) The temple of Vahagn was located at Aštišat, and the importance of his cult is underlined by St. Gregory the Illuminator’s choice of that place for the earliest See of the Armenian Church (Movsēs 2.8, 14; Agathangelos 809; S. Šahnazarean, Mšoy barbaṙə, Beirut, 1972, pp. 90, 155). The new Christian shrine was consecrated to St. John the Baptist and St. Athenogenes; the former was regarded as a protector of wayfarers, like the Iranian Vərəθraγna (Komitas vardapet, M. Abelyan, Hazar u mi xał, Erevan, 1969, p. 22). Vahagn shared his temple with Asṭłik, a goddess whose name is apparently a translation of Syr. kaukabtā “little star;” she may fulfill the function of Hepit, consort of Tešub (see G. Kapantsian [Łapʿancʿyan], Istoriko-lingvisticheskie raboty, Erevan, 1956, p. 276 on a possible connection between Arm. htptankʿ and Hepit). Tir, the dpir “scribe” of Ormizd (sic), had a temple called Erazamoyn at Artašat (Agathangelos 778). Erazamoyn contains the Iranian loanword eraz “dream” (Gk. [Agathangelos] oneiromousos confirms this), but the ending -moyn is unknown. The fourth month, Trē, is named after him, corresponding to Cappadocian Teirei (L. H. Gray, “On Certain Persian and Armenian Month Names as Influenced by the Avestan Calendar,” JAOS 38, 1907, p. 336). The ending -ē, as in the loanword margarē “prophet,“ may be a Mid. Ir. form of OIr. *-akī (H. W. Bailey, “Iranica,” JRAS, 1930, pp. 11-19). Prof. E. Ałayan of Erevan (oral communication, July 1979) suggested that -ē is a contraction of Arm. eay, a gen. sing. ending attested in the very toponym Treay geawł “Village of Tir” (Atišan, op. cit., p. 245), but the ending -ei in Cappadocian (Arm. ē comes from Proto-Arm. *ey) would suggest that Trē is not a form evolved within Armenian. Tir survives in modern Arm. belief as the groł “writer” who inscribes the souls of men and carries them off at death (S. Šahnazarean, op. cit., 88; Ē. Pivazyan, op. cit., 12.16; Nahapet Kʿucʿak, Hayreni Kargav, Erevan, 1957, XXIII, L, LV; Abelyan, op. cit., VII, p. 21). His name is the Iranian word for the planet Mercury, which was considered by the Mesopotamians to be governed by the god Nābu, whose traits Tīr acquired. (Mercury, compare NPers. dabīr-e falak “scribe of fate,” Pahl. Tīr-ī abāxtarīg “the planet Tīr” in Bundahišn, tr. p. 63.12, cf. W. Eilers, Semiramis, Vienna, 1971, p. 43; Šāpūr II ordered the general Muʿain to worship Nebo, the god he presumably knew as Tīr, cf. G. Hoffmann, Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Märtyrer, Leipzig, 1880, p. 29. Nābu’s temple usually had a library attached, as did Tīr’s at Artašat, cf. Saggs, op. cit., p. 357.) The ruler of the kingdom of death to which Tir conducted the souls of the departed was Torkʿ of Anġł; Torkʿ is the Luwian Tarhunda (see E. Laroche, “Taṛḫunda,” Revue hittite et asianique, Paris, 1958, p. 88) “the Thunderer,” while Arm. Angel (gen. sg.) translates Nergal in IV Kings 17:30. The Orontid necropolis was located at the center of the cult of Torkʿ, at Angeł Tun, Gk. Ingilene (Movsēs 2.8; N. Adoncʿ, “Torkʿ astuac hin Hayocʿ,” Yušarjan-Festschrift, Vienna, 1911; C. Toumanoff, Studies in Christian Caucasian History, Washington, 1963, p. 109 n. 68; D’yakonov, op. cit., p. 233 n. 112; A. Łanalanyan, ed., Avandapatum, Erevan, 1969, p. clxxxiii). Arm. sandaramet “Hades” (Ezekiel 31:16) is derived from a Southwest-Ir. form in sw-; Spandaramet, with northwest-Ir. sp-, renders the name of the god Dionysus in II Maccabees 6:7 (A. Meillet, “Sur les termes religieux iraniens en arménien,” Revue des études arméniennes 1, 1920, p. 233; H. W. Bailey, “Saka śśandrāmata,” Festschrift für Wilhelm Eilers, Wiesbaden, 1967, p. 136). As a female yazata, Av. Spəntā Ārmaiti, Arm. Spandaramet seems not to correspond well to Dionysus, a male god, but gender was not of primary importance in establishing correspondences between gods of different traditions (e.g., the representation on Kušan coins of a goddess by a male figure and vice versa, M. Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 68 n. 309); nor did the gender of all yazatas remain fixed within Iran itself; the Avestan female Haurvatāt and Amərətāt became the male Hordād and Amurdād in Pahlavi (Boyce, ibid., pp. 204-05). The Armenian translators were evidently more anxious to create a parallel of function than one of gender. At Innaknean Artašēs II built temples of “Heraklēs and Dionysus” (Ṭʿovma Arcruni, I, p. 8) = Gisanē (the shaggy one) and Demeter at Innaknean, i.e., Vahagn and Spandaramet; St. Ignatius declares that the heathens call the earth Demeter (Arm. Demetrē, in Sopʿerkʿ Haykakankʿ 22, Venice, 1861, p. 144, cited by MA III, 450), and Spəntā Ārmaiti is the earth personified. In Avestan, the grave is called “the darkness of Spəntā Ārmaiti” (Vd. 3.35); in Pahl., she is spandārmad zamīg “Spandārmad, the earth” (Bailey, “Saka śśandrāmata”); and Ṭʿovma Arcruni calls the earth her pandoki “inn” (loc. cit.). Spandaramet is probably the šahapet of the tombs referred to by Tiridates III (Agath. 61). Arm. uses šahap “satrap” in the toponym Šahapiwan, the summer residence of the Arm. Orontids, who were satraps under the Achaemenids (S. T. Eremyan, “Osnovnye cherty obshchestvennogo stroya Armenii v ellinisticheskuyu epokhu,” Tełekagir 11, 1948, p. 41); the word šahapet, however, seems to derive from OIr. xšaθrapati attested in Aram ḥštrpty. The name of the god Sadrapēs (Pausanias 6.25.6) may come from here (see A. Dupont-Sommer, “La stèle trilingue récemment découverte en Létoon de Xanthos: le texte araméen,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles Lettres, Paris, January-March, 1974, pp. 136, 146). In Armenian, the šahapetkʿ are supernatural beings (Atišan, op. cit., pp. 199, 453); an Armenian miscellany of the 13th century (Oskiberan, cited by J. Karst, Mythologie arméno-caucasienne, Strasbourg, 1948, p. 55 n. 1) calls Dionysus the šahapet of vineyards; he was considered the protector of these in Pontus as well (F. and E. Cumont, Studia Pontica II, Bruxelles, 1906, p. 367). The goddess of the earth represented both fertility, particularly the fruit of the vine, and the resting place of the dead. In accordance with pre-Zoroastrian custom, the Armenians buried their dead, as did many equally pious Iranian Zoroastrians. The Armenian kings had necropoli at Anġł, later at Ani and Bagawan (Agathangelos 785; Movsēs 2.61), with massive, impregnable tombs (cf. Pʿawstos Biwzand, Patmuṭʿiwn Hayocʿ, Erevan, 1968, IV, p. 24 on the tomb of Sanatruk); towers in which the dead were interred in the first century B.C. have been excavated at Pʿarakʿar, on the Erevan-Ēǰmiacin highway, and elsewhere (G. Tiracʿyan, “Pʿarakʿari aštarakajev dambaranə ev nman hušarjanner Hayastanum ev Aṙaǰavor Asiayum,” Banber Erevani Hamalsarani 1 (10), 1970, pp. 229-39). Grave burials were numerous (Ž. N. Xačʿatryan, R. M. Ṭʿorosyan, “Nyuṭʿer Vałaršapati hyusis-arevelyan dambaranadašticʿ,” Lraber 5, 1976, pp. 99; G. A. Tiracʿyan, “K voprosu o gradostroitel’noĭ strukture i topografii drevnego Valarshpata,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs 2, 1977, p. 94; Ṙ. Ṭʿorosyan, F. Ter-Martirosyan, “Uš hellenistakan žamanakašrǰani dambaranner Ēǰmiacni šrǰani Aygešat gyułum,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs 2, 1976, p. 265), and the Arm. tapan “coffin” is an Ir. loanword found in Khwarezmian tpnkwk “ossuary” (W. B. Henning, “The Choresmian Documents,” Asia Major 11, 1965, pp. 170, 177). It is possible that the figure of a naked goddess found on the lids of glazed ceramic Parthian sarcophagi represent Spandārmad rather than Anāhīd, as R. Ghirshman suggests (Iran, Harmondsworth, 1978, p. 156). Like their Iranian neighbors, the Armenians paid reverence to the dead: Hroticʿ, the 12th month, corresponding to Av. Fravašayō in the Zoroastrian calendar, is the gen. plur. of *Hro(r)t, a loanword from Mid. Ir. fravart, Av. fravaši-, the spirit of the departed (H. Hübschmann, Armen. Etymologie, p. 184; on Arm. hr-, see A. Ghilain, Essai sur la langue Parthe, Louvain, 1939, p. 10 n. 9); it was at the end of the 12th month that the Zoroastrians celebrate Hamaspaθmaēdaya, corresponding roughly to Mid. Ir. Fravardigān “All Souls’ Day.” The Armenians also possess the word uru “ghost,” from Ir. urvan “soul,” and Agathangelos scorned the uruapašt “uru-worshipping” ancestors of the Christian Armenians (cited by Ałišan, op. cit., p. 215). The winged disk with human figure, well attested in Ir. iconography, may represent either Ahura Mazdā or the fravaši, while the disk alone probably symbolizes Av. xᵛarənah- ‘glory” (Arm. pʿaṙkʿ, from OIr. farnah-, see G. Bolognesi, Le fonti dialettali degli imprestiti iranici in armeno, Milan, 1960, p. 28; Hübschmann, op. cit., pp. 88-90, 254; but see most recently P. Lecoq in Orientalia J. Duchesne-Guillemin Emerito Oblata, Acta Iranica 23, Leiden, 1984, pp. 301-26). The winged disk, surmounted by a naked male torso in the Hellenistic style, is found on a coin of the Armenian Orontid satrap Tiribazus (4th cent. B.C., see X. A. Mušełyan, “Hin Hayastani dramayin šrǰanaṙuṭʿyan patmuṭʿyunicʿ,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs 3, 1970, p. 68). Another disk, with either thunderbolts or wings on either side and no human figure, is found on a coin of the Artaxiad period (P. Z. Bedoukian, Coinage of the Artaxiads of Armenia, London, 1978, p. 31 ). The Armenians to this day go out on the eve of Ascension Day (Hambarjman tawn) to collect bunches of the flower hawrot-mawrot, named after the Aməša Spəntas Haurvatāt and Amərətāt (G. Dumézil, “Les fleurs haurot-maurot et les anges Haurvatat-Ameretat,” Revue des études arméniennes, 1926, p. 43; J. Karst, op. cit., p. 349 n. 1; Poturean, ed., Kostandin Erznkacʿi, Venice, 1905, XI, p. 5; on Sogdian hrwwt mrwwt, see W. B. Henning, Sogdica, London, 1940, p. 16 lines 16, 19). The two yazatas came to be regarded by the Armenian as lovers, because they are always mentioned together (a modern poem, Gełam Saryan, Banastełcuṭʿyunner, Erevan, 1954, p. 361, repeats a legend partly romantic, partly Koranic in origin, cf. Sura 2:96 and EI2 II, p. 272), hence the modern Armenian expression of Karin (Erzurum), Xorotə morot ē gter “Hawrot has found his mawrot,” said when two fall in love (oral communication by V. Tarpinian, New York, July, 1979). Originally, hawrot and mawrot were two different flowers, and are mentioned by Agathangelos in a list (645, in G. Tēr-Mkrṭčʿean and St. Kanayeancʿ, eds., Agaṭʿangełay Patmuṭʿiwn Hayocʿ, Tiflis, 1909, pp. 330-31; tr. R. W. Thomson, The Teaching of St. Gregory, Cambridge, Mass., 1970, p. 159). The folk rituals of Ascension Day suggest the ancient identification of the two Aməša Spəntas with the plants and water, and have parallels in modern Persian customs (Fr. Epʿrem Pōłosean, Hambarjman tōnə ew Hay žołovurdi vičakaxatəə, Vienna, 1956, pp. 69ff.). The Armenian vocabulary for evil and the demonic abounds in Iranian loanwords which indicate the influence of Zoroastrian concepts. Arm. pʿaṭʿerak “distress” comes from Mid. Ir. patyārak, a word describing in Zoroastrian theology the adverse activity of Ahriman’s counter-creation (A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroastrian Studies, New York, 1928, p. 76 n. 11). For Arm. kaxard “witch,” compare Av. kaxᵛarəδa (Y. 61.2) (M. Schwartz, “Miscellanea Iranica,” Henning Memorial Volume, pp. 89-90); Arm. vhuk “witch,” from OIr. *viθuka- (E. Benveniste, “Etudes iraniennes,” TPS, 1945, p. 75); Arm. parik and yuškaparik “harpy” (Hübschmann, op. cit., pp. 199-200); Arm. Al, the demon which attacks mothers and their babies (E. Benveniste, “Le dieu Ohrmazd et le demon Albasti,” JA, 248, 1960, pp. 65-74; J. S. Wingate, “The Scroll of Cyprian, an Armenian Family Amulet,” Folk-Lore 41, 1930). Arm. karič “scorpion” is related to Pahl. kaṛčang “crab” (on Arm. gazan “wild beast” and Pahl. xrafstarān “noxious, Ahrimanic creatures,” see H. W. Bailey, “A Range of Iranica,” Henning Memorial Volume, p. 25). The Armenian name of Ahriman, Arhmn, appears to be a native form parallel in development to another Iranian loanword, arhawirkʿ “terror” (H. W. Bailey, “*Spanta,” in Die Diskussion um das "Heilige",” Darmstadt, 1977, p. 171 ). The Armenian religious vocabulary is almost entirely Iranian, and covers most Zoroastrian ideas, religious institutions and instruments: awrhnem “I bless,” nizovem “I curse,” paragast “God forbid;” draxt “heaven,” džoxkʿ “hell,” datastan “judgement,” hrašakert “wonder” (Hübschmann op. cit., pp. 254, 145, 142, 183; R. Godel, An Introduction to the Study of Classical Armenian, Wiesbaden, 1975, 2.345); atrušan “Fire temple,” bagin “altar,” mog “Magus,” zoh “sacrifice,” yašt “prayer, hymn” (Hübschmann, op. cit., pp. 195, 110, 151; on Armenian terms with baga- such as the toponyms Bagaran, Bagawan and the personal name Bagarat, see A, Meillet, Revue des études arméniennes 1, 1920, pp. 233-36.) Atrušan is the only surviving form of the Parth. word for a fire temple, *ātarōšan; the bagin probably relates to the image cult suppressed by the Sasanian state and replaced by temple fires, see M Boyce, “On the Zoroastrian temple cult of fire,” JAOS 95, 1975, pp. 454-65. In referring to specifically named fires other than atrušankʿ, Armenian writers use the Mid. Pers. forms ormzdakan and vṙamakan instead of Arm. Aramazd and Vahagn (cf. Ałišan, op. cit., p. 51 ), indicating that these were not institutions of the older, Armenian form of Zoroastrianism. Most vestments of the Armenian Church have Iranian names; names of specifically Zoroastrian vestments and instruments include kʿustik “sacred girdle,” pʿandam “face mask,” šapik, sudra “sacred shirt,” barsmunkʿ “ritual bundle of twigs” (Hübschmann, op. cit., pp. 254, 211, 119; J. R. Russell, “The word kʿustik in Armenian,” in J. Greppin, ed., Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Armenian linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, publ. 1980). It is seen that the Armenians came under Median influence at an early stage in their history, and that Zoroastrianism was introduced later, under the Achaemenids. The religion was strongly colored by local tradition and foreign influence, as indeed in Iran itself. Zoroastrian traditions were so much a part of Armenian spiritual and material culture that they survived the fanaticism of Kartīr and his successors and were absorbed into the Armenian Christian faith. The Armenian Cross itself is supported on tongues of flame and has at its center not the body of Christ, but a sunburst; an Armenian girl about to marry a Tatar khan is advised in a medieval folksong to remain true to her loys hawat “faith of light” (one recalls that King Mowbad swears in the Parth. epic Vīs and Rāmīn by “the religion of light,” tr. by G. Morrison, Vis and Ramin, New York, 1972, p.144, as the “glorious religion”). But a small group of Armenian Zoroastrians, the Arewordikʿ “Children of the Sun,” never converted to Christianity, and appear to have survived down to the massacre of the Western Armenians by Turkey in 1896-1922. The Arewordikʿ were never converted by St. Gregory (see the Letter of St. Nersēs Klayceʿi [Šnorhali, “the Gracious”], d. 1173, to Samosata in R. M. Bartikyan, “Eretiki Arevordi [“syny solntsa”] v Armenii i Mesopotamii i poslanie armyanskogo katolikosa Nersesa Blagodatnogo,” Ellinisticheskiĭ Blizhniĭ Vostok, Vizantiya i Iran: Istoriya i filologiya. Sbornik v chest’. . . N. V. Pigulevskoĭ, Moscow, 1967 (French tr. in Revue des études arméniennes, N.S. 5, 1968, pp. 271-88). They were said to have been “infected” by Zradašt (Zarathushtra; Gregory Magistros, 11th cent., and Mxiṭʿar of Aparan, 14th cent., cited by Bartikyan, op. cit.) and were carefully distinguished from Christian heretics such as the Paulicians and T’ondrakites (loc. cit), whom they apparently taught to expose the dead on rooftops instead of burying them (John of Awjun, 8th cent., Contra Paulicianos, Venice, 1834, pp. 84-87, cited by N. G. Garsoïan, The Paulician Heresy, The Hague, 1967, p. 95 n. 46; this would indicate that both burial and exposure of the dead were practiced in Armenia, as in Iran). The Arewordikʿ spoke Armenian (Mxiṭʿar of Aparan, cited by Bartikyan), and revered the poplar and all heliotropic plants (St. Nerses, cited by Bartikyan. On the worship of plants by the Armenians, see S. Avdalbekyan, “Buyseri paštamunkʿi azdecʿuṭʿ yunə haykakan mi kʿani tełanunneri vra,” Patma-banasirakan Handēs 4, 1964, p. 223 and Łanalanyan, Avandapatum, pp. liv-lv). A tree which is either a poplar or a cypress, probably the latter, which is particularly revered by the Zoroastrians, appears on an Artaxiad coin (see Bedoukian, op. cit., p. 36, no. 157). The Arewordikʿ offered sacrifices for the souls of their departed (Mxiṭʿar of Aparan, cited by Bartikyan and passed on their teachings orally (loc. cit.; on the importance of oral transmission in Zoroastrianism see H. W. Bailey, “Patvand,” in Zoroastrian Problem, in the Ninth-Century Books, Oxford, 1971 ). Their leader was called the hazərpet (Arm. hazarapet “chiliarch,” probably originally a Median title, see M. L Chaumont, “Chiliarque et curopalate à la cour des Sassanides,” Iranica Antiqua 10, 1977, pp. 140, 143. On the etymology of the word, see O. Szemerényi, “Iranica V,” in Monumentum H. S. Nyberg II, Acta Iranica 5, Tehran and Liège, 1975, pp. 354-66; on the use of the title in 15th-century Armenian, see R. H. Hewsen, “The Meliks of Eastern Armenia II,” Revue des études arméniennes, N. S. 10, 1973-74, p. 300). In the late 14th century there were four Arewordi villages in the Mardin area, and others lived in Samosata and Amida (Ṭʿovma Mecopʿecʿi, 14th century, cited by Bartikyan). In the early 20th century, the Armenian quarter of Marsovan was called Arewordi; there was a cemetery outside the town called Arewordii grezman, and the Armenian owner of a nearby vineyard was named Arewordean, i. e., Arewordi-son (Letter from Mme. Maricʿa Metakʿsean, Ēpinay-sur-Seine, France, 4 July 1979, in response to an article by the author in Haratch, Paris, 1 July 1979). Bibliography : See also on pre-Christian Armenian religion: Ł. Ališan, Hin hawatkʿkam heṭʿanosakan krōnkʿ Hayocʿ, Venice, 1910. A. Carrière, Les huit sanctuaires de l’Arménie païenne, Paris, 1899. H. Gelzer, “Zur armenischen Götterlehre,” Berichte der königlichen sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenachaften 48, 1896, pp. 99-148. M. L. Chaumont, Recherches sur l’histoire d’Arménie, Paris, 1969. M. H. Ananikian, “Armenian Mythology,” Mythology of All Races VII, Boston, 1925. A. Perikhaṇyan, Khramovye ob’edineniya Maloĭ Azii i Armenii, Moscow, 1959. On Armenian folklore of Christian times reflecting Zoroastrian and ancient influences: A. Łanalanyan, Avandapatum, Erevan, 1969. M. Abełyan, Erker I-VII, Erevan, 1966-75, especially Vol. VII, which includes his Azgagrakan hetazotuṭʿyunner and Der armenische Volksglaube (originally publ. Leipzig, 1899). On ancient Armenian art and archeology, the most recent general work is B. N. Aṙakʿelyan, Aknarkner hin Hayastani arvesti patmuṭʿyan, Erevan, 1976. The most recent and compendious history of Armenia in the pre-Christian period is C. P. Ałayan et al., eds., Hay žołovrdi patmuṭʿyun I, Erevan, 1971. On language: H. Ačaṙean, Hayerēn armatakan baṙaran I-VII, Erevan, 1926-35. A. Meillet’s armenological studies are gathered together in Arm. tr. in A. Meillet, Hayagitakan usumnasiruṭʿyunner, ed. M. Minasyan, Erevan, 1978. Eznik of Kołb’s refutation of Zurvanism and Armenian pagan cults was translated by L. Mariès and Ch. Mercier, De Deo, in Patrologia Orientalis XXVIII/3, 4, Paris, 1959
(J. R. Russell)
iv. Iranian Influences in Armenian
i. General
ARMENIAN, the language of the Armenians, which is attested in written sources since the 5th century A.D. (after the invention of the Armenian alphabet by St. Mesrop Maštocʿ) and which is characterized from the very beginning of the literary documentation by a large number of Iranian loanwords. Only this aspect of the history of the Arm. language is treated in this article. The Arm. letters are here transliterated according to the system proposed by Schmitt, 1972: a b g d e z ê ə ṭʿ ž i l x c k h j ł č m y n š o čʿ p ǰ ṟ s v t r cʿ w pʿ kʿ ô f, and the digraph ow for [u].
1. Historical background. In ancient times the name “Armenia” designated the entire highland, which in spite of all political and historical changes in the course of time such as the temporary separation of certain districts or even the complete disintegration of the country, was defined by the Taurus mountains in the south, the upper Euphrates River in the west, the Caucasus mountains in the north, and Media Atropatene, the modern Azerbaijan in the east. In some parts of the area the Armenians constituted the majority of the population, in others only its upper classes, but they were everywhere the unifying element that maintained the culture and language of the whole region. Since these Armenian highlands had been subdued by Cyaxares about 600 B.C. and so had become part of the Median Empire, the conditions had been provided for the intensive influence of Iranian culture and customs on the Armenians and their language. Apart from interruptions of varying duration Armenian was to bear the yoke of the respective Iranian leading power for more than a thousand years, for after the Medes followed the Persian Achaemenids (550-330 B.C.; we find the first attestation of the name of the country in OPers. Armina “Armenia” in 520 B.C. (see above)), then Alexander and the Seleucids. The independence of Armenia from the Seleucids was not gained until 189 B.C.—by Artaxias and Zariadres. The Armenian kingdom, whose power and size had been enlarged considerably in particular by king Tigranes I called the Great (ca. 94-54 B.C.), had become a bone of contention between the Parthians and the Roman Empire (see Chaumont, 1976) ever since L. Licinius Lucullus had marched against Tigranes during the third Mithridatian War and this king had submitted himself to Pompeius in 66 B.C. The Roman protectorate was followed by the rule of a younger line of the Parthian Arsacids (Arm. Aršakowni-kʿ) over Armenia from 53 (or 66) A.D. to 428 A.D., again except the short period of Roman occupation under Trajan. For the Parthian king Vologaeses I had in 53 A.D. simply placed on the Armenian throne his younger brother Tiridates (Trdat) I, who had been acknowledged by the Romans in the treaty of Rhandeia in 63 and who had finally been crowned by Emperor Nero himself in 66 A.D. For several centuries thereafter Armenia was ruled by a Parthian aristocracy, who exerted considerable influence. Indeed, the Parthian aristocracy was emulated by the Armenians, especially the upper classes, who necessarily had a command of both Parthian and Armenian, and who even tried to join through marriage with the new true masters of their country. Though the Christianization of Armenia in the third century and its rise to Armenian official religion shortly after 300 A.D. loosened the close ties between Iranians and Armenians, ties that had until then been close even in matters of creed, little changed in the political situation even under the Sasanians (who ruled over Iran from 224 A.D.), until the Armenian apple of discord was finally divided between Romans and Sasanians in 387 A.D.: Western Armenia came under the rule of the Romans and later the Byzantines, whereas the far greater eastern part of the country, the so-called “Great Armenia” or the “Persarmenia” of the Byzantine historiographers, came under Persian control and was fully annexed by Bahrām V Gōr some years later, in 428 A.D., and from then governed only by Sasanian margraves. Even this brief sketch of the historical background shows that the relations between Armenia and Iran were often very strained, especially during the golden ages of Iran under the Achaemenid and Sasanian dynasties. Moreover, it shows that conditions favorable to a fruitful cultural interchange between Armenians and Iranians existed almost exclusively during the rule of the Arsacids over Armenia before the Christianization of Armenia. During that period the culture of the Parthian feudal aristocracy, being superior to that of the Armenians, exerted profound influence on them. Accordingly, most of the linguistic borrowings came into Armenian from the Northwest Iranian language of the Parthians in a way comparable to the overwhelming French influence on English after the Norman conquest. Furthermore, it should be emphasized that these borrowings were not limited to the vocabulary but also involve derivational suffixes, phraseology, and all kinds of names, and that they are from the beginning of the Armenian literary tradition inextricably mixed with the inherited vocabulary of IE. stock. (For the political, social, cultural, and religious contacts between Iran, Armenia, and Georgia see most recently Lang, 1983.)
2. History of the problem. Armenian word forms are close to or even identical with Iranian and especially NPers. forms in so many cases that the particular connection between the two languages could not escape the notice of scholars even at the beginning of modern Armenological studies. However, such words were not at first recognized as borrowings, and as a result, in the mid-19th century experts both in Armenian and in Iranian, foremost among whom were Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller, concluded that Armenian belongs to the Iranian group of languages. That opinion prevailed until 1875, when H. Hübschmann proved that Armenian is an independent branch of the IE. family of languages. The revolutionary element in Hübschmann’s procedure was that according to him Arm. words fully or largely agreeing with Ir. forms in phonetic shape were suspect of being loanwords and could therefore not safely be regarded as genuine Arm. words. It was due to this methodological principle, which only gradually gained universal acceptance, that Hübschmann became the significant pioneer in the study of Ir. borrowings in Armenian (see details in Schmitt, 1975). Still today we are indebted to the one volume that was published of his Armenische Grammatik (Hübschmann, 1897, pp. 9-259) for the most comprehensive compilation of those borrowings. It contains 686 items concerning Iranian loanwords, aside from the borrowings from NPers., and 217 names. These lists represent a milestone in Armeno-Iranian scholarship and still today are of fundamental importance, but they are far from complete. Indeed, completion could not have been attained at that time since relatively little was then known about OIr. and even less about Mid. Ir. The subsequent investigation of these problems is accordingly closely connected with the advances made in Iranian studies that have to a large extent followed upon the well-known extensive archeological discoveries. In particular, the discovery of many new texts in several Mid. Ir. languages, and thus also the understanding of the vocabularies of those languages, has made it possible to recognize many more Arm. words as borrowings from Ir. and to define more exactly the material already known. Thus, Considine, 1979, p. 213, has called attention to the fact that Hübschmann was unable to provide Mid. Ir. evidence for more than forty percent of those words which he himself regarded as Ir. loanwords in Armenian. Of particular importance here are the new findings in the field of Ir. historical dialectology, which made it possible for the first time to discover the exact Ir. source language of the majority of those Arm. loanwords that came to Arm. from Southwest and Northwest Iranian. The first to prove that Parthian was the source of many Arm. borrowings was A. Meillet (see Meillet, 191 l/12). On that broader basis scholars like E. Benveniste, G. Bolognesi, and many others (see the articles cited in the select bibliography) have proved by means of Ir. evidence the Ir. origin of numerous Arm. words that had previously been unexplained or regarded as IE. heritage. The need for a comprehensive collection of the Ir. loanwords in Arm. reflecting the enormous progress that has been made since the turn of the century has become more and more pressing for both disciplines concerned, especially since H. H. Ačaṟyan, Hayeren armatakan barāran (Armenian etymological dictionary) 4 vols., Erevan, 1971-1979 (first mimeographed edition 1926-1935), is unreliable as far as the Iranian evidence is concerned. As for the prospects of realizing such a project see Considine, 1979, pp. 2l4f. Later research has in many cases confirmed the Iranian origin of Arm. words which Hübschmann could only suspect on the basis of their sound of being of Iranian origin (see Bolognesi, 1966, pp. 575f.); ašxat “trouble, labor,” cf. Mid. Pers. axšādīh “trouble, pain;” bazmak “candle, lamp” from Parth. bazmag; ham(a)harz “adjutant, attendant” from Parth. hāmhirz; vin “lute” from Mid. Pers. win, etc. Moreover, a number of words that Hübschmann had regarded as inherited IE. words in Armenian, have in the meantime been identified, or at least claimed as Iranian loanwords (see Bolognesi, 1966, pp. 580f.; 1980, pp. 27f.), even if the last word has not yet been said in some cases: gan “beat, blows,” dag “pressing,” dêz “heap,” hasak “age,” ma(r)h “death,” mêg “mist,” mêz “urine,” yargem “I respect, honor,” sami-kʿ (plur.) “yoke,” sast “scolding,” sowg “sorrow, grief,” vasn “on account (of), because (of),” tar “distant.” Here the important point is that where the phonological development is parallel in both Parthian (or Iranian) and Armenian, it is not always possible to be certain whether a word is borrowed or inherited. The difficulty was already illustrated by Hübschmann (1897, pp. 16f., see most recently Schmitt, 1980, pp. 415f.), in his discussion of naw “ship.” Doubts may sometimes be removed by more detailed argumentation. Thus, Benveniste, 1957/58, pp. 60 and 60f. stressed that the morphological type represented by mêg and mêz is attested for the roots in question otherwise only in Indo-Iranian and is found very often in Irano-Armenian borrowings. In addition, he pointed out that gan appears in the phrase gan harkanel “to strike blows,” which belongs to legal terminology and that gan thus is part of a system. In all these cases the interpretation as a loanword accordingly gains much probability. Benveniste, 1964, p. 2 also introduced a dialectological argument by pointing to the improbability of the existence of isoglosses exclusive to Armenian and Indo-Iranian. Thus, a word like sowrb “pure, holy,” which corresponds exactly to Vedic śubhrá- “neat, smart,” but has no counterpart in other IE. languages, could be assumed to be a loanword from Iranian even if no Iranian evidence for such a word were found. However, in this case the Iranian evidence may be provided by Khotanese since, as R. E. Emmerick has pointed out, Khotanese suraa- “pure, clean” is probably to be derived from *subra-ka- rather than from *suxra-ka-. Similar problems arise in connection with a number of words that have been lost in Iranian and preserved only in Armenian (see Bolognesi, 1977, pp. 534ff.) because an argument often advanced is that since the model assumed is not attested in Iranian, the derivation from Iranian is based upon an argument ad silentio. Nevertheless, there are cases where the rules of historical phonology allow not even the slightest doubt, as e.g. in the case of nirh “sleepiness” or parawand “fetter.” This fact is of course most important from the point of view of methodology and shows clearly that a residue of unsolved problems may always remain.
3. Layers of Iranian borrowings. That not all Arm. borrowings from Ir. belong to one and the same layer is to be expected a priori because of the long period of Ir.-Arm. interrelations, and is, as always in such cases, exemplified clearly by double borrowings like Arikʿ (ew Anarikʿ) “Aryans (and non-Aryans)” beside Eran (ew Aneran) “idem,” mogpet beside movpet as the title of the Zoroastrian high priests, or aspar “shield” beside sar-kʿ (plur.) “weapons.” The last two pairs can be explained as reflecting a Northwest-Ir. and a Southwest-Ir. dialect respectively. For mog- beside mov compare Man. Mid. Parth. muṛγ “bird” beside Man. Mid. Pers. murw. Clearly, these pairs result from borrowings from Parth. in the Arsacid and from Mid. Pers. in the Sasanian period respectively. Another explanation is required to account for Arm. Arikʿ beside Eran, since both Inscr. Mid. Pers. Ērān and Inscr. Parth. Aryān have an ending -ān which is not present in Arm. Arikʿ. In general the Arm. forms of the loanwords indicate that they were borrowed after the OIr. period, although this does not mean that it is possible to date each borrowing precisely. However, the earliest influences upon the Arm. vocabulary, even though they are attested by only a few words, seem to belong to the time before Macedonian and Seleucid rule over Iran, i. e. chiefly to Achaemenid times, when Armenia was under Iranian domination but not yet thoroughly Iranianized (see Meillet, 1911/12, pp. 246f. = 1977, pp. 149f). It has been suggested that the first borrowing may have been that very form Ari-kʿ (-kʿ is the plural-marker), whose -ea-inflection Arikʿ, gen. Areacʿ, etc., is in accordance with that of the inherited IE. *-iā-stems and so suggests that the Iranian word was borrowed at a time when it still had the ending -ya- intact, as in Old Pers. Ariya-, Av. Airiia- ṭʿšnami “enemy,” borrowed from OIr. *duš-manyu-, attested by Av. dušmainiiu- “hostile,” may also be one of the earliest borrowings (see most recently Schmitt, 1980, pp. 422f.). Early borrowing was assumed by Meillet (1911/12, p. 250 = 1977, p. 150) for Arm. partêz “garden,” which with its t from *d still shows the effect of the Arm. consonant shift. For other Ir. loanwords from before the Arm. consonant shift and the problems involved see especially de Lamberterie, 1978, pp. 246ff. In view of the important role played by “paradises” in Achaemenid Iran (note Gk. parádeisos, Hebrew pardēs and also Av. pairidaēza- “enclosure”), such a borrowing is in fact easily understandable, even though in view of the phonological difficulties presented by the word it may be preferable to regard it as an indirect borrowing. Finally, Arm. gowšak “informer, denouncer” from Old Pers. *gaušaka-, is a typical term of the Achaemenid administration attested only by Aram. gwšk. On the other hand the existence of ancient borrowings dating back as far as the time of the Median Empire, as assumed by Frye, 1969, pp. 84f. = 1976, pp. 155f. seems highly doubtful. Certainly, the proper name Pʿārnawaz (name of an Iberian king) reflects the Gk. form Farnābazos and not a “Median” form with *farnah-. The number of Ir. loanwords in Armenian apparently increased during the Arsacid period, since their Northwest-Ir. dialectological characteristics show the majority of the Arm. borrowings to have come through Parthian (see especially Benveniste, 1957/58 and 1964 and Bolognesi, 1960). These Arsacid borrowings are not only more numerous and of course more archaic in form than the Sasanian ones (and sometimes even more archaic than the forms found in the Parth. texts themselves) but above all they penetrated Arm. much more deeply and became a living part of it. (On the archaic character of such borrowings see Bolognesi, 1977, pp. 528ff.) It is thus clear that a merely quantitative and statistical assessment of the loanwords is inadequate. The Parth. and Mid. Pers. materials can not be compared on an equal basis. They must be examined more closely and the following points must be taken into account: a) Among the Arsacid loans there are words belonging to the basic vocabulary of everyday life in all its aspects including many adjectives, such as vat “bad,” veh “better,” and others denoting colors, even though adjectives are not usually borrowed as readily as substantives. On the other hand the Sasanian Mid. Pers. layer of loanwords contains mainly technical terms of the military and administration, of jurisdiction and trade, titles or professional designations, and names of all kinds. On the whole it can be said that the Sasanian Mid. Pers. loanwords were often borrowed into other neighboring languages, such as Syriac and Arabic, as well. b) The Arsacid loanwords are usually well attested both in the oldest texts (the Bible translation) and later throughout all literary genres, whereas the Sasanian loanwords are mostly isolated hapax legomena confined to certain authors and often occur in a typically Persian context. c) Only the Arsacid borrowings were still productive in Armenian so that new words, derivatives as well as compounds, could be formed from them. This difference, seen most clearly in those cases where both the Arsacid and Sasanian forms are attested in Armenian, obviously reflects the different relationships between the Armenians and Arsacid and Sasanian masters, namely peaceful co-existence under Arsacid rule, but stubborn resistance against the Sasanians, who had brought political and religious bondage to the land. The bulk of the pre-Sasanian Arm. borrowings from Mid. Ir. languages, in particular all the Arsacid Parthian loans, can not be assigned to one single homogeneous stratum. This was proved definitively by Bolognesi, 1951, who was able to advance beyond the work of Hübschmann by postulating on the basis of different phonological representations (such as Arm. er- beside ṟ for Ir. r-, or Arm. oy beside o for Ir. ō) two successive phases in the development of Parthian, which he called (p. 162) rather inappropriately “paleopartico” and “neopartico” (“Old Parthian” and “New Parthian”). Though our knowledge of the Parth. language throughout the different periods of its history has been greatly enlarged as a result of the discovery of the Nisa ostraca, the Manichean texts from Turfan, and the Sasanian inscriptions, more precise dates within that long period of time cannot be determined. The majority of these Parthian loanwords were, however, undoubtedly borrowed in a “Late Old Parthian” or rather an “Early Middle Parthian” period. Because little was known in his time about Mid. Ir. languages, in 1897 Hübschmann was rarely able to detect dialectal differences in the Ir. originals of Arm. loanwords. But already in 1911/12 Meillet clearly described the dialectological characteristics of the Northwest Ir. ( = NW), Parth. language within the Arm. borrowings as follows: 1. NW s in Arm. vnas “damage” beside Southwest Ir. ( = SW) h as in Man. Mid. Pers. wināh, NPers. gonāh; 2. NW z in Arm. yazem “I worship” (from Man. Parth. yaz-) beside SW d as in Old Pers. yad-; 3. NW ‘ (whence Arm. r) in Arm. xoyr “headgear, diadem” (from Man. Parth. xō’ “helmet”) beside SW y as in Man. Mid. Pers. xōy (from Old Pers. xauda-); 4. NW rd in Arm. vard “rose” (as also in the Aram. loanword wrdʾ) beside SW l as in Zoroastrian Mid. Pers. gul “flower;” 5. NW hr (whence Arm. rh or h) in Arm. parh/pah “guard” (from Man. Parth. pāhr) beside SW s as in Mid. Pers., NPers. pās; 6. NW b- in bar- “door” (attested in barapan “door-keeper”) from Man. Parth. bar beside SW d- as in Mid. Pers., NPers. dar. (N.B. Statements like “Arm. yazem from Man. Parth. yaz-,” as above, do not mean that the Arm. word can only be derived from the Manichean Parthian form, but that within Parthian the only or the best evidence is provided by the Manichean texts, which in some cases actually have forms showing later phonetic developments.) Subsequent research in the field of Ir. dialectology has increased the number of these distinctive features substantially. Some special features reflected in the Arm. material and characteristic of the Northwest-Ir. dialect group, which is on the whole the more conservative one, are the following: 1. NW sp in Arm. asp- “horse” (attested in some compounds) from Parth. asp (compare Av. aspa-) beside SW s as in Old Pers. asa-, Mid. Pers as- (in aswār “horseman”); 2. NW ž in Arm. žaman-ak “time” (cf. Man. Parth. žamān, written, jmʾn) beside SW z as in Man. Mid. Pers. zamān; 3. NW g in Arm. mogpet “(Zoroastrian) high priest” (from Man. Parth. maγbed, written mgbyd) beside SW w as in NPers. mowbad or the borrowed Arm. movpet, Syr. mvpṭʾ; 4. NW nd in Arm. band “prison” (from Man. Parth band) beside SW nn as in Man. Mid. Pers. bann. Characteristic features of the Arm. borrowings from Northwest-Ir. dialects are, in addition, the metatheses of hr to rh (see above) and of the initial group xš- (which had at first remained unchanged) to (a)šx- as in ašxarh “land, world” from *xšahr from Proto-Iranian *xšaθra-. The latter feature proves that forms like Arm. šah “king” and šahanšah “king of kings” with their reduced initial š- from original xš- must be regarded as Sasanian borrowings from Mid. Pers. šāh, šāhān šāh (from OPers. xšāyaθiya-). Another significant Northwest-Ir. feature is the lack of contraction in cases like Man. Parth. zāwar (written zʾwr) “strength, power” (whence Arm. zawr “army”) beside Man. Mid. Pers. zōr. On the other hand there are also words in Armenian that are marked by dialectological features characteristic of the Southwest-Ir. Mid. Pers. language (the above criteria in reverse order): 1. SW h in Arm. akah “knowing” (from Zor. Mid. Pers. ākāh, Man. Mid. Pers. āgāh) beside NW s as in Man. Parth. āgas; 2. SW d in Arm. dast- “hand” (attested in dastak “wrist,” dastakert “possession, property;” dastarāk “towel”) from Mid. Pers. dast beside NW z as in Av. zasta-; 3. SW y in Arm. dastiarak “teacher” (also with dast- as first element), cf. NPers. dastyār “assistant,” beside NW ’ as in Man. Parth. dast’ār from Proto-Ir. *dasta-dāra-; 4. SW l (whence Arm. l or ł in Arm. sałar “leader, chief” (from Mid. Pers. sālār) beside NW rd as in Inscr. Mid. Pers. sardār (with historical writing); 5. SW d- in Arm. dar- (attested in darapan “door-keeper”) beside NW b- as in the other borrowings, bar-, barapan (see above); 6. SW s in Arm. sar-kʿ (plur.) “weapons” beside NW sp as in Arm. aspar “shield,” Mid Pers. spar, both borrowings from a Northwest-Ir. dialect. Note also the following two points: 1. the adjective ṭʿšowaṟ “unfortunate, miserable” from an unattested Mid. Pers. *dušuvarr (contrast Man. Parth. dušfarr, Av. dušxᵛ arənah-) with the typically Pers. development of Proto-Ir. *hṷ- to old Pers. uv- as opposed to Med. f-, Av. xᵛ- (see Hübschmann, 1897, p. 155; Schmitt, 1980, p. 422); 2. the compounds with first element Proto-Ir. *pati-, whence Mid. Ir. pat-, pad-, but especially also Mid. Pers. pay-, as it is found e.g. in the Arm. borrowings payman “measure, statute,” etc., from Man. Mid. Pers. paymān (as opposed to Man. Parth. padmān) and paykʿar “fight, struggle” from Mid. Pers. paykār (Man. Mid. Pers. pahikār), NPers. peykār (as opposed to Man. Parth. padkār- “to fight”). The different Northwest- and Southwest-Ir. dialectological characteristics, as far as they are reflected in Arm. loanwords, have been studied most systematically by G. Bolognesi in his monograph Le fonti dialettali degli imprestiti iranici in armeno (Milan, 1960). But the study of the Armenian loans from Iranian is of vital importance for solving problems of Old, Middle, and New Iranian linguistics, as well. 1. They help determine the exact phonetic shape of the (Middle) Iranian words, which in the Iranian texts is often obscured by the consonantal writing systems. The Arm. alphabet, however, is fully vocalized, though it does not show the original vowel quantity. 2. They enable us to establish the exact meaning of the Ir. words. 3. They shed light on the phonetic developments that took place in the Ir. languages and thus aid in reconstructing linguistic stages not known or not sufficiently known from the Ir. evidence itself. 4. They provide evidence relating to Ir., and especially Mid. Ir. dialectological problems. Finally, the Arm. language is also an important source for Ir. lexicology and lexicography as it contains many words, some of which survive right down to the present day, not attested in the Ir. languages themselves, e.g.: erašx “guarantee, security” from Proto-Ir. *raxši- (cognate with OInd. rakṣ “to protect;” see Benveniste, 1945, p. 71 ), hraparak “place” from Proto-Ir. *frapādaka- (compare the Syr. loanword hrpdq; see Benveniste, 1957/58, pp. 62f.), nirh “sleepiness” from Proto -Ir. *nidrā- (corresponding to Vedic nidrāˊ-; see Benveniste, 1964, p. 2), and parawand “fetter” from Proto-Ir. *pādabanda- (corresponding to OInd. pādabandha-; see Benveniste, 1957/58, pp. 63f.). In every investigation of these questions one must bear in mind, however, that individual cases either may not be so clearcut on the Iranian side because the Ir. transmission is in parts very fragmentary, or on the whole be more complicated because of borrowings between different Iranian dialects. As is well known, there are in the basically Southwest-Ir. Persian language numerous Northwest-Ir. elements, incorporated mainly in Arsacid times, and on the other hand also a certain number of Southwest-Ir. (Persian) influences on the Northwest-Ir. dialects from Sasanian times, as in the case of Man. Parth. dast “hand” with SW (and common Middle and modern Iranian dast, etc.) d instead of NW z. This complication of the Iranian situation calls for a more comprehensive view in order to assess the Armenian borrowings, which means that one must take into account all available data rather than discuss specific criteria in isolation. In this respect the book by Bolognesi, 1960, where all the most important dialectological features reflected in Armenian are discussed in great detail, is in every way a model. Among the many questions that have not yet received an answer are the following: 1. In addition to the adjective seaw, “black,” which is in accordance with Man. Parth. syāw, Av. siiāuua- and therefore is a Northwest-Ir. borrowing, Armenian has forms showing a change of *sḭ to š, namely šaw- in the proper names Šaw-asp and Šaw-arš comparable to Av. Siiāuuāspi- (patronymic to *Siiāuuāspa-) and Siiāuuaršan-. However, we do not know to which Iranian dialect that change of *sḭ to š is due. Thus, whereas Bolognesi, 1960, p. 24 established a connection of this phenomenon with the Iranian southwest, Benveniste, 1964, p. 3 objected strongly to that view and instead regarded these names as belonging to a particular epic tradition, which he considered to be Northeast-Ir. because of BSogd. šāw and especially Chor. šāuš (from Proto-Ir. *Syāvaršā), etc. A third position was adopted by Périkhanian, 1968, pp. 24f., who, arguing from analogous cases, thought of traditional Median names taken over by the Armenians from the “Middle Median” language of Northwest Iran, which, however, is not attested in an authentic source. 2. As the regular continuants of Proto-Ir. *d in originally intervocalic position (old Pers. d, old Av. d) we find Northwest-Ir. (Parth.) ‘ (Arm. r; see above), but Southwest-Ir. (Mid. Pers.) y. Apart from these regular developments, both these Ir. dialects also show forms with h from Proto-Ir. *d, which are to be attributed to a third dialect said to have been spoken in an area between the other two. However, the postulated intermediate dialect remains a rather vague entity. Such forms with h from Proto-Ir. *d are attested also in Armenian: e.g. zrah-kʿ (plur.) “cuirass” (with various derivatives) belonging to the likewise borrowed Aram. zardā (written zrdʾ), the younger Arm. form zreh, and Zor. Mid. Pers. zrēh, NPers. zereh (compare Young Av. zrāδa-); and srah “hall, (court)yard,” which is connected with JPers. srāh “outer court,” the Mandaic loanword srʾdq, and Zoroastrian Mid. Pers. srād or srāy, all deriving from Proto-Ir. *srāda-. In the case of such Armenian borrowings the immediate Ir. source dialect can not usually be determined since Parthian or Middle Persian with their (borrowed?) h- forms are potential candidates just as well as the postulated h- dialect itself. A particularly odd situation is to be observed in the case of the Armenian reflexes of Proto-Ir. *spāda- “army” Old Pers., Old Av. spāda-, Young Av. spāδa-), where we find side by side Arm. spah (as in Zor. Mid. Pers. spāh, NPers. sepāh), spay (with the genuine Mid. Pers. development), and *spar (from Parth. *spāδ, Man. Parth. ispāδ written ʿspʾd) implied by the compound sparapet “commander-in-chief,” a title which is to be compared with Inscr. Parth. (a)spāδpat, Mid. Pers. spāhpat, NPers. sepahbad, and the borrowed proper name Arm. Aspahapet (all from Proto-Ir. *spāda-pati-). The confusion described above is compounded by additional factors. Thus, the Parthians came into close contact with the Armenians only after having spread over Northwest Iran in the second half of the second century B.C. They thus contributed much to the extinction of the old “Median” or “Atropatenian” dialect spoken there, a dialect apparently closely related to their own language. This “Middle Median” dialect (see above), whose country bordered on that of Armenian, is virtually unknown. Périkhanian (1966, especially pp. 21f. n. 7; 1968, especially pp. 25-29) thought she had found the key to its characterization in older Aramaic inscriptions from the region, particularly in that of King Artašês/Artaxias (189-160 B.C.) from Zangezowr. Her main shibboleths “Mid. Med.” hr from Proto-Ir. *θr and “Mid. Med.” prothetic vowel before initial sp- and xš- (whence Arm. šx) rested chiefly upon one single piece of evidence, namely the proper name Axšahrsart (written as Aram. ʿḥštrsrt) containing “Mid. Med.” *axšahr as first element (by contrast with Parth. xšahr “country, empire”). Moreover, Périkhanian considered that many of the Northwest-Ir. loanwords in Armenian that are usually regarded as being from Parthian, are to be attributed in fact to an older stratum, a “Middle Median,” layer, although these words presented none of those peculiarly Med. characteristics of which a limited number can be established for the Old Iranian period (see Périkhanian herself, 1966, p. 21 n. 7). This line of approach had been anticipated by W. B. Henning, who in 1963 had assigned those words containing the group nj instead of Parth. nǰ (like Arm. brinj “rice” beside NPers. berenǰ or Arm. ganj “treasure” as Man. Mid. Pers. ganz beside Man. Parth. gazn, NPers. ganǰ) to Median. This approach appears to be correct in principle but it is difficult to work out the details because of the scanty evidence available for the older Iranian dialects. Similar problems are presented by the connections between Armenian and East Iranian languages, which have been remarked on repeatedly since Gauthiot 1916. Most striking is the fact that a number of words known only from Sogdian were borrowed into Armenian (see Bolognesi, 1966, pp. 574f. n. 18): e.g. margarê “magician, sorcerer” (like BSogd. mārkarē rather than Man. Parth. mārēgar), kari “very” (like BSogd. kʾ’y), baw “enough” (like BSogd. βāw “satiety”). Since there were never direct connections between Armenians and Sogdians it is impossible to envisage Sogdian loanwords in Armenian. The most likely explanation seems to be Henning’s proposal (1958, p. 93) that we have to do here with elements of the so-called “Parnian” language, the virtually unknown language of the East Iranian conquerors of Parthia, which was brought to Parthia by the Parni but abandoned in favor of Parthian after it had been enriched by East Iranian elements. No definitive proof has been found but it is plausible to assume that the words in question may have been East Iranian words that entered Armenian via Parthian. That Parthian played the part of such an intermediary must be assumed also in other instances. Most obvious is the case of Indian or Aramaic/Syriac words. Of Indian provenance are e.g. Arm. kapik “ape” (as Zor. Mid. Pers. kabīg, NPers. kabī from OInd. kapi-, šakʿar “sugar” (as Mid. Pers., NPers. šakar) from Niya Prakrit śakara, or vagr “tiger” from Niya Prakrit vyagra. On the other hand the plant name bowcin “verbascum,” which corresponds to Syr. būṣīnā from Mid. Pers. būčīnā, appears to be an indirect Ir. borrowing in Armenian by way of Syriac (see Hübschmann, 1897, p. 301) because of its -c- (suitable to Syr. ṣ) instead of -č- (corresponding to Ir. č). But matters are clearest in the case of some borrowings from Greek, in particular with the older ones, which were taken over in the period before the complete Christianization of Armenia. Even the general historical situation would lead us to expect that Greek words would have come to Armenia through the Parthian empire since Greek was the cultural language of the Parthians, who were Hellenized to some extent at least in their upper classes. Such indirect borrowing of Greek words via Parthian often can not be established unambiguously (as e.g. also in the case of Hrōm/Hrōvm, the name of Rome and Byzantium), but occasionally such an intermediate stage is revealed by phonological criteria, as when Greek ’, i.e. [d] becomes Parth. ’, i.e. [’] in intervocalic position and is replaced by Arm. r: Arm. lampar (with variants lambar and łampar/łambar) “torch” from Gk. lampás, stem lampád- (in contrast to the hapax legomenon Arm. lambat-kʿ (plur.), which was later borrowed directly from Gk. lampádes), or Arm. kałapar “model, form, pattern” from Gk. kalopódion “(shoe) last, model.” Certainty can be obtained also where one and the same word was borrowed twice; once directly from Greek in a form corresponding to the Greek original, and a second time indirectly, after passing through Parthian and attested in another form similar to that known in Iranian. Thus, we find side by side the learned “book word” drakʿmê “drachm” borrowed directly from Gk. drachmḗ and the more commonly used dram (attested already in the Bible translation) from Man. Mid. Pers. drahm, NPers. deram (with the Ir. change of xm to hm and m), or yakinṭʿ “jacinth (stone)” from Gk. hyákinthos, and yakownṭʿ, which is closer to Parth. yākund. Armenian played a similar role in connection with the neighboring languages in the north, especially Georgian. Many Ir. loanwords occur in Old Georgian literature from the fifth century A.D. onwards although the Ir. loanwords in Georgian are nowhere nearly as important as those in Armenian. They were borrowed either directly from Ir. languages or dialects, as seems to have been the case in Arsacid times, or by way of Armenian, as can sometimes be proved on phonological grounds. Clear evidence is afforded by the typical Arm. r for Ir. *d or Parth. ’: Georgian ambori “kiss” from Arm. hamboyr “kiss, affection, love” from Parth. *hambō’ (compare Man. Parth. ambōyād “he kissed”); Georgian xoiri “headgear” from Arm. xoyr “headgear, diadem” (see above) from Man. Parth. xō’ “helmet;” Georgian čʾešmaritʾi “true” from Arm. čšmarit “true” from Mid. Pers. čašmdīd “evident, apparent (lit. seen with (one’s own) eyes);” the Georgian proper name Bagratʾi from Arm. Bagrat (beside Bagarat) from Ir. *Bagadāta “given by god(s).” But equally certain are some borrowings from Ir. into Georgian without the intervention of Arm., mainly when Arm. has borrowed from a different source. Such are: Georgian pʿarmani “permit, license” from Parth., Mid. Pers. framān as opposed to Arm. hraman “order;” Georgian pʿarsaxi “parasang” from Parth. *frasax (implied by the Syr. loanword prsḥʾ) as opposed to Arm. hrasax, or, because of the absence of metathesis, Georgian pʾitʾiaxši “governor, viceroy” as opposed to Arm. bdeašx “idem.” Thus M. Andronikʾašvili was justified in warning against the overready assumption of Arm. mediation in the case of Georgian borrowings from Ir.: see her book Narkʾvevehi iranul-kartuli enobrivi urliertobidan (Studies in Iranian-Georgian linguistic contacts) I, Tbilisi, 1966. After the fall of the Sasanian empire in the middle of the seventh century A.D. the Armenians came for a long period under the influence of Islamic masters (Arabs, Saljuqs, Mongols, and Ottomans), but that foreign rule did not greatly affect Armenian culture and language since the Armenians remained firmly Christian. We accordingly find only a few loanwords, especially among technical and learned vocabulary, from Arabic and New Persian (see Hübschmann 1897, pp. 14f. and 259-280). In general they are limited to later, specialized or technical literature that has in many cases been translated from the donor languages. In part they are distinguished by showing the changes of the second Arm. consonant shift, as in the case of Arm. gos “drum” from NPers. kōs or satap “rue” from NPers. sadāb. That is why Hübschmann (1897, p. 15) assigned these borrowings to the period after the eleventh century. In other cases a more exact chronological classification is difficult or impossible because of the lack of decisive evidence. However, Hübschmann was in error in thinking that Arm. z must have been from “NPers.” z from “Mid. Pers.” č, e.g. in the case of ṭʿazem “I run” from NPers. tāzam according to Hübschmann, 1897, p. 265, since it is now known from the phonetically more exact writings of the Man. Mid. Pers. Turfan texts that the development of č to z is much older and occurred during the Middle Persian period. To this group of loanwords belong also the arabicized forms so characteristic of NPers. e.g. the names of orange and lemon, Arm. nārinǰ from NPers. nārang, arabicized nāranǰ (from OInd. nāraṅga- “orange tree”) and Arm. patrinǰ from NPers. bādrang, arabicized *bādranǰ (not attested) from Zor. Mid. Pers. wādrang.
4. Classified list of selected loanwords: a brief analysis of the loanwords with respect to their cultural context. This analysis is restricted to a semantic classification of the most important and best attested Ir. loanwords, namely those found in the Bible translation. No attempt is made here to present a complete or even a comprehensive catalogue of the Iranian elements in Armenian. Note also that any such classification is to some extent arbitrary. The order followed is that of the Armenian alphabet. a) Government, administration, social order, and law. Direct evidence of the Arsacid and Sasanian rule over Armenia is provided by those loanwords that can be classified under this heading. Examples: azat “free, noble” from Parth., Mid. Pers. āzād; azd “information” from Parth., Mid. Pers. azd “known;” ambox “crowd, people” from Parth. *ambōx (cf. NPers. anbūh); ašxarh “world, country” from Parth., Mid. Pers. šahr; aparankʿ (plur.) “house, palace” from Parth. apa’an; awan “village” from Mid. Pers. āwahan, Old Pers. āvahana-; awrên (-kʿ) “law, right, custom” from Parth. aβ’ēn; band “prison” from Parth., Mid. Pers. band; gah “throne” from Parth., Mid. Pers. gāh; ganj “treasure” from Mid. Pers. ganz/ganǰ, Parth. gazn; dašt “field, plain” from Parth., Mid. Pers. dašt; dastakert “village, estate” from Parth., Mid. Pers. dast(a)gird; dat “justice, verdict” from Mid. Pers. dād, Old Pers. dāta-; dar-a-pan “doorkeeper,” loan translation on the basis of Mid. Pers. darbān; diwan “chancellery” from Mid. Pers. dēwān (cf. NPers. dīvān); dpir “scribe, secretary” from Parth., Mid. Pers., dibīr; ṭʿag “crown” from Mid. Pers. tāg (cf. the loanwords, Syr. tāγā, Arab. tāǰ; išxan “prince, ruler” from Ir. *xšāna- (cf. Sogd. axšāwan “king”); hazarapet “chiliarch, manager” from Parth. hazārpat (Mid. Pers. hazāruft; from proto-Ir. *hazahrapati-); hramayem “I order” from Parth., Mid. Pers. framāy-; hraman “order” from Parth., Mid. Pers. framān; hramatar “ruler” from Parth., Mid. Pers. framādār; hrovartak “letter, decree” from Parth., Mid. Pers. frawardag; marz “frontier, province” from Parth., Mid. Pers. marz; mowrh-ak “(sealed) deed” from Parth., Mid. Pers. muhr “seal;” namak “letter, writing” from Mid. Pers. nāmag (cf. NPers. nāma); nždeh “foreigner” from Ir. *niždahyu- (cf. Parth. izdeh, Mid. Pers. uzdeh “exiled, foreign”); šahap “satrap, governor” from Parth., Mid. Pers. šahrab; šên “village” from Parth. *šēn (cf. Av. -šaiiana-); owxt “pact, treaty” from Parth. *uxt (cf. Av. -uxti-); payman “condition, stipulation” from Mid. Pers. paymān (cf. Parth. padmān); partêz “garden” from OIr. *paridaiza- (cf. Av. pairidaēza-, Gk. parádeisos; see section 3 above); pet “chief” from Parth., Mid. Pers. -bed; psak “crown, diadem” from Parth., Mid. Pers. pusag (cf. Av. pusā-); rām “common people” from Parth., Mid. Pers. ram “herd, flock;” spas “service” from Parth. ispas- (cf. ispasag “servant,” etc.); vkay “witness” from Parth. *wikāy (cf. Mid Pers. gugāy, Av. vīkaiia-); včiṟ “decision, judgment” from Mid. Pers. wizīr. b) War, battle, and armament. ašteay “lance” from Parth. *aršti- (cf. Old Pers. ṛšti-, Av. aršti-); aspar “shield” from Parth., Mid. Pers. ispar; awar “booty” from Parth. āwār; gownd “troops” from Parth., Mid. Pers. gund; dašnak “dagger” from Mid. Pers. dašnag (cf. NPers. dašna); drawš “banner, flag, standard” from Parth., Mid. Pers. drafš; zangapan “greaves” from proto-Ir. *zanga-pāna- (cf. Mid. Pers. zang “shank”); zawr “army” from Parth. zāwar “power, strength” (cf. Mid. Pers. zōr); zên “weapon, armament” from Parth., Mid. Pers. zēn; zrah-kʿ (plur.) “cuirass” from Parth. *zrad (cf. the Aramaic loanword zardā; see section 3 above); ṭʿšnami “enemy” from OIr. *dušmanyu- (cf. Av. dušmainiiu-, Parth., Mid. Pers. dušmen); hên “army of marauders” from Mid. Pers. hēn (cf. Old Pers. hainā-); jerb-a-kal “prisoner” (lit. “held with the hands”), loan translation based on Parth., Mid. Pers. dast-graw; nizak “lance, spear” from Parth., Mid. Pers. nēzag; pah(ak) “guard” from Parth., Mid. Pers. pāhr(ag) “guard;” paterazm “war, battle, fight” from Parth. pādrazm; rāzm “battle” from Parth., Mid. Pers. razm; saławart “helmet” from Parth. *sārwart (cf. the Syr. loanword sanvartā, Mid. Pers. sārwār); sałar “general, leader” from Parth., Mid. Pres. sālār “leader;” spah, spay “army” from Mid. Pers. spāh (cf. Parth. ispāδ); spar-a-pet “army leader,” loan translation based on Parth. spāδ-pat (cf. Mid. Pers. spāh-bed); têg “lance” from Parth. *tēg (cf. Mid. Pers. tēx, NPers. tīγ “sword, edge”). c) Equitation and horses. In this sphere, Ir. influence was very strong, although the word for horse itself, ji, is not Iranian. Examples: axōr “stable” from Parth., Mid. Pers. āxwarr (cf. NPers. āxor); aspastan “stable (for horses)” from Mid. Pers. aspastān (cf. Av. aspo@stāna-); asp-a-rês “horse race, racecourse,” loan translation based on Mid. Pers. asp-rēs; aspet “knight” from *aspapet from Parth., Mid. Pers. asppat; smb-ak “hoof” from Mid. Pers. sumb (cf. NPers. sonb, Arab. loanword sonbak). In particular several of the numerous color terms borrowed from Iranian may have been taken over in connection with their use as epithets of horses: ašxêt “reddish, sorrel horse” from Mid. Pers. šēd (cf. Av. xšaēta-); erašx “reddish(-brown), sorrel horse” from Parth. *raxš (cf. NPers. raxš “red”); karmir “red” from Mid. Pers. karmīr (cf. the Hebrew loanword karmīl; čartowk “grey (horse)” from Parth. *čartuk (cf. NPers. čarda “dun horse”); čermak “white horse” from Parth. *čarmak (cf. NPers. čarma); seaw “black” from Parth. syāw (cf. Mid. Pers. syā); spitak “white” from Mid. Pers. spēdag (cf. Parth. ispēd). d) Trade and economy. ambar, hambar “storehouse” from Mid. Pers. hambār (cf. NPers. anbār); anapak “unmixed, pure (wine)” from Parth. *anāpak (cf. Av. anāpa- “without water”); anoyš “sweet(-scented)” from Parth. *anōš (cf. anōšēn); ardow, a measure of capacity (“artabe”) from Parth. *ardab (cf. the loanwords Gk. artábē, Aram. ardab); aržān “worthy, proper,” aržê “it is worth” from Parth. aržān, Mid. Pers. arzān, arz; aroyr “brass” from Parth. *ro’ (cf. Mid. Pers. rōy “copper, brass”); baž “tribute, duty” from Parth. bāz, Mid. Pers. bāǰ (cf. Old Pers. bāǰi-); biwr “ten thousand” from Parth., Mid. Pers. bēwar; graw “pledge, security” from Mid. Pers. graw, (cf. NPers. gerow); griw, a grain measure, from Parth., Mid. Pers. grīw; ṭʿakoyk “vessel, jar” from Mid. Pers. takōk (cf. NPers. takūk); ṭʿošak “provisions, wages” from Mid. Pers. tōšag (cf. NPers. tūša); kapič, a grain measure, from Mid. Pers. kabīz (cf NPers. kavīz and the Gk. loanword kapíthē); kndrowk “frankincense” from Mid. Pers. kundur (cf. NPers. kondor); kowž “pitcher, jug” from Parth. *kūž (cf. the Ar. loanword kūz); hazar “thousand” from Parth., Mid. Pers. hazār; hark “tribute, duty, service” from Mid. Pers. harg (cf. the Ar. loanword xarǰ; mar, a liquid measure, from Parth. mar; naw “ship” from Parth., Mid. Pers. nāw; nawt “naphtha” from Mid. Pers. naft (cf. the Gk. loanword náphtha); vačār “trade, market” from Parth. wāžār (in the derivative wāžārgān “dealer, merchant,” cf. Mid. Pers. wāzār). e) Handicrafts, techniques, and workmanship. goyn “color” from Mid. Pers. gōn (cf. NPers. gūn); žir “active, busy, clever” from Parth. žīr, Mid. Pers. zīr; črag “lamp” from Parth., Mid. Pers. čarāγ; nkar “painting, picture” from Mid. Pers. nigār (cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. nigār- “to draw, paint”); šiš “bottle” from Parth. *šīš (cf. the Syr. loanword šīšā, Mid. Pers. šīšag); patker “image, portrait” from Parth., Mid. Pers. patkar; patowhan “window” from proto-Ir. *patifrānā-; varagoyr “curtain” from Parth. bar(a)γō’; vran “tent” from Parth. wi’ān, Mid. Pers. wiyān; taxtak “tablet, board, plank” from Mid. Pers. taxtag (cf. NPers. taxta); taławar “tent, hut” from Parth. talawār; tašem “I cut, hew” from Mid. Pers. tāš- (cf. Av. taš-); tašt “cup, bowl” from Mid. Pers. tašt (cf. Av. tašta-); tapak “frying-pan” from Mid. Pers. tābag (cf. NPers. tāba); tapar “hatchet, axe” from Mid. Pers. tabar (cf. NPers. tabar); kʿandak “chisel, carving” from Parth. *kandak (cf. Mid. Pers. kan- “to dig”). f) Costume, jewelry, and ornament. aparanǰan “bracelet” from Parth. *aparanǰan (cf. NPers. abranǰan); bowrwaṟ “scent bottle, censer” from Parth. *bō’warn (cf. Sogd. βwḍβrn); gês “hair” from Mid. Pers. gēs (cf. Av. gaēsa-); dipak “brocade” from Mid. Pers. dēbāg (cf. NPers. dībā); erang “color, dye” from Mid. Pers. rang (cf. NPers. rang); xoyr “headgear, diadem” from Parth. xōδ “helmet,” Mid. Pers. xōy (cf. Old Pers. xauda “cap”); kerp- “form, shape, appearance” from Mid. Pers. kirb (cf. Av. kəhrp-); mahik “crescent, lunette, crescent-shaped ornament” from Parth. *māhīk (cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. māh “moon”); šapik “shirt” from Mid. Pers. šabīg “(Mazdean’s ritual) undershirt” (cf. NPers. šabī “nightshirt”); patmowčna “garment, dress” from Parth. padmōžan, Mid. Pers. paymōžan; paregawtkʿ “cloth, coat” from OIr. *parigauda- (cf. Gk. paragṓdas = khitōžn parà Párthois; see R. Schmitt, Glotta 49, 1971, pp. 107-10); vars “hair” from Mid. Pers. wars (cf. Av. varəsa-). g) Nature and food. bown “root, stock, foundation” from Parth., Mid. Pers. bun; gomêš “buffalo” from Mid. Pers. gāwmēš (cf. NPers. gā(v)mīš; xortik-kʿ (plur.) “food, dish” from Mid. Pers. xwardīg (cf. Av. xᵛarəti-); čarak “pasture, food” from Parth., Mid. Pers. čarag; čarp “grease, fat, oil” from Parth. *čarp (cf. Mid. Pers., NPers. čarb “fatty, oily”); marax “locust” from Parth. *ma’ax (cf. Av. ma’axa-, NPers. malax, but Mid. Pers. mayg); marg “meadow” from Parth. maṛγ (cf. Av. marəγā-); nkan “bread, loaf” from proto-Ir. *nikāna- “ash bread” (lit. “(bread) dug in (ash);” cf. Mid. Pers. nigān “buried”); rōčik “sustenance, daily bread” from Mid. Pers. rōzīg (cf. NPers. rūzī “idem,” lit. “daily (bread)”); rōt “river” from Parth., Mid. Pers. rōd (cf. Old Pers. rautah-); vard “rose“ from Parth. *ward (cf. Mid. Pers. gul, Av. varəδa-, Aram. loanword wrdʾ); vêm “stone, rock” from Parth., Mid. Pers. wēm; tap “heat” from Mid. Pers. tab “fever” (cf. NPers. tab “idem”); tawṭʿ “heat” from Parth. *taft (cf. NPers. taft); pʿowt “rottenness; rotten, spoiled” from Parth. *pūt (cf. Av. pūiti- “rottenness,” Mid. Pers. pūdag “foul, rotten”). h) Family and society. apaharzan “divorce” from Ir. *apa-harzana- (cf. OInd. apa-sarjana- “abandonment”); aspanǰakan “hospitable” from Parth. ispinǰ, Mid. Pers. aspinǰ “hospitality, inn;” bazmim “I sit down (to dinner)” from Parth., Mid. Pers. bazm “meal, feast;” bžišk “physician, doctor” from Parth., Mid. Pers. bizešk; kapên-kʿ (plur.) “price (of prostitution)” from Mid. Pers. kābēn “dowry” (cf. NPers. kābīn); harazat “legitimate, related brother” from Parth. *ha’azat (cf. Av. haδō.zāta-); parāw “old woman” from Parth. *parnāw (cf. the Syr. loanword parnuš, NPers. pārāw); tohm “family, tribe, line” from Mid. Pers. tōhm, Parth. tōxm; kʿên “hate, revenge” from Parth., Mid. Pers. kēn. i) Man, his body and qualities. axt “illness, disease” from Parth. *axt (cf. Av. axti-); ah “fear” from Parth. *āh (cf. Av. āiθti- “fear”); andam “member, limb” from Parth., Mid. Pers. handām; bazowk “arm” from Mid. Pers. bāzūg (cf. Av. bāzu-, NPers. bāzū); daštan “menses, menstruation” from Mid. Pers. daštān (cf. Av. daxšta-); eran-kʿ (plur.) “loins, hip, thigh” from Mid. Pers. rān (cf. Av. rāna-); xrat “wisdom, reason, admonition” from Parth., Mid. Pers. xrad; kam “desire, will” from Parth., Mid. Pers. kām; koyr “blind” from Mid. Pers. kōr (cf. NPers. kūr); kowšt “belly, flank, side” from Parth. *kušt (cf. NPers. košt); čakat “forehead” from Mid. Pers. čagād “peak, summit” (cf. NPers. čakād); mah, marh “death” from Parth. *marh (cf. Parth. murd, Av. mərəθiiu- and see in detail Bolognesi, 1960, pp. 17-19); oyž “force, strength” from Parth. *ōž, Mid. Pers. ōz (cf. Av. aoǰah-); owš “mind, sense, intelligence” from Parth. uš (cf. Av. uši-, Mid. Pers. ōš; veh “superior, better, good, high” from Mid. Pers. weh (cf. Old Pers. vahyah-, camparative); vzowrk “great” from Parth., Mid. Pers. wuzurg (cf. Old Pers. vazṛka-). j) Everyday life. ahok “fault, blame” from Mid. Pers. āhōg (cf. NPers. āhū); apastan “refuge” from Mid. Pers. abestān; arāt “abundant, rich, liberal” from Parth., Mid. Pers. rād; dep-kʿ (plur.) “accident, case” from Parth., Mid. Pers. dēb “fate, fortune;” džowar “difficult” from Mid. Pers. dušwār (cf. NPers. došvār); dsrov “blamed” from Mid. Pers. dusraw; zowr “futile, vain, false” from Parth., Mid. Pers. zūr; ṭʿšowaṟ “unfortunate, miserable” from OIr. *duš(h)uvarna- (see section 3 above, cf. Parth. dušfarr, Av. dušxᵛarənah-); žaman-ak “time, age” from Parth. žamān, Mid. Pers. zamān(ag); xortak-em “I break into small pieces” from Mid. Pers. xurdag “small” (cf. NPers. xorda); katak “jesting, joke” from Mid. Pers. kādag; čšmarit “true” from Mid. Pers. čašm-dīd “obvious” (see section 3 above); mštik “bundle” from Mid. Pers. mušt “first” (cf. Av. mušti-); yawêt “always, eternal” from Parth. yāwēd (cf. Av. yauuaētāt- “eternity,” Mid. Pers. ǰāwēd “eternal”); nirh “sleep(iness)” from proto-Ir. *nidrā- (cf. OInd. nidrāˊ-); nšan “sign, mark, miracle” from Parth., Mid. Pers. nīšān; patgam “message, sentence” from Parth. paḍγām, Mid. Pers. paygām; paṭčên “copy, duplicate” from Mid. Pers. pač(č)ēn; vasn “on account (of), because (of)” from Parth. *wasn in wasnāδ (cf. Old Pers. vašnā); vnas “injury, damage, harm, sin” from Mid. Pers. wināh (cf. NPers. gonāh); pʿaṟ-kʿ (plur.) “glory, splendor, fame” from Parth., Mid. Pers. farrah (cf. Av. xᵛarənah-). k) Religion. The Ir. elements in the common vocabulary, numerous as they are, seem nevertheless to be outnumbered by those pertaining to religion. See especially G. Boccali, “Influenze della religione iranica sulla cultura armena,” Atti del Primo Simposio Internazionale di Arte Armena, San Lazzaro/Venezia, 1978, pp. 25-33. Examples: anowšak “immortal” from Parth., Mid. Pers. anōšag; ašakert “disciple, pupil, student” from Mid. Pers. hašāgird (cf. NPers. šāgerd); awrhnem “I bless, praise, offer” from Parth., Mid. Pers. āfrīn-; bag- “god” (in proper names) from Parth. baγ, Mid. Pers. bay; baxt “fate, fortune, luck” from Mid. Pers. baxt (cf. Av. baxta-); den “religion, faith” from Parth., Mid. Pers. dēn; dêw “demon, devil” from Parth., Mid. Pers. dēw; džox-kʿ (plur.) “hell” from Mid. Pers. dušox (cf. Parth. dōžax); zoh “sacrifice, offering” from Mid. Pers. zōhr (cf. Av. zaoθra-); kaxard “sorcerer, magician” from Av. kaxᵛarəδa-; hreštak “ambassador, messenger, angel” from Parth. frēštag, Mid. Pers. frēstag; mog “magician, (Mazdean) priest” from Mid. Pers. moγ (cf. Old Pers. magu-); yazem “I worship, offer, sacrifice” from Parth., Mid. Pers. yaz; yašt “sacrifice, worship” from Mid. Pers. yašt (cf. Av. yašti-); šnorh “grace, gratitude” from Mid. Pers. šnōhr (cf. Parth. išnōhr); tačar “temple” from Parth. tažar “palace” (cf. Old Pers. tačara-). These borrowings from the Iranian religious vocabulary did not occur as a result of the close Irano-Armenian symbiosis during the Arsacid period. The terminology involved is not connected with any particular religious ideas such as those of Zoroastrianism but reflects the religious notions current among the people at large as is revealed by the fact that in the Bible translation even the disciples of Christ and the angels were designated by two terms of Iranian provenance: ašakert and hreštak. Hence it should cause no surprise that even the great gods of the Iranians are known to the Armenians: Aramazd (beside the rarer Ormizd as “learned” form in Yeznik) from Old Pers. Aurumazdā-. Aramazd is presumably an old borrowing since the vowel between r and m is preserved, and it was borrowed from Old Pers. as the absence of h in Ara- from Aura- indicates; Anahit from Av. Anāhitā-, Mid. Pers. Anāhīd; Mihr from Av. Miθra-, Parth., Mid. Pers. Mihr; Spandaramet from Av. spənta@ Ārmaitiš, Mid. Pers. Spandarmat with sp-, the Northwest-Ir. form corresponding to the Southwest Ir.-form with s- that survives only in Arm. sandaramet-kʿ “nether world;” Vahagn from Av. Vərəθraγna- (cf. Inscr. Mid. Pers. proper name Wrtgnpt = Inscr. Parth. Wrtrgnpt), Mid. Pers. Wahrām (see section 6 below). 5. Linguistic analysis. A linguistic analysis of these Iranian elements in Armenian, which we see touch all parts of speech, from substantives to adjectives, verbs (trans. -em, intr. -im), and even numerals, adverbs, and other indeclinables, may be carried out in different ways. On the one hand the phonetic shape of the Armenian words sheds light on the sounds the Iranian words must have had at the time when they came into Armenian, and on the other hand, one may also observe their adaptation and their morphological and/or lexical integration into Armenian. Phonology. Some Arm. phonemes, chiefly p and č, but also š, ž, and x, appear only exceptionally in words inherited from IE. but commonly in Ir. loanwords. This means that the words containing those phonemes can be assumed to be loanwords even if the original Ir. forms are not directly attested. Likewise characteristic of Iranian loanwords are special final consonant combinations, in particular -zd, -zm, -xt, -nd, -nj, -šx, -šk, -št, -sp, -st, -rd, -rz, -rk, -rh, and -rt. A list of the phonetic correspondences between Armenian and the Ir. source languages must contain at least the following (for parts of the consonant system see also the list in R. Godel, An Introduction to the Study of Classical Armenian, Wiesbaden, 1975, p. 91):
Some items call for further comment. The Arm. loanwords show the Ir. intervocalic voiceless stops k, p, t and the affricate č, throughout preserved without any change and not the voiced counterparts g, b, d, and, ǰ or ž, which we find in the orthographically least ambiguous Mid. Ir. texts, i.e. the Man. Parth. and Mid. Pers. texts. Thus they can be assumed to reflect faithfully the phonetic values of Arsacid Parthian. A chronological difference lies behind the divergent treatment of Ir. initial *r-, which is in part rendered with a prothetic vowel as ar- or er- as in the inherited vocabulary, but in part appears as ṟ- as in the case of borrowings in later times and from other sources. Whereas consonant groups of stop plus r (with maintenance of the stop as such) underwent metathesis in inherited words (e.g. Arm. rt from IE. *dr), Ir. clusters like dr or gr are kept unchanged. On the other hand, metathesis is regular in the Ir. clusters xš and hr, for which Arm. has šx and rh as in ašxarh, ašxêt, erašx, etc. The earlier view that h is an Arm. phonetic substitute for the Ir. spirant [f], which does not occur in the Arm. system, must be abandoned because forms with hr- in Ir. itself (like Mid. Pers. hrēstag “messenger” equal to Arm. hreštak) or in other collateral traditions of Ir. (like Aramaic hrmnʾ “order” like Arm. hraman) make it quite certain that Arm. in such cases reflects the phonetic state of some Western Mid. Ir. dialect. Later, internal Arm. changes are the weakening of certain vowels and diphthongs in pretonic syllables: Iranian i/ī and u/ū appear generally as i, ow (i.e. [u]) in stressed, but as zero in pretonic syllables in the older layer of loanwords from Arsacid times, whereas in later borrowings such a different treatment is no longer found. Correspondingly, Arm. ê, oy, ea alternate with i, u (written ow), and e in older borrowings when rendering Ir. ē, ō, and ya/yā respectively. In loanwords from a later time beginning at some date not yet determined exactly, but in all probability quite early in the Arsacid period (see in detail Bolognesi, 1951), Mid. Ir. ē and ō (usually from older Ir. *ai and *au) are regularly represented by Arm. e and o. Hence, in such cases the characteristic Arm. “vowel alternations” are not found. Thus, we have side by side: zên “weapon” (with gen. zinow) from (Arsacid) Mid. Ir. *zēn, but den “religion” (with gen. den-i) from Mid. Ir. *dēn, and ṭʿakoyk “vessel” (with gen. ṭʿakowk-oy) from (Arsacid) Mid. Ir. *takōk, but ambox “crowd” (with gen. ambox-i) from Mid. Ir. *ambōx. Morphology. Here, it must be stressed, the Ir. influence is limited to the formation of words while the morphology in the narrower sense of the word (that is, the formation of case forms, etc.) shows no Ir. influence at all. A certain peculiarity is noticeable, however, with regard to the integration of the Ir. loanwords into the various classes of the Arm. noun declension. It is possible to distinguish three groups: 1. those instances where the Arm. stem class matches the original OIr. one, (e.g. Arm. xrat “wisdom,” u-stem, from Mid. Ir. *xrat from OIr. *xratu-, u-stem); 2. those cases where there is a difference (e.g. Arm. dat “justice,” i-stem, from Mid. Ir. *dāt from OIr. *dāta-, a-stem); 3. cases characterized by the co-existence of different types caused by the fact that the nom.-acc. sing. forms have no ending (e.g. Arm. mog “(Zoroastrian) priest,” u- or a-stem, from Mid. Ir. *mog from OIr. *magu-, u-stem). Formerly it was thought that the borrowings in the first group go back to a period when the original final syllables had not yet disappeared. This view seems to have been first expounded by Meillet, 1911/12, p. 249 = 1977, p. 149, and it was repeated subsequently in several manuals although it was never based on a close investigation of the problem, relying mainly on certain cases of agreement between Arm. and Ir. a-, i- or u-stems, like azat from āzāta-, ašxarh from xšaθra-, dêw from daiva-, eran from rāna-, hreštak from *fraištaka-, tačar from tačara-, etc.; axt from axti-, baž from bāǰi-, owxt from uxti-, etc.; gah from gāθu-, xrat from xratu-, mah from *mṛθyu-, etc. Such an assumption would entail that the so-called (older) Arm. “Law of final syllables,” according to which the vowel of the originally final syllable of a word and this syllable itself disappear, would have operated only in the Arsacid period at roughly the same time as the analogous phenomenon in Western Mid. Ir. It is true that a number of such correspondences are found but they can not be considered apart from the many seemingly archaic borrowings whose antiquity is guaranteed by phonological features (e.g. by Arm. ê, oy for Mid. Ir. ē, ō; see Bolognesi, 1954, p. 124) but which do not belong to the same stem class as the Ir. source word (group 2 above): e.g. Arm. i-stems from Ir. a- or ā-stems (dat from dāta-, xoyr from xauda-, hên from hainā-, spah/spay from spāda-, vars from *varsa-), Arm. u-stems from Ir. a- or ā-stems (zên from *zaina-, pah from *pāθra-, kʿên from *kainā-), the Arm. o-stem pʿowt from the Ir. i-stem pūti or the Arm. a-stem pet (together with its compounds) from the Ir. i-stem pati-. A chronological dilemma is brought about by treating as morphologically late such group 2 forms which phonological criteria prove to be archaic borrowings. The only way out of the dilemma seems to be the one proposed by Bolognesi, 1954, p. 124, that these cases of coincidence between the Arm. and the Ir. stem classes are to be explained as restored from derivatives or compounds in which the stem vowel could have been readily preserved. That means that Arm. borrowed those forms when their final syllables had already been shortened in Ir., that is, in their typically Mid. Ir. form, and that the loss of the final syllables seen in the Arm. borrowings from Ir. (when compared with the OIr. or even Indo-Ir. data) has nothing to do with the Arm. “Law of final syllables.” The nominal compounds of Ir. have strongly affected the Arm. formation of compounds. Sometimes a long series of compounds of the same kind was borrowed and through imitation of such models (analogy) certain first or second compositional elements were reduced to the status of mere prefixes or suffixes, which could be attached to inherited as well as to borrowed words. Having thus become grammaticalized, they became productive. Such words or compositional elements are partly also in independent use in Arm., as is the case with goyn “color” (from Mid. Pers. gōn, OIr. *gauna-), which is used both in “true” compounds (like ariwn-a-goyn “of blood color”) and grammaticalized as the usual suffix of the comparative or with pês “manner, way” (from Ir. *paisah-; cf. Av. paēsa(h)-), which is a current adverbial suffix as well as used independently in the iterative compound pêspês “(in) various (ways).” It should also be noted that Ir. compounds were sometimes to some extent “armenianized” by inserting the compositional vowel -a-. Strictly speaking we must accordingly regard them as loan translations: compare e.g. marz-pan “margrave” corresponding to Parth., Mid. Pers. marz-bān, but dar-a-pan “doorkeeper” and spar-a-pet “army leader” as opposed to Mid. Pers. dar-bān and Parth. dar-bān and Parth. spāδ-pat.
The following suffixes are of Ir. origin: -astan in nouns denoting places, especially in names of countries: asp-astan “stable of horses” (from morphology asp “horse”); dar-astan “garden” (from dar “tree”); ay-astan “Armenia” (from Hay “Armenian”); Xuž-astan “Susiana;” Asorestan “Syria” (from Asori “Syrian”), etc.; from Ir. *-stāna-, cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. stān (Parth. Xūžistān). -aran in nouns denoting places: ganj-aran “treasury” (from ganj “treasure”); zoh-aran “sacrificial altar” (from zoh “sacrifice”); place name Bag-aran; from Ir. *dāna- “receptacle,” cf. Parth. -’ān (Old Pers. daivadāna- “temple of daivas”). -arên in adjectives and adverbs denoting languages: yown-arên “Greek” (from Yoyn “Greek”); asorarên “Syriac” (from Asori), etc. from Ir. *-ādayana- “manner, way,” cf. Parth. *āδēn, NPers. āyīn “norm, manner” (cf. Leroy, 964). -kar “doing, making”: awgt-a-kar “profitable” (from awgowt “profit”); vnas-a-kar “hurtful” (from vnas “damage”), etc.; from Ir. *-kara-/-kāra, cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. -gar/-gār (Old Pers. zūrakara- “evildoer,” Mid. Pers. wināhgār “sinner”). -kert “made, done”: dast-a-kert “building, village” (lit. “handmade” from dast “hand”); jeṟ-a-kert “manufacture” (from jeṟn “hand”); place name Tigran-a-kert (lit. “founded by Tigran”), etc.; from Ir. *-kṛta “made, done,” cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. -kirt, -gird (Old Pers. duškṛta “ill-done,” Parth., Mid. Pers. yazdegird “made by god,” also as a proper name). -ow(r)hi in feminines, starting from a single loanword, ṭʿag-ow(r)hi “queen” from Ir. *tāga-bṛθryā (fem. to ṭʿag-a-wor “king,” lit. “bearing the crown”), where -ow(r)hi, no longer understood, became isolated by separating ṭʿag “crown” and having thus become independent was finally generalized (cf. Benveniste, 1945, p. 74). -pan “protecting”: marz-pan “margrave, protecting the frontiers” (from marz “frontier”); bar-a-pan/dar-a-pan “doorkeeper” (from bar- and dar- “door”), etc.; from Ir. *-pāna-, cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. -pān, -bān, NPers. -bān (Mid. Pers. marz-bān “margrave,” NPers. šobān, čūpān “shepherd”). -pet “chief,” first in numerous titles borrowed from Ir. (spar-a-pet “army leader,” dpr-a-pet “secretary-in-chief”, etc.), then in Arm. neologisms. It became especially productive to render Gk. compounds with arkhi-, -árkhēs, -arkhos (hayr-a pet “patriarch,” tasn-a-pet “decurion,” etc.); from Ir. *pati- “lord, chief.” The extremely large number of these formations (collected, classified, and interpreted in detail by Leroy, 1960 and Benveniste, 1961 ) is clear evidence of the profound influence of the Arsacid and Sasanian feudal aristocracy and military on Armenia.
Prefixes that are of frequent occurrence and thus often allow a borrowing to be identified by way of cumulative evidence are: apa- from Ir. *apa- or *upa-: cf. Leroy, 1975. aw- from Ir. *abi-: awtar “foreign” from Ir. *abitara cf. Av. aiβitara-); awrên-kʿ (plur.) “law” from Parth. aβ’ēn, etc. dž- or ṭʿš- “dis-, mis-, un-” from Ir. *duš-. ham- “same” from Ir. *hama-: ham-a-mayr “of the same mother,” etc. pat- from Ir. *pati-: no longer productive in Arm. according to Belardi, 1962.
Ir. suffixes that were true suffixes from the beginning and have gained great vitality and productivity in Arm. are, among many others, the following: -ak in diminutives (from substantives or adjectives): nawak “boat” from naw “ship;” kapowt-ak “bluish” from kapoyt “blue;” from Ir. *-aka-, cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. -ak, -ag; common is also -eak from Ir. *-ya-ka-. -akan in adjectives (“belonging to”): ašxarh-akan “worldly” from ašxarh “world;” mayr-akan “maternal” from mayr “mother;” vačaṟ-akan “merchant” from vačaṟ “trade, commerce;” from Ir. *-akāna-, cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. -(a)kān, -(a)gān. This is one of the commonest Arm. suffixes. -ean in adjectives (“belonging to”), particularly in proper names and patronymics: arewel-ean “eastern” from arewel-kʿ, plur. “east;” Aram-ean “son/descendant of Aram,” etc.; from Ir. *iḭāna- or gen. plur. *-iḭānām. -ik in diminutives (from substantives or adjectives): hayr-ik “daddy” from hayr “father;” pʿokʿr-ik “very little” from pʿokʿr “little;” from Ir. *-ika-.
The so-called eżāfa-formations so characteristic of some of the younger Ir. languages, especially Mid. and NPers., were introduced into Arm. only in late and sporadic borrowings. These are mostly technical terms from geographical and botanical literature, as daričenik “cinnamon” from Mid. Pers. *dār ī čēnīk “Chinese wood.” Clearly this was merely a lexical process and the construction as such has no morphological function in Armenian. Conclusive evidence of the strong influence of the foreign Iranian culture and languages on Armenia and Armenian is also afforded by the loan translations, of which a steadily increasing number has been identified. Many phrases composed only of Armenian words were in fact modeled on Iranian expressions. This process depended for its success on widespread bilingualism. Instances of this kind of Ir. influence have been brought to light only in recent times, mainly by Bolognesi (see Bolognesi, 1961; 1962a; 1966, pp. 577f.) but also by Benveniste, 1964, pp. 35ff. It is of course much more difficult to detect instances of loan translation than loanwords so that there remains much scope for future research in this field. Most numerous are phrases with the auxiliaries aṟnel “to do,” linel “to be,” harkanel “to beat,” ownel “to have,” and tal “to give,” some of which occur in a large number of expressions (e.g. locutions with aṟnel or harkanel with Persian equivalents with kardan “to do” or zadan “to beat”). Examples of phrases with the structure substantive plus auxiliary (often paralleled by synonymous denominative verbs) are: With aṟnel “to do”: azat aṟnel “to make free, i.e. liberate,” cf. NPers. āzād kardan; azd aṟnel “to make known, i.e. publish,” cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. azdegar “messenger;” dat arnel “to do justice, i.e. to judge,” cf. NPers. dād kardan; całr aṟnel “to make laugh, i.e. to laugh,” cf. NPers rīšxand kardan; herī aṟnel “to make remote, i.e. to remove,” cf. Parth. dūr kar-, NPers. dūr kardan; yišowmn aṟnel “to make memory, i.e. to remember,” cf. Parth. aβyād kar-, NPers. yād kardan; awłił aṟnel “to do right, i.e. to judge,” cf. Parth. razwar kar-, NPers. rāst kardan; vnas aṟnel “to do damage, i.e. to damage,” cf. NPers. gunāh kardan. With harkanel “to beat”: banak harkanel “to strike a camp, i.e. to encamp,” cf. NPers. ordū zadan; xoran harkanel “to strike a tent, i.e. to camp,” cf. NPers. čādor zadan; howr harkanel “to strike fire, i.e. to inflame,” cf. NPers. ātaš zadan; pʿoł harkanel “to strike the trumpet, i.e. to sound the trumpet,” cf. MPers. nāy pazd-; as a compound sanj-a-harel “to strike the bridle, i.e. to bridle,” cf. NPers. afsār zadan. With ownel “to have”: akn ownel (and as compound akn-kalel with the suppletive aorist stem) “to have an eye, i.e. to expect, to hope,” cf. NPers. čašm dāštan; pah ownel “to keep watch, i.e. to watch,” cf. NPers. pās dāštan. With tal “to give”: hraman tal “to give order, i.e. to command,” cf. NPers. farmān dādan; patasxani tal “ to give answer, i.e. to answer,” cf. NPers. pāsoḵ dādan. Note also the following constructions: i kʿown erṭʿal “to go to sleep, i.e. to sleep,” cf. NPers. ba-ḵᵛāb raftan; erkṇčʿel i plus abl. “to be afraid of,” cf. Old Pers. tṛs hača @ plus abl., Parth., Mid. Pers. tirs až/az, NPers. tarsīdan az. It is hardly surprising to find such loan translations in the case of typically Ir. titles such as “king of kings” (Mid. Pers. šāhān šāh) rendered by Yeznik as arkʿayicʿ arkʿay or its fem. counterpart occurring in the book of Esther and in Sebêos as tiknancʿ tikin “mistress of mistresses” (Inscr. Mid. Pers. bānbišnān bānbišn). Loan translations of Ir. compounds are: ašxarh-a-kal “holding the world, i.e. ruler of the world” from Parth. šahr-’ār, Mid. Pers. šahr-yār; jerb-a-kal “prisoner” (lit. “held with the hands,” cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. dast-graw: Benveniste, 1945, pp. 77), which shows the passive use of the same verbal stem -kal; ṭʿag-a-wor “king” (lit. “bearing the crown”) from Mid. Pers. *tāg-bar but with Arm. -wor (from IE. *-bhoros) substituted for the Ir. second element; arew-el-kʿ (plur.) “east” (lit. “sunrise,” cf. Parth., Mid. Pers. Xwar-āsān also meaning originally “sunrise”).
6. Proper names. In Armenian literature we find from the very beginning in the fifth century A.D. a very large number of Iranian proper names, especially personal names. According to Nalbandyan, 1971, p. 4, roughly one quarter of all Arm. personal names were taken over from Ir. languages. The vast extent of this borrowing process reflects once again the fact that there were over the ages often very close historical and cultural contacts between these two countries and peoples. Modern research in this field began with Hübschmann, who compiled a list of 217 entries concerned with Iranian names found in Armenian sources: see the first section of his grammar, 1897, pp. 17-91. His list was necessarily far from complete and his interpretations are by no means final but his work has had a kind of monopoly until the present day. In Hübschmann’s list as well as in Ačaṟyan’s onomasticon (Ačaṟyan, 1942-1962) and in Nalbandyan’s dissertation, no distinction is made between two groups of names which should in fact have been kept separate. On the one hand we find a great many names of Arsacid or Sasanian kings and queens, princes and princesses, generals and notables of various kinds which refer exclusively to Iran proper and to Iranian matters but just happen to occur in Armenian texts and are therefore virtually on the same level as the Ir. collateral tradition in Greek, Aramaic, Elamite sources, etc. On the other hand, however, there are those names of Ir. origin that really were taken over by the Armenians, were borne by Armenian people and remained in use among them, partly till today. These names are of importance not only for Ir. studies but for Arm. studies as well, since they have become fully integrated within the Arm. language. The borrowing of personal names of foreign origin from other peoples is always conditioned by cultural matters and based upon something like an onomastic fashion. The situation may be compared with that obtaining in the feudal societies of the European Middle Ages. There foreign names were often adopted first by the nobles because of the splendor and pomp attaching to them and only afterwards by the common people imitating them. The Arsacids ruling in Armenia of course never abandoned their onomastic tradition, not even after becoming Christians. They carried on using their old names like Aršak, Trdat, Tiran, Pap, Xosrov, Varazdat, etc., or the feminines Ašxên, Bambišn, Varazdowxt, Xosrovidowxt, and the like. In that period of Arsacid rule the Parthian nobles who had entered the land in their wake and the local Armenian aristocracy, families such as the Artsrunians, Mamikonians, or Bagratids, followed the same customs. It is perhaps surprising to find markedly Zoroastrian and by the same token non-Christian names like Vahagn or Vahan (from Av. Vərəθraγna-) or Nerseh or Nersês (from Mid. Pers. Nar(i)sah, Av. Nairiiō.saŋha-) used by Christian people or even monks. When proper names are borrowed they do not usually undergo any change of form but if they do it is usually a slight change that remains fixed. This fact often makes it easy to date the borrowings, especially if it is possible to obtain additional evidence from typical features of the historical phonology such as the characteristic Arm. substitution of r for Parth. ’ from Ir. *d as in Bagarat. Still clearer evidence is afforded by cases where the same name was borrowed twice at different dates: Spandarat from Parth. *Spandaδāt but later Spandiat from Mid. Pers. Spandyāt (cf. Av. Spəṇtō’āta- etc. from Ir. *Spanta-dāta-) or Vrkên from Parth. *Vurkēn as opposed to later Gowrgên from Mid. Pers. Gurgēn (both from the hypocoristic form Ir. * Vṛkaina-). The most telling example of this kind is Vahagn from *Varhagn (with h from rh), which is derived by dissimilation from Parth. Varhragn (as attested at Nisa by wrtrgn) from OIr. *Varθragna- (or perhaps Vṛθragna- like Av. Vərəθraγna-), which contrasts with Vahan from the by-form Inscr. Parth. and Mid. Pers. Warhrān as against Vahram from Zor. Mid. Pers. Wahrām, a dissimilated form of Warhrām with secondary m (perhaps a sandhi variant) from n, or Vrām, which is the commonest Arm. form of this Sasanian royal name and is shortened from Vahram but appears to be from a form with a zero-grade initial, i.e. from *Vurram, * Vurhrām, *Vurhrān, and ultimately proto-Ir. *Vṛθragna-. Sometimes there is reason to think that a name was not borrowed directly. Thus, the name of the Persian king Kiwros, attested in the Bible translation and in Moses of Khorene, is not a direct reflex of Old Pers. Kuruš but simply the exact rendering of Gk. KÅɨros. In various studies (especially 1971), Nalbandyan has tried to distinguish between OIr. loans (Median and Old Pers. names, those from the Zoroastrian pantheon, and Scythian names), Mid. Ir. loans (“Mid. Median,” Mid. Parth., and Mid. Pers. names), and New Ir. loans, especially names from the Ir. national epic. However, Nalbandyan’s work not only confuses the name of Iranians in Armenian sources with Ir. names of Armenians, but also suffers from several inconsistencies, the most serious of which is that he has in mind in each case primarily the linguistic stage of Ir. for which the name concerned is attested for the first time even when the Arm. form shows clear traces of a later or an indirect borrowing: see above on Kiwros and Bagarat. Bagarat can not have been borrowed in Median times even though the first attestation of a form *Bagadāta- is from the eighth century B.C. A typological investigation of these Irano-Armenian personal names with respect to morphology shows (see Schmitt, 1983) that all the various types of names attested in Parthian or Middle Persian have found their way into Armenian. This holds true for the two-stem compounds inherited, as a type, from IE. (with several subdivisions according to the syntactical relations between the two elements of the compound) and the new formations derived from those names by the addition of special hypocoristic suffixes to mutilated parts of them. It applies equally to the likewise inherited one-stem names, which had only one word stem originally. Armenian also reflects Parth. and Mid. Pers. forms that arose only in Mid. Ir. times such as the three-stem formations based upon secondary composition or the “theophoric dummy dvandvas” of the Atrormizd-type (cf. Mid. Pers. Ādur-Ohrmazd), which resulted from the secondary juxtaposition of two divine names. Finally there are names that were originally patronymics, which became productive in Middle Iranian as well as in Armenian, especially names of women. In Arm. toponymy Ir. influence is equally noticeable (see Leroy, 1961). Some of the old pre-Armenian geographical names (toponyms, hydronyms, oronyms, etc.) were apparently replaced by modern names in the course of time. As a result of the extensive borrowing of Ir. words into Armenian from the Arsacid period on, many of the geographical names newly created by the Armenians also contain Ir. word stems or suffixes or are even wholly Iranian. See above for names ending in -(a)stan, -(a)ran, and -kert, denoting places. The suffix -kert is found in various kinds of place names, the most important of which is the kind with a personal name as first element: Tigran-a-kert, Xosrov-a-kert “founded by Tigran/Khosrov.” Genuine Ir. compounds of a type that was likewise fully productive are the toponyms in -apat like Vałarš-apat or Peroz-a-pat, where apat “inhabited place” represents proto-Ir. *-āpāta- “protected (by)” found in Parth., Mid. Pers. ābād; in -awan like Bagawan, Zareh-awan with awan “village” from Mid. Pers. āwahan; or in -šat like Art-a-šat, Erowand-a-šat, with sat “happy; happiness” from Parth., Mid. Pers. šād “happy, joyful” from Old Pers. šiyāta-. In the case of place names in -apat, -kert, and -šat we have to do with settlements founded by the persons mentioned, mainly kings, so that the use of an Ir. rather than an Arm. name need cause no surprise. Bibliography : H. Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik I: Armenische Etymologie, Leipzig, 1897 (Hildesheim, 21962, Hildesheim and New York, 31972). A. Meillet, “Sur les mots iraniens empruntés par l’arménien,” MSL 17, 1911/12, pp. 242-50 (repr. in: Ētudes de linguistique et de philologie arméniennes II, Louvain, 1977, pp. 142-50). R. Gauthiot, “Iranica,” MSL 19, 1916, pp. 125-32. E. Benveniste, “Titres iraniens en arménien,” REArm ( = Revue des études arméniennes) 9, 1929, pp. 5-10. H. Ačaṟyan, Hayocʿ anjnanownneri barāran (Lexicon of Armenian personal names), 5 vols., Yerevan, 1942-1962 (repr. Beirut, 1972). E. Benveniste, “Ētudes iraniennes,” TPS, 1945, pp. 39-78. G. Bolognesi, “Sul vocalismo degli imprestiti iranici in armeno,” Ricerche Linguistiche 2, 1951, pp. 141-62. Idem, “Ricerche sulla fonetica armena,” Ricerche Linguistiche 3, 1954, pp. 123-54. E. Benveniste, “Mots d’emprunt iraniens en arménien,” BSL 53, 1957-1958, pp. 55-71. W. B. Henning, “Mitteliranisch,” 1958, pp. 20-130. G. Bolognesi, Le fonti dialettali degli imprestiti iranici in armeno, Milan, 1960. M. Leroy, “Les composés armeniens en -pet,” AnnIPhO 15, 1958-60 (1960), pp. 109-28. Idem, “Suffixes d’origine iranienne dans la toponymie arménienne,” Studia Onomastica Monacensia 4, 1961, pp. 517-21. E. Benveniste, “Remarques sur les composés arméniens en -pet,” Handes Amsorya 75, 1961, cols. 631-40. G. Bolognesi, “Nuovi aspetti dell’influsso iranico in armeno,” ibid., cols. 657-84. Idem, “Rapporti lessicali tra l’armeno e l’iranico,” Rend. Istituto Lombardo 96, 1962, pp. 235-58 (= 1962a). Idem, “Studi armeni,” Ricerche Linguistiche 5, 1962, pp. 105-47 (= 1962b). W. Belardi, “Sull’origine delle voci armene antiche composte con pat,” ibid., pp. 149-69. W. B. Henning, “Coriander,” Asia Major, N.S. 10, 1963, pp. 195-99 (repr. in: Selected Papers II = Acta Iranica 15, 1977, pp. 583-87). E. Benveniste, “Ēléments parthes en arménien,” REArm, N.S. 1, 1964, pp. 1-39. M. Leroy, “Les mots arméniens en -arēn,” in: Ēcole des Langues Orientales Anciennes de l’Institut Catholique de Paris. Mémorial du cinquantenaire 1914-1964, Paris, 1964, pp. 131-33. G. Bolognesi, “La tradizione culturale armena nelle sue relazioni col mondo persiano e col mondo greco-romano,” in: Convegno internazionale sul tema: “La Persia e il mondo greco-romano,” Roma, 1966, pp. 569-603. A. Périkhanian, “Une inscription araméenne du roi Artašēs trouvée a Zanguézour (Siwnikʿ),” REArm, N.S. 3, 1966, pp. 17-29. Idem, “Notes sur le lexique iranien et arménien,” REArm, N.S. 5, 1968, pp. 9-30. R. N. Frye, “Continuing Iranian influence on Armenian,” Yād-nāma-ye Īrānī-e Minorskī, Tehran, 1969, pp. 80-89 (repr. in: Opera Minora I, Shiraz, 1976, pp. 150-60). G. M. Nalbandyan, Armyanskie lichnye imena iranskogo proiskhozhdeniya (kul’turno-istoricheskoe, ètimologicheskoe issledovanie) (Armenian personal names of Iranian origin, cultural-historical, etymological studies), Avtoreferat dissertatsii, Tbilisi, 1971. R. Schmitt, “Empfehlungen zur Transliteration der armenischen Schrift,” ZVS 86, 1972, pp. 296-306. M. Leroy, “Les composés arméniens à premier terme apa-,” Mélanges linguistiques offerts à Ēmile Benveniste, Paris, 1975, pp. 367-73. R. Schmitt, “Von Bopp bis Hübschmann: Das Armenische als indogermanische Sprache,” ZVS 89, 1975, pp. 3-30. M. L. Chaumont, “L’Arménie entre Rome et l’Iran. I. De l’avènement d’Auguste à l’avènement de Dioclétien,” in: Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt. II: Principat, vol. 9, Berlin and New York, 1976, pp. 71-194. G. Bolognesi, “Problemi di geografia linguistica relativi all’area iranica e armena,” Actas del V Congreso Internacional de Estudios Lingüísticos del Mediterráneo, Madrid, 1977, pp. 527-40. Ch. de Lamberterie, “Armeniaca I-VIII: études lexicales,” BSL 73, 1978, pp. 243-85. P. Considine, “A Semantic Approach to the Identification of Iranian Loanwords in Armenian,” in: Studies in Diachronic, Synchronic, and Typological Linguistics. Festschrift for Oswald Szemerènyi, Amsterdam, 1979, pp. 213-28. G. Bolognesi, “L’Armenia tra Oriente e Occidente: Incontro di tradizioni linguistiche nei secoli che precedono e seguono la prima documentazione scritta,” Transcaucasica II, Venice, 1980, pp. 26-42. R. Schmitt, “Die Lautgeschichte und ihre Abhängigkeit von der Etymologie, am Beispiel des Armenischen,” in: Lautgeschichte und Etymologie. Akten der VI. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Wiesbaden, 1980, pp. 412-30. D. M. Lang, “Iran, Armenia and Georgia,” Camb. Hist. Iran III, 1983, pp. 505-36. R. Schmitt, “Iranisches Lehngut im Armenischen,” REArm, N.S. 17, 1983, pp. 73-112. M. Leroy, “Emprunts iraniens dans la composition nominale en arménien classique,” ibid., pp. 51-72. R. Schmitt, “Iranische Namenschichten und Namentypen bei altarmenischen Historikern,” Beiträge zur Namenforschung, N. F. 19, 1984, pp. 317-31.
(R. Schmitt)
iv. Iranian Influences in Armenian 2. Iranian Loanwords in Armenian
The Iranian loanwords in early Armenian are either fully integrated into the language or, at times, cited as foreign words. For Iranian studies both are equally important. The words can be traced from Achaemenian times through Parthian and Sasanian to the intrusion of the Muslim technical terms into Iran. A selection of these early Iranian words in Armenian is organized in groups to indicate the Iranian penetration. Intellect and senses: angarem “reckon” (Pahl. hangār-), andačem “test” (Pahl. handāč-), andarj, handerj “testament” (Pahl. handarz), arg-, yargem “honor,” argoy “important” (from arg-, Oss. aṛγ “value,” Man. Parth. ʾrgʾw “fine, noble”), aržem, aržan “be worth, worthy” (Pahl. arž-, arzān), handēs “show,” haṇčar “intellect” (ham- with kar- “to think”), ouš “wits,” apouš “foolish,” apšim “be surprised,” yišem “remember,” yišatak “memory” (Man. Mid. Pers. ʾwšy “memory,” ʾbyʾwš “senseless,” Sogd. ʾšyh “memory,” Khot. uviʾ “wits”), xorh, xoh “thought” (*hvarθa-, base hvar- “to grasp in mind,” Khot. hvarāka- = nāsāka- “grasping,” like the use of grab- “grasp” in Sogd. γṛβ “understand,” Yagh. γriv- “know, understand,” Chor. γiβ- “grasp, think”), niš, nšan “mark, sign” (*ni-īš “look into,” Man. Mid. Pers. nyyš-, Georgian niš-i, Man. Parth. nyšʾn, Pahl., NPers. nišān), piš- “look, gaze,” miapiš “gazed at by all,” pšnoum, pšnem “gaze” (*pi-īš- “look, gaze,” Av. piš- “look,” apišman- “not seeing”), govem, govest “praise” (Old Pers. gaub- “speak,” Sogd. γwβ- “praise”), drouat “praise” (Pahl. drūt, NPers. dorūd, Man. Mid. Pers., Parth. drwd “health,” Sogd. drwtʾth, Av. drvatāt-), patiu “honor” (Sogd. pṭβyw-), kʿēn “hate” (Av. kaēna-, Pahl. kēn, Oss. xinä “evil”), žmit, žpit “smile,” žpirh “bold,” žprhim “to dare” (žm-, žp- from šm- as in Khot. śmī- of haśmīśtä “is surprised,” to two bases IE. smei- “smile, wonder,” and (s)mei- “dare” in Oslav. sŭ-mei- “dare”), nazim “be ceremonious,” nazeli “gracious” (NPers. nāz-, Khot. nāys, nāśa-), pargeu “gift, favor” (Man. Parth. prgʾw- “desire,” Khot. hagav- “desire,” gau- in Latin gaudeo), zbōsnoum, zbōsanam “jest” (Khot. būsä “jest”), tagnap “haste, anxiety” (Man. Parth. tgnbnd, from *tagnapanta, with tang- “be tense” and pa- “cause”), patouēr “command” (Sogd. pṭβγ’- from OIr. patibaudaya-), arouest, arhest “art, ingenuity” (Old Pers. aruvastam “ability,” Parth. ʾrwst = Gk. nikē “success,” -rv- replaced by -rf, whence Arm. -rh-), azd “influence,” ah, aha-vir-kʿ “fear” (Av. āiθi-, and *bīra- from bai- “fear”), erk “work” (Sogd. ʾrkh, Pahl. arg, Yagh. ark “work”), datark “idle” (from dāta- “ceased,” arka- “work”), parap “leisure, idleness” (from parā- “beyond,” apah- “work”), dipah “anger” (Pahl. dyphl, i.e. dēpahr, Man. Parth. dybhr, tybhr “anger,” dybhrg, tybhrg “under anger,” NPers. dyfhry, dfhry, i.e., difahrī). Moralia: xem “character” (Pahl. xēm), hrahang-kʿ “instruction (plur.)” (Pahl. frahang “education, knowledge,” NPers. farhang, with hra-, as in many modern northwest-Iranian dialects), čšmarit “true” (Pahl. čašmadīt), patir “cheat” (Sogd. ptʾy’-), čartar “clever,” with agent suffix -tar-), pandoyr, pandoṙ “foolish” (cf. Khot. pandara- “foolish”), erašx “pledge” (base raxš- “protect”), dat “law” (Old Pers. dāta, Pahl. dāt), dašn, gen. sing. dašin “agreement, harmony” (cf. Pahl. dašn “right hand,” Inscr. Mid. Pers. dšny “pledge” [NPi]), patouhas “penalty” (Pahl. pātufrās), ir “thing,” adj. irakan, irau “true” (Man. Parth. ʿyr, tr. Gk. khreia “affair,” Man. Mid. Pers. xyr, Pahl. ʾyl, hyl, i.e., (h)ī “thing,” Pahl. heterogram ṢBW, Aram. “thing,” Pazend hīr, haēr, Khot. hira- “thing, wealth, element (dharma),” vauer “trustworthy,” vauerakan “genuine, reliable” (Man. Parth. wʾwr, wʾwryft “belief,” Man. Mid. Pers. wʾbrygʾn “true,” Pahl. vāβar, vāβarīkān, NPers. bāvar “belief),” from reduplicated vā-var-, var “to assert,” Arm. -er from Ir. -ar), zgam “feel” (cf. Av. vohuna-zga- “cleaving to blood”), hambau “news” (Georgian ambav-i “tale,” Khot. haṃbvakyā- “abuse”), erdnoum “swear” (possibly to Oss. ārd “oath”), šogmog “tale-bearing, slandering,” šogmogem “to slander” (dialectal š- to base sauk- “to call,” Khot. sūch-, sūṃjs “call,” Oss. soxtä “caller to prayer, muezzin,” with mau- “to speak,” Khot. mura- “speech,” Yid. sūgo “tale”). Religion: aramazd, later ormizd “Ahura Mazdā” (Pahl. Ohrmazd), mazdezn “worshipping Mazdā” (Av. māzdayasni-, Pahl. mazdēsn), vahagn (vṛθragna- “victor”), kʿrtikar “creator” (Man. Mid. Pers. kyrdgʾr, Pahl. kardagār), zrouan “time (as creator)” zrouanean “son of Kronos” (Av. zrvan-, Pahl. zurvān, Sogd. (ʾ)zrwʾ “Brahmā,” but zrwyh “old age,” Oss. zäruä), spandaramet “Dionysus of the underworld,” sandaramet-kʿ “underworld” (Khot. śśandrāmatā- “Śrī” [see Ārmaiti], bag “god” (Old Pers. baga- [tr. Akkad. ilu], Av. baγa-), bak- in hour-bak for the farn-baγ fire, bak-our “son of gods,” NPers. from Sogd. faγr-fūr, Greco-Persian (Surkh Kotal) bagapouro from *bagapuθra-), pʿaṙ-kʿ “fortune” and tr. Christian Gk. dóxa “opinion, glory,” pʿaṙauor “fortunate” (Old Pers. *farnah-, Av. xarənah-, Pahl. farr, xvarrah, xvarr, NPers. farr, farrox, Oss. fārnä, fārngun), aṭʿaš “fire” in the name aṭʿaš-xoday, beside atr- (Av. ātarš, Pahl. ātaxš, NPers. āteš and Pahl. ātur, NPers. āḏar), zoh “offering,” zoharan “altar” (Av. zaoθra-, Pahl. zōhr; and OIr. *zauθradāna-), boyr “perfume” (Av. baoi’i-, Oss. bodä, Pahl. bōd, NPers. bōy), bourouaṙ “censer” (Sogd. βw’-/βrn, from *baudabarana- “censer”), barsman- “bundle of twigs” (Av. barəsman-, Pahl. barsom), gomēz “bovine water” (Av. gao-maēza-, Pahl. gō-mēz), atroušan “fire-temple” (from ātr- and *aušana- “burning-place”), haraman, xaraman, arhmn (Av. aŋrō mainyuš, Pahl. ahraman, Sogd. šimnu), deu “demon” (Av. daēva-, Pahl., NPers. dēv, Oss. deu, Greco-Pers. Asmodaios, Sogd. δyw), čokan “crozier,” Pahl. čōpakān, NPers. čōγān “polo stick”), dahaman “offering” (cf. Man. Parth. dʾhwʾn “gift”), nouēr “offering” (cf. Av. nivaē’aya-, Inscr. Parth. nywdpty, Sogd. nwy’- “invite”), xost, xostovan, xostouk “confessing” (cf. Man. Parth. xvāstavānīft), zouarak “sacrifical steer” (Georgian azaver-, azavir-i “ox for carrying”), yazem, yašt “worship” (Av. yaz-, Old Persian yad-, Av. yašti-, yašta-, Pahl. yaz-, yašt, Khot. gyays-, gyaṣṭa-), patgamauor “messenger, prophet” (Pahl. paygāmbar, cf. Man. Parth. pdgʾm), erani “happy” (Av. rānya-), erǰanik “fortunate” (Pahl. aržānīk “getting”), apizar “separated” (Pahl. apēzār “separated, freed”), apauēn “refuge” (*upa-vayana- “place to run to”?), hreštak “messenger, angel” (Man. Parth. fryštg “apostle, angel,” NPers. ferešta “angel”), anoušak “immortal” (Pahl. anōšak “immortal”), hraš “astonished,” hraš-kʿ “wonder, marvel,” hrašakert “wonderful” (Old Pers. fraša = Akkad. bunū, Av. fraša-, Pahl. fraš “conspicuous,” Man. Parth. fršygyrdyg), mihr, mirh, mrhakan, meh-, merh- “Mithra” (Av. miθra-, Pahl. mihr, Kušan mihira-), mehean “Mithra-temple,” mehekani (gen. sing.) “of the 7th month Mehekan” (Greco-Pers. Mithrakana, Pahl. mtrʾgʾn, i.e., *mihrakān, NPers. mehragān, Georgian Mihrakʾan-i), tačar “temple” (Old Pers. tacara-), draxt “garden, paradise” (Pahl. draxt, NPers. deraḵt “tree”), partēz “garden” (paridaiza-, Av. pairi.daēza- “enclosed place,” Syr. prdys-ʾ, NPers. pālēz, Greco-Pers. Paradeisos), džox-kʿ “hell” (Av. daožaŋhva-, Pahl. dōšaxv, NPers. dōzax, Man. Parth. dwjx, Man. Mid. Pers. dwšwx, Georgian ǰoǰoxeṭʿ-i), pʿaṭʿerak “calamity” (Pahl. patyārak), boz-payit, baz-payit “confession of sin” (cf. Pahl. bazak, Man. Parth. bzg, NPers. baza, Khot. baśdaa@- “evil, sin” and Av. paitita-, Pahl. patīt “penance”), hroti-cʿ “of the month of Fravartīn” (from fravarti-, Av. fravaši-, Pahl. fravart, fravahr), mog, mogpet, mog-petan mog-pet, movan-pet “magus, magian, chief magian” (Av. magu- [once in gen. sing. magəˊuš], moγu-, Old Pers. maguš, Gk. mágos, Lat. magus, Pahl. maγūk-mart, maγupāt, NPers. mōbad), šahri < k > - “priest of Zābul” (Pahl. šahrīc to šahr), ouxt “oath” (Av. uxti-, Pahl. -uxt from uxta-), ašakert “qualified pupil” (*hašyā-kṛta-, Pahl. ašākart, Man. Mid. Pers. hšʾgyrd, NPers. šāgerd), vardapet “teacher” (Inscr. Parth. wrdpt, wrdptykn, Inscr. Mid. Pers. wldpt, wldptkn, Greco-Pers. goulbad, goulibēgan, with -rd, not -rt- nor -rz-), mkrta-, mkrtem “to wash (hands), immerse in baptism” (base mak- “to immerse, moisten,” in the Kartēr inscription on the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt 10 mktky, from OIr.*makata-ka- “baptist,” Slav. mok- “to make wet,” Baltic mak-; Arm. mkrt- from *makṛta- with suffix of agent -ṛta- beside makata-; mkrtaran “baptistery”), margarē “seer, prophet” (Sogd. mʾrkrʾk “sorcerer, possessor of manθra,” with -ē as in later Sogdian -yy from OIr. -aka-), hešmaka-pašt “serving demons,” (Georgian ešmakʾ-i, ešma, “demon,” Av. aēšma-, Pahl. ēšm, NPers. xešm, with pašt from *pari-štā- “to stand around,” cf. Pahl. parist- “to serve”), kaxard “wizard” (Av. kaxᵛarəδa-, kaxᵛarəδī “witch,” Buddhist Sanskrit kākhorda-), vhouk “ventriloquist” (Av. vīθuš , base vaēθ-), hmay-kʿ, hmayeak “augury” (NPers. homāy “bird of augury,” homāyūn “fortunate”), ǰatouk “magician” (Pahl. yātūk, Av. yātu-, NPers. ǰādū) pʿargast “absit omen” (Pahl. pargast, possibly fron pari-kas-, Oss. fälgäsun “survey”), višap “monster” (Georgian vešapʿ-i, Av. vīšāpa-, possibly Khot. gukṣapa-), youška-parik “ass-centaur” (Khot. jūṣḍa-, Waxī yukš “wild goat,” NPers. vošk “ass” with parik, Pahl. parīk, Av. pairikā- “witch,” NPers. parī “fairy,” Sogd. pṛʿyk- “female demoness”), nhang “sea-monster” (Pahl. nihang, NPers. nahang “crocodile”). From nature there are: gah, gahinkʿ “precipice” (Av vī-gāh), gauaṙ “province” (Av. gava- “district,” Oss. ārān “boundary”), kiṛč “pass, defile” (Khot. keʾca- “cleft,” from *kart-čā-, base kart- “cut, cleave”), čarak “pasture” (Pahl. čarak), dašt “plain” (Pahl. dašt, Sogd. δʾxšt- to Av. daγa- “bare”), koh “mountain” in kap-koh “Caucasus” (Old Pers. kaufa-, Pahl. kōf, NPers. kōh Khot. kūvaa- “heap”), auan “village” (*ā-vāna-, Syr. ʾwʾn-ʾ, base van- “cover”), van-kʿ “monastery” (Khot. vāna- “temple,” base van-, Av. nivānənti “they cover”) šatrouan “fountain” (Pahl. šāturvān), ṙah “road” (Pahl. rās, NPers. rāh), ṙot “river” (Old Pers. rautah-, Av. θraotah-, Pahl. rōt, NPers. rōd), ṙotstak, əṙotastak “district” (Pahl. rōtastāk, rōstāk, Inscr. Mid. Pers lwtstʾk, Man. Parth. rwdystʾg, NPers. rōstāk, rostāq, rūstā), deh “region,” dehapet “chief of district,” nždeh “exile,” dehkan “governor” (Av. dahyu-, Old Pers dahyu-, Pahl. dēh, Man. Mid. Pers. dyḫ, Sogd. ʾztyw, i.e. uzdayu “exile”), vēm “rock” (Khot. bīma-, Inscr. Parth, wym, Av. vaēma-), vtak “stream” (tak- “to flow,” cf. Khot. nätāa-, from OIr. *nitāka-), koys “side” (Sogd. kws “side,” Pahl. pātkōs, Man. Parth. pʾdgws, Man. Mid. Pers. pʾdgws, pʾygws), kʿoust “side” (Pahl. kušt, Khot. kuvāʾysa- “side”), Sogd. qwšy “side of body,” from two bases kaus- and kauš-), sahman “boundary” (Pahl. shmʾn, NPers. sāmān), astouč, aštouč, “dry” (Khot. astauca- “dry land,” base as- “to dry”). Animals: asp “horse” (Av. aspa-, Old Pers. as(s)a-, Khot. aśśa-, Waxī yaš) in aspastan “horse stall” (Av. aspō.stānā, Pahl. aspastān), aspatak “incursion (with horse)” (Pahl. aspatāk), aspazēn “horse-armor,” aspet “horseman” (from asa-pati- to Old Pers. àsa- beside Inscr. Parth. ʾsp-pty, Pahl. ʾswbʾl, i.e. asuβār, ʾspwʾl, i.e. aspaβār, NPers. savār), gomēš “buffalo” (NPers. gāv-mēš, kapik “monkey” (Pahl. kapīk, OInd. kapi-), kʿouṙak “foal” (Pahl. kurrak, NPers. korra, korraǰ), marax “locust” (Av. ma’axa-, Pahl. myg, i.e. mayig, NPers. meyg, malax, Oss. mätix), moušk “musk,” moušk erē “musk deer,” napʾak “musk bag” (Pahl. mušk, NPers. mošk, nāfa), palang “leopard” in štrpalang “giraffe” (NPers. šotor-palang), pʿił “elephant” (Old Pers. piru-, Pahl. pīl, NPers. fīl), samoyr “sabel” (Pahl. samōr), gurg “wolf” in gurgasar “wolf headed,” Georgian gorgasal, Av. vəhrka-, Pahl., NPers. gurg, Sogd. wyrky, Khot. birgga-, Sanglēčī wurk, Yazg. warǵ), vagr “tiger” (OInd. vyāghra-, Pahl. b(w)pl, i.e. baβr, NPers. babr), štr, ištr “camel” (Pahl. uštur, Av. uštra-, NPers. oštor, šotor), yauanak, yovanak “young animal” (Oss. iuonug, Iron uänig “young steer,” Av. yvan- “young,” OInd. yuvan-), yauaz, yovaz “panther” (NPers. yōz, (Georgian avaza, Pahl. ywč, i.e. yavaz), karič “scorpion” may be from the word kar- (Pahl. kaṛčang “crab,” NPers. ḵaṛčang, Man. Mid. Pers. qyrzng) or from the fuller form kaṛč- (from the base IE. (s)kerp-, Gk. skórpios), inj, inc (u-stem) “leopard” (possibly from Iran. *hinzu- “pouncer,”with OInd. siṃha′- “lion” as “pouncer,” from the Ir. base haiz-, hiz- “to mount,” OInd. *seh-, siṃh-. Birds: marg “bird” in sira-marg “peacock” and lor, lora-marg “quail” (North Iranian as in Oss. māṛγ “bird”) besides mouł in ištr-mouł “ostrich,” NPers. šotor-moṛγ with Man. Parth. mwrg, Man. Mid. Pers. mwrw, NPers. moṛγ), bazē, bazay “falcon” (Pahl., NPers. bāz, base baz- “to extend the wings”), čouṙak “falcon” (Npers. ǰorra), gauaz “falcon,” Georgian gavaz-i (likely to be Iranian), sareak, sarik “starling,” NPers. sār, sārak, sāraǰ, sārī), soxak “water bird, nightingale” (possibly to base sauk- “to call” like OInd. śuka “parrot”), kakʿau “partridge” (similar to Pahl. kpg, i.e. kaβg, NPers. kabk “quail,” Gk. kakkábē, Khot. kakva), paskouč “griffin,” Gk. grips = koṛč “griffin” (folkloric Aramaic pwšqnṣ, Pahl. baškuč, Man. Mid. Pers. pškwč, Georgian pʾaskʾunǰ-i, pʿaskʿuǰ-i, pʿaskʾunǰi, Oss. pākʾondzi, pāgŭndzä, paskʾondi, Swan pʿaysguǰ, from *pati-škuvaṇči- “swooping down upon”). For people at work we find: dēt, parēt, paret “observer” (from *daitar- agent to dai- “see,” nom. sing. -tā > -t, as Old Pers. dauštar-, to NPers. dōst “friend;” *patidaitar-, like Av. paitidaya- “surveying”), špet “herdsman” (from *fšu-pati-, beside Pahl. špʾn, šupān, NPers. šobān), goušak “observer, informer,” Sogd. γwšk- “spy,” Georgian gušag-i “sentinel,” Arameo-Pers. gwšk- “listener”), mšak “farmer;” Georgian mušakʾ-i (with Khot. miṣṣa- “field,” later muṣa-, base maiz- “to cultivate”), nauaz “boatman” (Av. navāza-, Man. Parth. nʾwʾz), satar “artisan” (Av. sātar- “controller”), bžišk “physician” (Pahl. bižišk, Man. Mid. Pers. bšyhk with Av. biš, bišaz-, Sogd. βyč, βyčʾnʾk “medical,” βyčyh “medicine”), dahič “executioner” (Syr. dhš-ʾ, base dah- “treat violently”), dastiarak “educator” (Man. Parth. dstdʾr, NPers. dastyār “helper”), datauor “judge” (dāta “law,” Pahl. dātaβar, Man. Parth. dʾdbr, NPers. dāvar), despan “envoy” (Pahl. baγ-dēspānīk, Ar. dosfān), gousan “singer” (Man. Parth. gōsān, Georgian mgosan-i, NPers. kwsʾn, i.e., gōsān, base *angaus-), derjak “tailor” (base darz- “sew,” NPers. darzī “tailor”), dpir “scribe” (from dipi- “document,” dipi-bara- “carrying documents,” Inscr. Mid. Pers. dipīvar, Pahl. dipīr, NPers. dabīr), xohaker “cook” (*hvarθa-kara-, Av. xᵛarəθa- “food”). Minerals and metals: aroyr “copper” (Man. Mid. Pers. rwy, Sogd. rwδynʾk “of copper,” Pahl. rō’, NPers. rūy), aṛčič “lead, tin” (Pahl. aṛčīč, NPers. arzīz, base ark- “to shine”), apaki “crystal, glass” (Oss. āvgä, ävgutä, Pahl. āpakēnak, NPers. ābgīna “crystal”), anoušatr “sal ammoniac” (NPers. nūšādor), dahanak “dark green emerald” (NPers. dahā/ănak), gač “gypsum” (Khot. gatsä, Pahl., NPers. gačʾ), karkehan “chalcedony” (Pahl. karkēhan, Gk. khalkēdōn), kir “chalk” (Oss. kʾirä, Georgian kʾir-i, Aramaic gir), lazouarṭʿ “lapis lazuli” (NPers. lāzavard, (OInd. rājavarta- from “blue stone”), navṭʿ “naphtha” (NPers naft), płinj “copper” (NPers. berenǰ, pereng), połopat, połovat “steel” (Pahl. pōlāpat, NPers. pūlād, fūlād), zaṙik “yellow arsenic” (Pahl. zarnīc, Khot. ysirai, beside ysīrā “red arsenic”), zaṙna- “gold” in zaṙna-uouxt “gold-woven” (*zaranya-vafta-, to Av. zaranya-, Old Pers. daranya-, Khot. ysīrra-, Man. Parth. zrnyn “golden”), mardasang, mercʿank “vitriol” (NPers. murdā-sang, Khot. muḍā-saṃga-), šauar “pearl” (NPers. šāhvār, Man. Parth. šʾhwʾr “royal”), zmrouxt “emerald” (Pahl. ʾwzmbwrt, NPers. zumurrud, OInd. marakata-, Gk. smáragdos), sngoyr “cinnabar, rouge”(with different suffixes NPers. šangarf, Kroraina Prakrit sā/ănapru, Old Pers. sinkabruš, žang “rust” (NPers. žang, zang, Oss. izgä), žangaṙ “verdigris” (NPers. žangār), gočazm “blue stone, both jade and turquoise” (from gau- “blue, green” and *azma- from *asma- “stone”), gohar “precious stone” (Pahl. gōhr “substance, growth,” NPers. gowhar, Ar. ǰawhar, Sogd. γwš “substance” with -š- from -θr-), ganj “treasure” (Old Pers. ganǰa-, Sogd. γzny, NPers. ganǰ, Oss. γäznug, γäzdug). Food: xortik-kʿ “food” (Pahl. xvartīk, NPers. ḵᵛordī, Khot. hvaḍa-, hvīḍe), xoh, xah “food” (Av. xᵛarəθa-, Oss. xuälcä), nparak “provisions” (base par- “to feed,” Khot. pāra- “food,” aś-para- “lucerne as horse fodder”), ṙočik “food” (Pahl. ročīk, NPers. rōzī, from rauk- “to provide food” not from raučah- “day,” Khot. rūkīja “food”) with patroučak “sacrificial victims” (from *patiraučaka-), pih “food” (Av. piθwa-, Pahl. pyhw, Man. Mid. Pers. pwx, with -ux- from -ixv-, not axv), pax “sodden” (*paxva-, OInd. pakva-, Khot. paha- “cooked,” Pašto pox, plur. pāxə), apouxt “uncooked” (Pahl. puxt “cooked”), hroušak, xroušak “sweetmeat” (Pahl. plwšk, i.e., frōšak, NPers. farūša), pak “cooked food” (from *pāka-, Pahl. pāk, NPers. pā, -bā, -baǰ), dastapak “cakes,” amič “seasoned food” (Pahl. āmīč, Syr. āmiṣ, āmīṣ), bazmem “to sit at banquet,” bazmakan “guest” (NPers. bazm “banquet”), grtak “round loat” (NPers. gerda), čaš “repast” (Pahl. čāšt), moł “wine” (Sogd. mw’-, i.e., mol-, Av. maδu-), panir “cheese” (Pahl., NPers. panīr, Balōčī panēr, base nai- “to churn”), tošak, toršak “provisions; wages” (Pahl. tōšak, NPers. tūša), nkan, nkanak “bread” (from *nikana-, Khot. nāṃji, NPers. nān). Clothing: kapay “monk’s gown” (Pahl. kapāh, Khot. khapa, Arabo-Pers. qabā), bob “cushion” (Pahl. pōb, bōb, NPers. bōp, from base pau- “to cover,” Khot. pvāna- “covering”), bazpan “clerical armlet” (NPers. bāzū “arm” with -pān), bahouand “woman’s ornament” (bāhū- from *bāδu@ = bāzū “arm,” and band- ), grapan “hole in garment for head” (NPers. gerībān “collar”), grīv-pān “helmet” (Av. grīvā- “neck”), dastaṙak “hand-towel” (NPers. dastār), grpan, grapanak “pocket,” kʿsak “purse” (NPers. kīsa, Balōčī kīsaγ), dipak “brocade” (Pahl. dēpāk, NPers. dībā), gdak “cap” (from base gaud- “cover,” Balōčī gud “cloth”), taškinak “cloth for sweat” (Pahl. tšknk, tškwk, i.e., taškanak “shirt,” Khot. ttaṣakana- “dress”), derǰan “thread” (base darz- “to sew”), draušak “hem” (base darb- “to sew”), pʿarouaz “seam, shirt” (NPers. parvaz “border, shirt,” base vaz-), xoyr “hat” (Old Pers. xauda-, Oss. xodä), arta-xoyr “hat” (Khot. haḍa- “dress,” Georgian ardag-i “cloak,” base ar- “to fit”), kamar “girdle” (Av. kamarā-, Pahl., NPers. kamar) kāpēn-kʿ “payment” (Pahl. kāpēn “dowry,” NPers. kābīn, OInd. kāpā-), kštapanak “armlet” (Pahl. kušt “side”), kaušik, kōšik “shoe” (Pahl. kafšak, NPers. kafš, Khot. khauṣa-), handerj “clothes” (base darz- “to sew”), čambar “man’s ornament” (NPers. čanbar “wheel”), goumartak “neck ornament” (*vi-mār- “to appoint”), mahik “crescent ornament” (Pahl., NPers. māh “moon”), meheuand “neckband, armlet” (Georgian melevand-i, melavand-i “armlet,” from mṛdu- = mṛzu- “neck,” Av. mərəzu-, Zāzā mil, with band-), mouštak “furred gown” (base mauxš- “to put on,” to mauk-, Khot. mūṣ- “to put on,” mūṣaka- “clothes,” Pahl. mōk, patmōk, with b- we have Khot. baucaʾ- “hat,” Gk. baûkis “shoe”), šapik “night-dress, shirt” (Pahl. šapīk), čitak “neck-ornament” (base kait-, Khot. cäte, kyite “ornaments,” Av. čiθra-), paregaut-kʿ “long dress” (parai-gauda-, gaud- “to cover”), varagoyr “veil” (from varah- “breast” and gaud- “to cover”), vaṙ “mantle” (Av. varənā-, Pahl. wl, i.e., varr), varapanak-kʿ “cloak, Gk. mandúas” (varah “breast” and pānak “protection”), varšamak “handkerchief, head-band, veil” (NPers. vāšāma, bāšāma, Georgian varšamang-i), zangapan “leggings” (Oss. zängä “leg,” zängoinä “leggings,” Pahl. zang “foot”), žapauēn “ribbons” (Khot. cāpaṇe, cāpine “fluttering parts of dress,” base kap-, kamp- “to shake,” Khot. caṃbula “shaking,” here with variation č- and ǰ-; for -p- note Khot. khapa “dress,” Pahl. kapāh, Arm. kapay). Materials: aprišoum “silk” (Pahl. aprēšom), šar “silk” (NPers. šār) əstourak “stiff silk cloth” (Pahl. staβrak, Georgian stʾavra, Ar. estabraq), kerpas “fine linen or silk” (OInd. karpāsa- “cotton,” Khot. kapāysa-), kʿemouxt “fine leather” (NPers. kēmuxt; possibly northwestern Prakrit keme- designating some kind of cloth, Khot. kaimeja-, kamaiśka-). Plants: partēz “garden” (NPers. pālēz), draxt, drast “garden” (Pahl. draxt, NPers. deraxt “tree”), darastan “garden” (from Pahl., NPers. dār “tree”), mirg “fruit” (from *mi’ga-, older migda-, Man. Parth. mygdg, adjective mgdyyn, Sogd. mγδʾk, Pahl. mywk, NPers. mīva), ananoux “mint” (NPers. nānūxa, Pahl. nānūk-spram), aprsam “balsam” (Syr. ʾpwrsm-ʾ, Gk. opobálsamon), armau “date,” armauastan “plantation of dates” (Pahl. (h)urmāk, NPers. xormā), brinj “rice” (Pahl. brinǰ, NPers. berenǰ, gorenǰ, Semnāni varinǰ, Khot. rrīysū, Yagh. riǰan), bēš “aconite” (Pahl. bēš, gaz “tamarisk” (NPers. gaz), gauars “millet” (Pahl., NPers. gāvars, Sogd. γwrstʾny, Khot. gauʾsä, Pašto γōṧt, Yid. γawarso), dar i płpeł płpił “pepper” (NPers. dār-e felfel, OInd. pippalī, Khot. pipalä, Uigur Turk. pitpidi), zartagoyn “crocus” (Pahl. zart “yellow,” gōn “color,” NPers. zaryūn “anemone”), kanapʿ, kanepʿ “hemp” (Pahl. kʾnb, Gk. kánnabis, NPers. kanab, kanav, Oss. gänä), kndrouk “incense” (NPers. kondor, OInd. kunduruka-), xiar, xiarouk “cucumber” (Pahl. xiyār, giyār, Buddhist Skt. guyara-, Khot. byāra-), xarbzak “melon” (Pahl. xarbuzak, NPers. xarbū¦za), kočak “bud,” parkouc “peri- carp” (Khot. kujsā- “bud”), kṇčiṭʿ “sesame” (Pahl. kṇčyt, NPers. konǰed, Khot. kuṃjsata-, Sogd. kwyštʾyč Balōčī kuṇčīθ, Pašto kunzala-, OInd. kuncita-), čanbak “scented flower” (OInd. campaka- “Michelia cham paka,“ Khot. caṃbaa-, Pahl. čampak, NPers. čanbā; čandan “sandal-wood” (Pahl. čandan, Khot. caṃdana-, cadana-, OInd. candana-, Ar. ṣandal), manoušak, manišak, “violet” (Pahl. vanafšak, NPers. banafša base van- “blue”), maš “bean” (NPers. māš, marzangoš “majorana” (Pahl., NPers. marzangūš, mexak “cloves” (NPers. mīxak to mīx “nail”), mourt “myrtle” (Pahl mūrt, NPers. mūrd), yazmik “jasmine” (Pahl., Npers. yāsmīn), nay “reed” (Pahl. na’, Man. Parth. nd, Man. Mid. Pers. nʾy, Av. na’a-, Yid. nəl, Hungarian Alan nád, with ā from -ă-, OInd. nada-, naḍa-), nargēs “narcissus” (Gk. nárkissos, NPers. narges), noč “pine” (NPers. nōǰ, nōz, Old Pers. adjective naučaina-) nouṙn, gen. sing nṙan “pomegranate” (connected with NPers. anār, Sogd. nʾrʾkh), šahdanak “hemp” (Npers. šāhdāna), čakndeł “beet” (NPers. čoḡondar, base čak- in Khot. cakurīka- “sorrel”), sngrouēł; snkrouil “ginger” (Pahl. sngypyl, NPers. zanǰabīl, Georgian ǰanǰpʿil-i, OInd. śrṅgavera-), sox “onion” (NPers. sūx, as the “bitter” fruit, to base sauk- “be pungent”), soči, šoč, šoči “fir, pine” (from base sauk- “burn, be white red,” as Russian sosná “pine,” from IE. kas “grey”), spanax “spinach” (NPers. espanāḵ), spram “flower,” hamaspram “lily,” šahspram “basil” (*spragma-, Pahl. sprahm, NPers. espram, separam Khot. spargga- “flashing,” haṣpalgy- “burst out,” Sogd. ʾspṛγmʾk “flower,” sprxs- “to bud,” Man Mid. Parth. ʿsprhmg “flower,” ʿsprhm-čʾr “flower garden,” Waxī spraγ “flower,” sprēž- “to blossom,” base sprag- “burst out, water, bud, light”), saroy “cypress” (NPers. sarv, Old Pers. θarmiš “cypress,” Georgian saro), vard “rose” (Av. varəδa- “plant,” Khot. vala, Ar. ward, NPers. gol, Sogd. wr’-, plur. wr’tyy, wr’-γwn “rose-colored,” possibly Akkadian amurdennu “a thorny plant”), varoung “cucumber” (possibly to Khot. vālaiga “citron,” OInd. mātulunga-, NPers. vārang, bālang, bādrang, Pahl. vātrang “citron”), varsak “oats” (vars- “hair,” “hairy plant”), kask “barley,” kaškēn “barley loaf” (NPers. kask, Yazg. kåsk, Khot. chaska-, as the “pointed plant”), kʿapʿour “camphor” (Pahl., NPers. kāfūr OInd. karpūra-), kʿounar (in the village namf Kʿounarastan) “lote-tree” (Pahl., NPers. kunār), ōšindr “wormwood” (Arabo-Pers. afsentīn, Gk. apsínthion), ōšnan “soap plant” (NPers. ošnān “herba alcali ” from base snā- “to wash”), kʿrkʿoum “crocus” (Khot. kurkuma-, Syr. kwrkm-ʾ “saffron,” Sogd. kwrkwnph, Pahl. kwlkwm, i.e., kurkum, OInd. kunkuma-), mom “wax” (NPers. mūm). Sport and war: ors “hunting,” orsord “hunter” (since Russian oxota “desire” and “hunting,” oxotnik “lover, hunter” can be identified, this Armenian word can be placed with Tumšuq āwursa-, Khot. aursa-, orsa- and aulsa-, olsa- “desire,” from older *ā-vars- and *ā-vars (variants like dalys- and drays- “to load up”), cognate with Oss. uārzun “to love,” Man. Parth. ʾwrzwg, i.e., *āvarzūg “desire,” Pahl. ārzūk, NPers. ārzū; the two bases IE. ṷerkĝ- (or ṷerĝ-sk) and ṷerĝ- beside Lat. uergō “to incline towards;” the ancient tribal name Aorsoi may belong here as the “Hunters,” rather than connected with Oss. ors “white” from aruša-), naxčir-kʿ, “slaughter,” Peroz-naxčer place name (Pahl. nḥčyl, i.e. naxčīr, NPers. naḵčīr “hunting,” Man. Mid. Pers. nḥčyhr, Sogd. ṇγšʾyr, Inscr. Parth. nhšyr-pty, Inscr. Mid. Pers. nḥčyr-pt, “master of the hunt,” OInd. naścīra-pati-, Kroraina Prakrit nacīra (c@ = śc), Qumran Hebrew nhšyr “carnage,” Aram. nhšyrkn, Syr. nahšīr-ā, naxšeratānā; modern dialects Yagh. naxšir, naxčir, Arabo-Pers. fayrūz-naḵǰīr, Yid. naxšīr “goat,” Waxī naxčīr “fox,” Orošorī naxčīr “goat,” Shugh. naxčīr, Caucasian Tabarsānī ničxir “bird;” the base is “slaughter, hunting,” hence to base skar- with naš- from older niš- implying “complete, great” replaced by nax- before sč- in *nišsčarya- or *nišsčrya- “great hunting;” for -šč- to xč- note Georgian duxčʿir-i “ugly” from duščihr). For “fight” are used ṙazm, paterazm (Av. rasman-, Pahl. razm, Khot. rraysman- “rank, array,” Pahl. pātrazm “fight”), vatṭʿarem “defeat,” (Pahl. vattar “worse”), partem “conquer” (Av. part- “fight,” Pahl. nipart, NPers. nabard “fight,”) without -t-, goupar “war” (vipar-), pešopay “vanguard” (Pahl. pēšōpāδ, NPers. pīšvā), payik “foot soldier” (Pahl. pyk, i. e., payik, NPers. peyg, Syr. pʾyg-ʾ, Ar. fayǰ, Khot. pāyai “pedestrian,” OInd. padika-), drauš “banner” (Av. drafša-, Man. Parth. drfš, NPers. derafš). Equipment: three shields aspar (Pahl. spar), vahan (Oss. uārt), tapak (Pahl. tāpak “flat thing”), vert “armor” (*varti- to var- “protect,” varti-kʿ “trousers”), sałauart “helmet” (sāra-varti- like Av. sāravāra-, Man. Mid. Pers. sʾrwʾr), tēg “spear” (NPers. tīḡ), ašteay “spear” (Old. Pers. aršti-, Khot. hälsti-, Oss. āṛčä, NPers. ḵešt), varapanak “cuirass” (varah- “breast” and pānak “protection”), zrah-kʿ “cuirass” (Av. zrāδa-, Pahl. zrēh, NPers. zereh), nizak “spear” (Pahl. nēzak, NPers. neyza), nšauak “target” (šau-“move fast, shoot”), npatak “target” (pat-, paθ “eject, shoot,” Oss. fat “arrow,” Sogd. pʾ’’-, Khot. phāh- “eject”), vtauan, vteuan “bow-shot” (Inscr. Parth. wtʾwny, Pahl. vitāvan), vran “tent” (Man. Parth. wdʾn, NPers. gayān, Judeo-Pers. byʾn), maška-peṛčan “leather tent” (Man. Mid. Pers. mškbrzyn). Army divisions: spah, spay “army,” spasalar “commander” (NPers. sepāhsālār), spayapet, spahapet, sparapet; goundapet, gndapet “captain of a gound division;” goumapet “captain of a goum division” (*guma- from gau- “to assemble”), vaštapet “major,” vašt “division” (base vaz- of army “movement”), drauš “division.” For the horse in war there are aspazēn “horse armor,” aspatak “incursion by horse-troop,” smbak “hoot” (Pahl. sumb, NPers. som, somm, sonb), barš, baš “mane” (Av. barəša-, Pahl., NPers. buš, Balōčī bušk, Pašto wražˊ, dmak “tail” (Av. duma-, Pahl. dum, dumb, dumbak, NPers. dom, domm, donb, donbak, Khot. dumaa-), aprdoum “crupper” (NPers. pārdom, Sogd. pʾr’wnph), erasan, erasanak, aparasan “reins, without reins” (Pahl., NPers. rasan “rupe, halter”), arȧsan “rope” (NPers. rasan), dandanauand “bridle” (Pahl. dandān “teeth,” with band-), varauand “breast strap” (Pahl. var “breast”), zēn “saddle” (*izaina- “leathern,” Av. izaēna-, Khot. īṃjīnai, Pašto žai “leather bag,” Yid. ize, Khot. häysa- “skin,” but Pahl. zēn “weapons,” Av. zaya- “tool,” Georgian zein-kʾal-i “armorer”), kohak “peak” (NPers. kūha “higher part of saddle,” Pahl. kōfak “hump”), pēš-aspik “courrier” (Pahl. pēš “before”), tačkinak “stroke of whip” (base tāč- “make to run,” NPers. tāzīāna). Music: nouag “song” (Pahl. nivāk, nivāxtan, hunivākīh “music,” NPers. navā, navāḵtan; ḵūnyā Sogd. nwʾk, Khot. nvāka-, Georgian novag-i), vin “lute” (Pahl. vin, Arabo-Pers. wan, wanǰ, Sogd. wynʾk, wynʾ, Khot. bīnā-, OInd. bīṇā-), tauił “stringed instrument, cymbals” (Greco-Parthian tabēla, Syr. ṭbl-ʾ), dapʿdapʿem “to sound” (NPers. dap, Ar. daf “drum”), ṭʿmbouk “drum” (NPers. tonbak). Abstract terms: beur, biur “myriad, ten thousand” (Av. baēvar-, Alan baior, Pahl., NPers. bēvar, Sogd. βrywr, Man. Mid. Pers., Parth. bywr, Georgian bevr-i “many,” Oss. beurä, berä, Iron birä, plur. beretä “many,” Khot. byūrra, byūrä), hazar “thousand” (Pahl., NPers. hazār, Khot. ysāra-, Sogd. zʾr, Oss. ärzä), kerp “form” (Av. kəhrpa-, Pahl. karp), taraz “form, way” (NPers. tarāz), arouest, arhest “art” (Old Pers. aruvastam “ability”). Time: žam “hour” (Pahl. zaman, Sogd. zmn), žamanak “time,” žamanem “arrive” (base gam-, ǰam-, Pahl. zamān, zamānak “time,” NPers. zamān). The word nau-ṙouz occurs as a proper name (Pahl. navak-rōč, NPers. nau-rōz). For “year” sard is in nuva-sard “new year” (Kroraina nok-sari), erita-sard “youthful” (Pahl. rētak, NPers. rīdak “youth”), ausard “old woman” (*abi-sardā-; Av. sarəδa-, Old Pers. θard-, Oss. särdä “summer,” Khot. salī “year,” pasāla- “springtime,” Pahl., NPers. sāl “year,” NPers. absālān “spring,” Tumšuq Saka sāli-, gen. sing. sālye, Man. Mid. Pers. Parth. sʾr with r from rd). Medicine: bžišk “physician” (Pahl. bižišk, Man. Mid. Pers. bšyhk with byšʾz- “to heal,” Av. biš-, bišaz-), bžiškapet “chief physician.” Georgian has kept dastakʿar-i “surgeon” as a direct calque on Gk. kheirourgós. Further axt “disease,” žand-axt “plague” (Pahl. zand, zandak “violent”), hiuand “ill” (Pahl. hywndkyh, i.e., hēvandakīh “illness,” Man. Mid. Pers. xyndg), darman “treatment” (Pahl., NPers. darman “remedy”). Mankind: tohm “family” (Av. taoxman-, Pahl. tōxm, tōhm, tōm, *mart-tōhm, martōm “mankind,” Sogd. mrṭγmʾk, NPers. toxm, mardom, Khot. ttīman- “seed.” The people were ṙam “commoners,” as a group ṙamik with their chief ṙamkapet beside eram of both man and animals. The word nāfa- “navel” was developed to “people” and “family” as Sogd. nʾβ, nʾf, i.e., nāf, nʾβnʾmk, i.e., nāfnāmak “book of peoples,” in Arm. nahapet “patriarch, prince,” Northwest Prakrit ṇavhapati- (-vh- writes the sound f ). A crowd is groh, grox (Pahl. grōh). The “Sons of the Great House,” that is, “nobles” (Av. vīsō.puθra-, Khot. bisī-viraa-) are the sepouh, adjective sephakan, Georgian zepʾurni, adjective sazepʾuro, from *visas-puθra- whence -ai- from -az. Variant changes gave Northwest Prakrit guśuraka-, Ṣiṇā gušpur, Oss. guppur. Birth was stressed by azat “wellborn, free” (ā- with zan-, zāta-), azn “people,” azniu “noble” (Av. āzāta-, āsna-, Pahl. āzāt, āznāvar “noble,” Khot. āysāta-, āysñya-, Georgian aznaur-i “eugenēs,” uazno “dusgenēs.” Archaic is paṙau “old woman” (parā-with āyu- “age,” with Khot. myāñāva- “middle-aged,” Oss. āuä, ḭāuä, ḭāu “vitality, essence,” Av. āyu-, yvan-, OInd. āyu-, yuvan-, Lat. aeuom, iuuenis). The base vai- “be vigorous” gave vig “vigor” (Oss. uäḭug “strong, giant,” Lat. uis, OInd. vayas-). The Iranian puθra- “son” is kept in the pouh of sepouh and in the name Šapouh (Pahl. Šāhpuhr) and in bak-our, NPers. faγfūr “son of gods,” Kušan bago-pouro. Feminine titles are dšxoy “princess” from duxš- and bambišn “lady of the house, queen” (Av. nmānō.paθnī-, Pahl. bām-bišn). Artefacts: aparanǰan “armlet” (NPers. abranǰan), aparauš “head-dress” (possibly rafš- from raxš- to rak- in NPers. raxt “dress”), grtanak “roller” (Pahl. gartānāk “board”), bazmak “lamp” (Man. Parth. bzmg), dašnak “dagger” (NPers. dašna, to base das- in Oss. dāsun “cut”), payousak, payouasik, apauasik “purse” (Pahl. patvāsīk, Georgian pʾavasakʾ-i “sack”), dēspak “carriage” (Pahl. byʾspk, bay- beside day- in dēspak), doyl “bucket” (Pahl., NPers. dōl), drauš “pillar, idol,” drošm “sculpture” (base drauš- “to cut,” Pahl. drōš “cutting”), zangak “bell,” aha-zang “alarm bell” (NPers. zang), ṭʿag “crown” (NPers. tāǰ, Khot. ttāva-), ṭʿakoyk “jar” (Pahl., NPers. takōk, Georgian tʾakʾukʾ-i), lakan, lekan “vessel” (NPers. lakan, legan, Khot. lakāna-, Gk. lekanē, xorg, kʿourj “sack” (Syr. kwrg-ʾ, Oss. xordzen, D. xurdzin), kah “furniture” (NPers. kāla, Khot. kāṭha-), kouž “jug” (NPers. kūz, Khot. kūysa-, with ž from z), čašak “cup” (OInd. caṣaka-, base kalś-), črag “lamp” (Pahl. clʾγ, i.e., čirāγ, NPers. čerāg@ Khot. cirau, Oss. cirāg, base kai- “to burn”), makoyk “boat” (NPers. makūk, Man. Mid. Pers. mkwg, Pahl. mtwkck, i.e., matōkčak [with -t- for -k-], base mak- “move fast, jump” whence also Yazg. magūd, Waxī mukt “frog” as the jumping animal, from makata-), mač “plough handle” (NPers. āmāǰ, matean “book” (Pahl. mātaγ’ān, Georgian matiane), moyk, moučak “shoe,” OInd. maucika- “shoemaker”), patmoučan “dress” (Pahl. patmōčan, base mauk-, Pahl. mōk, mōčak “shoe”), mourhak “scaled document” (Pahl. mu’r, muhr “seal,” NPers. mohr, OInd. mudrā, Khot. mūrā- “coin”), nau “ship,” nauaz “shipman” (Man. Parth. nʾw, nʾwʾz, Av. navāza-), nštir, nštrak “lancet” (NPers. nīštar, Khot. nauṣṭara-), takaṙ “cask, bowl” (NPers. tāgar, Georgian ṭʿaγar-i), kʿandouk “jar for grain” (NPers. kandū, kandūk, Oss. xändug, Greco-Pers. kóndu), šiš “glass, flask” (Syr. šyš-ʾ, NPers. šīša, Georgian šišag-i), patker “image” (Pahl. patkar, NPers. peykar), pʿas “wine jar” (Inscr. Parth. pʾs, i.e., pās “measure for wine,” Greco-Pers. passous, pasatas, with Khot. phaysdve), patroyk, patroyg “wick” (Pahl. pairōk “shining” from pati-rauka-), parauand “fetter” (*pāda-banda-), sapat, sapatak “box, basket” (NPers. sabad, Khot. savā-, base sap- “to contain”), skauaṙak “dish” (NPers. sokūra, OInd. cakoraka), patgarak “barrow, litter” (*pati-gāraka-, base gar- “to take up,” Old Pers. ʾbgrn- “indemnity”), kʿašt- in kʿašti “rudder,” kʿaštik “shipman” (NPers. kaštī “ship”), smpatak “touch-stone” (NPers. sombāda), staran “bed,” base star- “spread out,” starana-), tašt “bowl” (Av. tašta-, NPers. tašt, Man. Parth. tʾst with-s- not-š-), tapak “frying-pan” (Pahl. tāpak, NPers. tāba, tāva), tapar “axe” (Pahl. tapar, Balōčī tapar, Waxī təpār, NPers. tabar base tap- “to strike”), varz, vazr “stick club” (from two words: varz- “to work, make a tool,” Georgian varz-i “sharp tool,” Oss. gärzä, Gk. órganon, Av. vazra- “cutting club,” Georgian vazr-i, Pahl. vazr, NPers. gorz, OInd. vajra-, base possibly ṷaĝ- beside ṷak- in Oss. uäs “axe,” OInd. vāśī “axe, adze”), kʿandak “engraving” (Pahl. kandišn with burrišn “cutting”), with vkandem “destroy.” Colors: ašxēt “red” (xšaita- “shining,” Av. xšaēta-. Pahl. šēt, hvar-xšēt, NPers. ḵᵛar-šēd “sun,” Oss. äxsed), erašx “red” (Pahl. raxš, NPers. raḵš “red” and Rustam’s horse, Khot. rrāṣa- “dark red,” Kurd. raš “black”), atragoyn “flame-colored” (ātra- and gōn “color”), čartouk “grey” (NPers. čarda “grey, reddish”), čermak “white” (NPers. čarma, Georgian čarmag-i “red”), kapoyt “blue” (Old Pers. kapauta-, Pahl. kapōt, Sogd. kpʾwt, Balōčī kapōt, Khot. kavūta- NPers. kabūd), karmīr “red” (Pahl. karmīr, Pāzand xarmēra, Sogd. krmʾyr, Buddhist Skt. kremeru), pisak “speckled” (Pahl. pēsak, NPers. pīsa), zartagoyn “yellow, saffron-colored” (Pahl. zart “reddish yellow” with gōn “color”), seau “black” (Av. syāva-, syāma-, sāma-, Khot. śāva- “copper-colored,” Oss. sau “black,” Pahl. syāh, NPers. sīāh), spitak “white” (Pahl. spēt, Av. spaēta-, NPers. safīd, Khot. śśīta-). Original Armenian are dełin “yellow,” kanačʿ “green,” dalar “green,” gorš “grey.” Titles are abundant, formed by the second component: -pan, -pet, -salar, -sar, -dar: barapan, darapan “door keeper” (dvar “door”), marzpan “frontier governor” (marz “boundary”), azgapet “leader of people” (azg “people,” Pahl. azg “branch”), axṙapet, xoṙapet “head of stables” (Pahl. āxvarr, NPers. ākor from *ā-hvarana-) (h)ambārapet “chief of stores” (Pahl. hanbār, NPers ambār), (a)sparapet, (a)spahapet “army commander” (spāda-, pati-, Pahl. spādapat, NPers. espāhbad), aspet “horseman” (*asa-pati-, Old Pers. asa-, Khot. aśśa-, Inscr. Parth. ʾsp-pty), bandapet “prison governor” (band- “to imprison”), barapet, darapet “janitor” (dvar “door”), dačapet “chief executioner” (dahič, Syr. dhš-ʾ), dehpet, dehapet “district chief” (Av. dahyu-, Pahl, deh, Sogd. ʾztyw, i.e., uzdayu, Arm. nždeh “exile” from *niždahyu-, Arabo-Pers. dahūfaḏ), denpet “religious head” (Av. daēnā-, Pahl. dēn), dprapet “chief scribe” (Inscr. Mid. Pers. dipīvar, Pahl. dipīr, NPers. dabīr, OInd. divirapati), gamapet “chief of troop” (gāma-, gam- “to hold together”), goumapet “chief of goum-division” (*guma-, gau- “to assemble”), gndapet, goundapet “captain of gound-division” (gound from *vṛnda-), (h)anderjapet “governor, steward” (Pahl. handarz), karapet “forerunner” (kāra- “mobile people,” Arm. karuuan, Pahl. kārvān, “caravan,” Pahl. kāradāk “traveler”), maypet, marzpet “chief of inner chambers,” mogpet “chief Magian,” naxararapet “head of nobles” (*nāfa-dāra-, Sogd. nʾβδʾr “prince”), nahapet “prince, patriarch” (Northwest Prakrit ṇavhapati- “prince,” Sogd. nʾβ, nʾf “family, people,” Hungarian Alan nép “people,” ē from ā), šahapet “chief of a šahr-district” (šahr from xšaθra-), šahr-ayean-pet “state master of ceremonies” (Pahl. āδēn, āyēn, aδvēn, NPers. āʾīn “ceremony”), špet “herdsman” (fšu-pati-, beside Pahl. šupān, NPers. šobān), ṙamkapet “head of commoners” (ṙam “people,” Pahl. ram “herd, crowd”), spaskapet “the head servant” (Pahl. spās “service”), vaštapet “army major” (vašt “division,” base vaz- “move”), vardapet “teacher,” Inscr. Mid. Pers., Parth. wrdpt, Greco-Pers. goulbad, Inscr. Mid. Pers. wldptkn, Inscr. Parth. wrdptykn, Greco-Pers. goulibēgan, with base vard-, not vart- nor varz-, possibly Oss. äuuärdun “to train”), takaṙapet “cupbearer” (Inscr. Parth. tkrpty, takaṙ “bowl”), pʿiłapet “elephant-keeper” (Old Pers. piru-, Pahl. pīl). This pet is also suffixed to Syr. kurmā “idol,” in kʿrmapet, and the Greek pandokheíon in pandokapet “keeper of an inn.” For sardār (NPers. sālār), there are goundsałar and spasalar. The second component dār is in matakarar “steward” (Pahl. mātiyār), and in naxarar (Sogd. nʾβδʾr “prince”). Buildings: aparan-kʿ “palace” (Old Pers. apadāna-, Aram. ʾpdn-ʾ, Ar. fdn, NPers. ayvān), gmbeṭʿ “dome” (Pahl. gumbat, NPers. gonbad, Georgian gumbaṭʿ-i, Syr. gbt-ʾ, base IE. geu- “to bend”), gauiṭʿ “forecourt” (possibly base kau-, gau- “to fence,” Oss. kāuä “fence”), dahlič “hall” (Old Pers. duvarθi-, Pahl. dʾhlyč, i.e., dahlīč, NPers. dahlīz), zndan “prison” (Pahl. zēndān, Man. Parth. zyndʾn, NPers. zendān, from zēn “watch” or zēn “weapons”), xonastan “audience-hall” (hvan- “to call, summon”), krpak “shop” (NPers. korba, kolba, Arabo-Pers. korbaǰ, korbaq), (h)ambartak “tower” (base par- “to build,” Pahl. hmʾpyl, i.e., hamāpēr, Man. Parth. hʾmʾbyr, Oss. āvārä “building,” Khot. pira- “house”), šahastan “chief city” (xšaθra-, stāna), šēn “dwelling” (base šay- “live, dwell,” Georgian šen-i “settlement,” šeneba “to build,” Av. šayana-), patškanb “room” (base skamb-, Av. fraskəmba-, NPers. paškam), patouar “bulwark” (*pati-vāra- to Av. pairivāra-), patouhan “sluice” (*patifāna-, base fan- “move,” Yazg. fan- “descend,” Khot. phan- “move,” OInd. phan-), parisp “wall” (Pahl. parisp, Man. Mid. Pers. prysp, base spā- “to place”), parkēn “fence” (kan- “to put”), srah, srahak “hall” (Pahl. srāδ, NPers. sarāy) beside srahak “curtain” (Mandean sradqa, Ar. sorādeq), vačaṙ “market” (*vahā-čārana-, Pahl. vahāk “price, sale,” Oss. uäyä, NPers. bahā, with čārana- “place of business,” Pahl. vāčār, NPers. bāzār, Sogd. wʾčrn), vran “tent” JPers. byʾn, Man. Parth. wʾdn), patnēš “fort” (Georgian pʾatʾnez-i, base naiš- and naiz- “to build”), taxt “seat, throne” (Pahl., NPers. taxt) beside taxtak, tastak “table” (Pahl. taxtak “board,” NPers. taḵta). Three adverbs deserve mention here: haziu “with difficulty” (Av. haz- “act violently”), hanapaz “always” from hama- “all” and pāz “section,” MSogd. pʾzyy “piece,” connected with base paz- in Khot. pāysa- “front, side” and Oss. fāzä, fäz, Lat. pāgus), and mišt “always,” with Pahl. hamēšak, NPers. hamīša, Man. Mid. Pers. hmys “together.” Proper names of the Parthian and Sasanian periods: For Darius there is Dareh, Greek Dareiaios, and in the Arsacid period ari-kʿ eu anari-kʿ “Aryans and non-Aryans,” later Sasanian eran eut aneran and the old areacʿ ašxarh “land of the Aryans.” Some of the names are: Aršak, Artašēs, Artauazd, Artauan, Bagarat, Pap, Hrahat, Sanatrouk, Vołarš, Tigran, Tiran, Trdat, Pʿarsman, Ašxadar with his wife Ašxēn. Of the Sasanian period royal names: Artašir, Šapouh, Ormizd, Vṙam, Vahram, Nerseh, Yazkert, Peroz, Vałarš, Xosrov, Aprouēž Xosrov, Born (Bōrān). Other names are Zareh “Zariadris,” Karēn “Carenas,” Surin “Surenas,” Ałan in the name Ałanayozan. Ethnic names: čen-kʿ “Chinese,” čenik, Čenastan hndouk, hndik “Indian,” hndkastan; Asorestan, Asori; Arouastan, Kʿoušan, Alan-kʿ. Later than these older loanwords many of the more recent post-Sasanian and modern Persian words are found in the Armenian authors. Such words are however well known in later stages of Persian and are of less interest for the old Iranian vocabulary.
(H. W. Bailey)
v. Accounts Of Iran in Armenian Sources
From the very beginning of the Arsacid period (247 B.C.-A.D. 226) Armenia, from Achaemenian times within the Iranian zone, found itself influenced by Rome. Christianity came to Armenia first, before the conversion of Constantine, from the Syrian south; after 314, it came from Caesarea. From the time of Tiridates the Great (298-330) the Armenian Arsacid dynasty was Christian; henceforth it was contested by the Sasanians and courted by Romans and Byzantines until its power waned after the partitioning of Armenia around A.D. 387. Eventually the local confrontation of the Christian Byzantine empire and the Zoroastrian Sasanian power provoked a series of wars, annexations, and persecutions in Armenia similar to those occurring further south, around Edessa and Nisibis. In 591 Armenia was repartitioned between Iran and Byzantium, and the Greek part of this Armenia practically disappeared, absorbed by the Byzantine empire. Since Armenian writing itself begins only around 430, almost forty years after the disappearance of the Armenian Arsacid empire, the historians who write of Arsacid or earlier events belong to a later era, and as pseudepigraphers their identity and testimony are heavily disputed: such are Pʿawstos Buwzand (Faustus of Byzantium), Movsēs Xorenacʿi (Moses of Chorene), Agathangelos, and pseudo-Sebēos of the Primary History. During the Sasanian period, on the other hand, the historians are relative contemporaries of the facts they describe. Such are Łazar Pʿarbecʿi (Lazar of Pharbe), Ełiše vardapet, and Movsēs Dasxurancʿi. The works of the theologian Eznik Kołbacʿi contain valuable information on Sasanian Zurvanist beliefs, and those of the scholarly compilator Anania Širakacʿi also include Iranian data. These later historians give an account of the Sasanian regime’s hostility toward Christianity and thus inaugurate the tales about a long series of invasions and persecutions up to the reign of Shah ʿAbbās in the middle of the 11th/17th century. Many of these accounts possess eyewitness value. Agathangelos. This Greek name, meaning “bearer of good tidings,” belongs to the presumed minister of King Tiridates, a witness to the conversion of the monarch by Gregory the Illuminator and to the overthrow of the non-Christian temple cults. The official Armenian text, although extremely lengthy (900 paragraphs), represents merely one stage of a developing legend. This official text probably took final shape about A.D. 555, and was translated into Greek undoubtedly in the 7th century; but a number of versions, mainly in Greek, Arabic, and Syriac, bear witness to earlier and later stages of the legend in lost Armenian models. The legend began around 505 by linking Tiridates the Great’s persecution of Gregory with Diocletian’s persecution of Christians, with Agathangelos as witness, according to all the clichés of Christian hagiography. In it Gregory’s apostolate spreads also to Albania and Georgia. Gregory is shown as a Greek, married to a Greek woman, who soon becomes a cousin of King Tiridates. According to recent chronological studies, Tiridates the Great is here confused with Tiridates III (287-298) owing to his position as an exact contemporary of Diocletian. From this myth evolves an entire prehistory in which Gregory the Parthian, son of Anak and nephew of Ḵosrow, the Armenian Arsacid, atones at the hands of Tiridates for Anak’s murder of Ḵosrow. In one of the latest Greek versions this episode is attached to the hostility between the Armenian Arsacids and the Persian Sasanians by borrowing from the Pahlavi Kārnāmag ī Ardašīr ī Pābagān. The Agathangelos that has reached us in a Syriac summary still stresses the legendary typology: Anak begets Gregory on the same hill of Mākū where in times gone by the apostle Thaddeus had been put to death by King Sanatruk. This version of Agathangelos, the ultimate stage of the etiological growth of the legend, recorded around 630, is the one on which Movsēs Xorenacʿi depends in the next century. Among its numerous Iranian themes we may note that of the king’s hunt; the execution of Saint Hripʿsimē according to the form of a rite of child sacrifice depicted by Movsēs Kałankatuacʿi (1.18), the transforming of the king into a boar, varaz (Pahl. warāz); the enumeration of the princes of Armenia; the list of temples of Mihr, Vahagn, and Anahit and the barsom; the metamorphoses of the divs attached to these temples, etc. (Cf. R. W. Thomson, Agathangelos, History of the Armenians, Albany, 1976, pp. lx-lxiii; G. Winkler, “Our Present Knowledge of the History of Agathangelos and its Oriental Versions,” Revue des études arméniennes 14, 1980, pp. 125-41). Pʿawstos Buwzand. The second most important source of Armenian pseudepigraphy is the History of Armenia of Pʿawstos Buwzand, called Faustus of Byzantium. This Greek name conceals the apparently Iranian title Buzandacʾi. In an article due to appear in Mélanges H. Berberian, A. Perikhanian suggests that what is in question here is neither Byzantium nor Buzand, a small village of Tarawn, but extracts from the “Commentaries of Faustus,” the radical having to be juxtaposed with Iranian pāzand. This Faustus is identified with a personage in the entourage of the bishop Nerses I, quoted in Book VI, 5 of the History, which presents itself as Books III to VI of a larger work, and contains the events from 340 to 387, the date of the partition of Armenia. Books I and II seem to designate the Book of Lerubna on the apostle Thaddeus, and the Agathangelos. This arrangement probably belongs to the late 5th century. Some similarities between Procopius of Caesarea and Pʿawstos render possible a Greek model before the development of Armenian writing around 430. Pʿawstos tells of numerous confrontations between the Arsacids and the Persians (III, II, 16; IV, 16-58; V, 2-8 and 38-44). Book V and VI tell more about the organization of the church. It has long ago been shown that the events recounted by these histories cannot chronologically be condensed within so short a period of time. There is in fact a juxtaposition of a history of the south—the province of Tarawn—and a history of the north, each zone having produced its own princes, bishops, and saints. Among the numerous Iranian features one notes that Šāpūr II swears by the sun, water, and fire (IV, 7), that the Armenian Arsacid ranks the third in the Sasanian kingdom (IV, 16), that before the partition of Armenia King Aršak is bound by more than one type of allegiance to the great Sasanian king. Movsēs Xorenacʿi. The third giant of Armenian pseudepigraphic historiography, Movsēs Xorenacʿi, has left three volumes beginning with the origins and ending with the death of the archbishop Sahak in 439. Therefore Armenian historiography generally places him in the 5th century, but a series of internal indications (for instance, the use of the administrative division into four Armenias inaugurated by Justinian in 536) render certain a later composition of the whole. Scholars outside the U.S.S.R. generally place the composition toward the end of the 8th century in the wake of the coming to power of the Bagratid dynasty. In any case, Movsēs was a historian of antiquity whose genius led him to take immense trouble in assembling such scraps of history as could be found in the most ancient monuments of Armenian popular tradition. We owe to him, for instance, the transcription of an epic poem on the birth of Vahagn (I, 31). His sources are not easy to identify, but R. W. Thomson (Moses Khorenats’i, History of the Armenians, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1978, pp. 20-52) has drawn up an eloquent list of them in which Pʿawstos and the 630 version of Agathangelos hold an important place. Nonetheless, Movsēs presents much information not to be found elsewhere, starting with his adapted biblical genealogies. Pseudo-Sebēos. The Primary History attributed to Sebēos has been integrated by Thomson into his English translation of Movsēs (Moses Khorenats’i, pp. 357-68). This rather brief text contains some very ancient elements for the genealogies of kings, concerning the Parthians’ assumption of Seleucid power and their succession. It allows them a total of 573 years of reign. Eznik of Kołb. Eznik was, strictly speaking, a theologian, but his work Against the Sects should be cited because it describes aspects of the religion of the Zurvanist Sasanians. Eznik belongs to the group of the first translators since 430. The text was edited by L. Maries (Patrologia Orientalis 28, 1959, pp. 413-776). Łazar Pʿarbecʿi. Łazar, toward the end of the 5th century, was the first Armenian historian to have retold as an eyewitness the conflicts between the Armenians and Sasanians. Only the second volume of his work deals with events contemporaneous with the author. The first, representing itself as a continuation of Agathangelos and Pʿawstos, tells of the end of the Armenian Arsacids. All the events retold by Łazar form an integral part of Sasanian history. Yazdegerd II’s persecution of Christians, Armenian resistance, and the reign of Pērōz are amply described. Ełišē vardapet. Ełišē’s work, On Vardan and the Armenian War, has been critically edited by E. Tēr-Minasyan (Erevan, 1957; English translation and commentary by R. W. Thomson, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982). Although he describes the same events as Łazar, Ełišē has conceived them more as a hagiographical collection than as a history. The work, moreover, has taken the form of the earlier writings of Abraham the Confessor (Xostovanoł), translator of the collection of Persian martyrs composed by Marūthā of Māypherqāt. On Vardan is composed of seven ełanak “modes, chapters” with supplements. Ełišē has transcribed a Zurvanist manifesto attributed to Mihrnerseh, marzpān of Armenia (On Vardan 2). The replies of Joseph Hołotamecʿi show no lesser an awareness of the Mazdean theological attitudes in whose name Yazdegerd justified his religious policy. Sebēos. The historian Sebēos (Eusebius) probably took part in the council of Duin in 645, three years after the conquest of the town by the Arabs. G. V. Abgaryan’s critical edition was published in 1979 (Patmuṭʿiwn Sebeosi, Erevan). Sebēos presents himself as the conscious continuer of Łazar into the 7th century. He tells of the campaigns of Anūšīravān and Heraclius up to Moʿāwīa’s expedition toward Chalcedonia. A number of passages touch upon Iranian doctrines and customs, such as Bahrām’s letter to Mušeł sealed with salt (chap. 11, p. 77). The History of Sebēos is the best source that has reached us for the campaigns of Heraclius. Movsēs Dasxurancʿi is the presumed author of the History of the Ałuans translated into English by C. J. F. Dowsett (The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movses Dasxurançi, London, 1961). The most ancient part of this history in three volumes may probably be attributed to the catholicos Viroy (596-630), but the last hand is undoubtedly of the 11th century. Even though this compilation is mainly concerned with relating the discovery of relics and with ascribing the ecclesiastic autonomy of ancestors worthy of their titles to the epoch of the prosperity of Partav in the 7th century, it has much to tell about the invasions from the north, taking up and adapting various legendary tales about King Sanatruk and appropriating them. Movsēs presents his own opinions on the family relations of the Sasanians in Albania (II, 7), and recounts the influence of Yazdegerd II in his country (II, pp. 1-3). His literary models are obviously Movsēs Xorenacʿi and Agathangelos. Anania Širakacʿi (ca. 600-670) is a scholarly compiler who has preserved some important traditions on the Iranian calendar, which forms the basis of the Armenian year of 360 days plus five epagomenes. His works were edited by A. Abrahamian (Anania Širakacʿu Matenagrutyunə, Erevan, 1944). This list of ten Armenian historians is obviously not exhaustive. Other important writers include Yovhannēs Drasxanakertecʿi (d. 931), who left a History of Armenia arguing ecclesiastical legitimacy from the anti-Chalcedonian point of view. He alone tells of the great fire temple erected in Duin under Yazdegerd II before the moving of the Armenian episcopate to this town in the 460s. Such historians as Ṭʿouma Arcruni in the 10th century, Stepʿanos Asołik in the 11th, Aristakēs Lastivertcʿi between 989 and 1071, and Matṭʿeos Urhayecʿi between 952 and 1136 still draw occasionally on ancient historians, some of whose data they reproduce. It is in general only because of this tendency that they are of interest in connection with Iranian material. The histories of Stepʿanos Orbelian and Stepʿanos Siwnecʿi, written between 1307 and 1322, contain numerous semi-legendary data on the origins of Siwnikʿ. They are a last echo of a historical method whose first impetus had been given by Movsēs Xorenacʿi and Agathangelos. Bibliography : The works of Armenian historians have been conveniently assembled in Collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l’Arménie I, Paris, 1877; II, 1878, in which J. B. Emin gives a translation of the principal ancient chronicles. The most recent brief presentation is that of V. Inglisian, Armenische und kaukasische Sprachen, HO I, Leiden, 1963, pp. 156-249. An excellent introduction has been given in N. G. Garsoïan, “Prolegomena to a Study of the Iranian Aspect in Arsacid Armenia,” Handēs Amsoreay 90, 1976, cols. 177-234.
(M. Van Esbroeck)
vi. Armeno-Iranian Relations in the Islamic Period
Before the coming of the Saljuqs. The Arab invasions brought about a major transformation in the political life of the countries of the Near East and had a profound influence upon the relations between the peoples living there. The expansion of Islam in Iran caused a big rift between Armenia, already converted to Christianity, and Iran. During the rule of the Omayyad and ʿAbbasid caliphs, the Iranian Muslim communities were looked upon as having essentially equal rights with other member communities of the whole Islamic world, but the Armenians were considered ahl al-ḏemma, who as a community believing in monotheism and having a holy book (ahl al-Ketāb), were in accordance with Islamic law subject to Islam and had to pay a head tax or ǰezya for protection and security (ḥemāya wa amnīya). Even though they were in different legal status, both Armenians and the peoples of Iran found themselves under the yoke of a theocratic, imperialistic power which sharply conducted a policy of conquest. During the eighth and ninth centuries, successive eruptions of violence and popular rebellions within wide strata of the populace, such as the movement of the “white-robed” (the mobayyeża) in Khorasan led by al-Moqannaʿ, the Ḵorramīya movement in Azerbaijan led by Bābak, as well as the Ṭʿondrakite movement in Armenia led by Smbat of Zarehavan, with their accentuated social nuances were part of the efforts of liberation from the Arab conquerors (see Ioanissian, Dvizhenie, pp. 100, 108; Yaʿqubī, Boldān, p. 463). The Sajid amirs Moḥammad Afšīn (q.v.) and Yūsof, appointed prefects of Azerbaijan and Armenia, carried out harsh judgments against the rebels. Even though they were considered governors appointed by the caliph, yet towards the end of the ninth century and the beginning of the tenth century, they were, in fact, autonomous rulers of Azerbaijan, who suppressed the liberation movements which had begun in Armenia. There were exceptional events, specially after Caliph al-Moqtader sent a crown to Ašot II Bagratuni in 919, and honored him with the title “Šahnšah.” The amirs of Azerbaijan and he were fighting against the Byzantine incursions. In 922, near Dvin the combined forces of Ašot II and amir Subuk of Azerbaijan defeated the Byzantine troops which had invaded Armenia (see Hay žołovrdi III, p. 44). Even after that the Sajid amirs continued to maraud the southeastern regions of Armenia, subjugating Naḵǰavān and the former capital, Dvin (Ar. Dabīl), until they were stripped of their authority in 930. Conditions did not, change, even after 945 when in reality the domination of the caliphate had been put to an end in central Iran and Fārs, where the kingdom of the Daylami Buyids had been established. During this period also the kingdoms of the Bagratids and Arcrunis, having risen to power in Armenia, were in constant collision with the Rawwadid amirs, descendants of the Arab Rawwād b. Moṯannā, later Kurdicized (but see Minorsky, Studies in Caucasian History, pp. 122-23), who had conquered Azerbaijan. Mamlān (Moḥammad), son of Abu’l-Hayǰāʾ, invaded Armenia a few times, but during his last campaign in 998 in which troops from Khorasan took part, he was defeated in the plain of Bagrevand by the joint Armenian and Georgian troops led by Vahram Pahlavuni and fled (see Matṭʿēos Uṙhayecʿi, pp. 36-37; Stepʿanos Taronecʿi, pp. 268-74; Kasravī, Šahrīārān-e gomnām, pp. 162-72; Camb. Hist. Iran IV, pp. 236-37). In the following decades, particularly during the reign of Gagik I Bagratuni (990-1021), Dvin, former capital of Armenia and the southern regions (Naḵǰavān, Gołṭʿn) were not subjected to new attacks. In 1021, the mercenary Turkish soldiers of the Daylamis embarked on a raid of plunder. They were able to penetrate to the village of Nig in the province of Ararat, where they were met by Prince Vasak Pahlavuni. In the battle near the river Kʿasax, 300 of the invaders were killed, and the rest fled (see Vseobshchaya istoriya, p. 122). The military clashes, characteristic of feudal states, and the subjugating efforts and hostile attitude of Muslim rulers toward non-Muslim peoples and countries, from time to time created obstacles in the development of relations with neighboring countries, including the countries of the Iranian high plateau. Even so, the traditional economic ties by necessity persisted, conforming to the demands of the time. The sources testify particularly about close commercial relations. The information about commercial goods exported from Armenia given by Ebn al-Aṯīr, Ebn Ḥawqal, Ḥodūd al-ʿālam, and other original sources, confirms the fact that the traffic of caravans along the traditional routes from Iran through Armenia continued. From the farther countries of the Orient—Central Asia, India, China—as well as from various regions of Iran, the trading caravans passed through Tabrīz, entered Armenia and from there were linked with the markets on the Black Sea and the Mediterranean countries of Europe. On the return trip, the merchants took with them farm and handicraft goods produced in Armenia. In their turn, the Armenian traders brought indigenous products through Iran via Khorasan to Central Asia, China, and India (see Bartol’d, Khudud al-Alem, fols. 32a-33a; Svedeniya arabskikh pisateleĭ, p. 92). Under the Saljuqs. Beginning with the 1040s, when following the invasions of Toḡrïl Beg, the domination of Saljuq Turks was established in Iran and the greater part of Armenia, the relations of Armenia with Iran continued to develop, though on mostly non-equitable terms. Although the conquest-seeking Saljuq rulers and their army were Turkish, yet the administrative, financial, and cultural life of their empire developed entirely in the Iranian tradition. Until the battle of Malāzgerd (Manzikert) in 1071, in which Alp Arslān inflicted a crushing defeat upon the armies of the Byzantine emperor Diogenes Romanus and extended the domination of the Saljuqs as far as the provinces of Asia Minor, in Armenia the domination of the Saljuqs had had the nature of frequent incursions; after that event it became a stable domination, inasmuch as by then the Bagratid Kingdom of Ani and the Arcruni Kingdom of Vaspurakan were eliminated as a consequence of the deceitful policy and continuous attacks of the Byzantine emperors. The Saljuq empire during the times of Jalāl-al-dīn Malekšāh (r.465-85/1072-92) reached its highest degree of development, thanks to the wise policy conducted by Ḵᵛāǰa Neẓām al-Molk, the Persian grand vizier. The Saljuq rulers, lacking tried functionaries, were forced to depend upon their co-religionist Persians for the administrative links of the state, and the Persians governed the country in the traditions of the Iranian state. Persian was the state language. At the royal court, Persian language and literature flourished, talented writers and scholars were discovered, all of which gave impetus to the cultural life of the country. But in Armenia, no such relations existed. After 1072, in different regions of Armenia, such as Ani, Kars, Karin, Erznka, and elsewhere, the minor officials under the Saljuq military leaders were Persians, who governed the country in identical traditions, having as their guideline the principles of the šarīʿa in dealing with non-Muslim subjects. This condition became more accentuated specially during the period of the disintegration of the Saljuq empire, when the atabegs who had assumed great power in border districts, became autonomous. The Danishmandids ruled in Lesser Armenia and Cappadocia 1005-06. Further in the west, in 1077, the Saljuq sultanate of Rum was established. From 1100, in the center of Xlaṭʿ (Aḵlaṭ) in the western part of Greater Armenia, the Sukmanids ruled, calling themselves “Šāh-e Arman” (see Hay žołovrdi IV, chap. 28). The representatives of Armenian feudalism, either deprived of political power or subjugated, were able to rebel against the conquerors from time to time. That struggle became more intensified when the strengthened Christian Georgia came out victorious in the fights against the surrounding emirates. Under the leadership of the Armenian generals Zakʿarē and Ivanē, who had assumed the high command of the Georgian Army, violent battles were being fought in the second half of the twelfth century against the amirs settled in Ani, Ganǰa, Dvin, and against the Šah-Armans ruling in Xlaʿ. In 1162, eastern Armenia was attacked by the atabeg Īldegoz of Azerbaijan. In 1170, with a new invasion, the Armenian Kingdom of Siunikʿ was terminated. The Armeno-Georgian armies, challenged by the troops of the Azerbaijan atabegs and the emirate of Ganǰa were defeated in the great battle of 1196, and a few years later the Zakʿarids liberated the capital Dvin (see Vracʿ ałbyurnerə, p. 34). In the first decade of the 13th century, the Armeno-Georgian military forces won new victories, challenging both the amirs of Xlaṭʿ and the sultan of Ardabīl, who had embarked upon a marauding raid toward Ani. They occupied the city of Ardabīl. During 1207-08, the domination of the Šah-Armans was eliminated. The Ayyubids came to power, with a more friendly attitude held vis-à-vis the Armeno-Georgian principalities. During 1210-11, the Armeno-Georgian troops, having liberated the whole of eastern Armenia and the larger part of central Armenia, were waging victorious fights against the Īldegoz atabegs of Azerbaijan (see Hay žołovrdi IV, chap. 31, par. 2). The Mongols and the Timurids. This situation lasted until the 1220s when the Mongol invasions began. The countries of Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr and Khorasan, subject to the Ḵᵛārazmšāhs were seized, pillaged, and ruined. The Mongol hordes leveled the flourishing cities and the artistic culture which over the centuries had reached a high level of development. Jalāl-al-dīn, son of the defeated Ḵᵛārazmšāh Sultan Moḥammad, fled to the west, and assembling under his banner a large number of soldiers, invaded Azerbaijan, Šervān, and Armenia (1225-30), spreading ruin in the occupied areas (Nasavī, Sīrat-e Jalāl-al-dīn, pp. 142-48, 150-51, 194ff.; Jovaynī, II, pp. 158-80). These destructive raids dealt a heavy blow to economy and capability of resistance, disorganizing the armed forces and facilitating further the invasion of the Mongol hordes into Azerbaijan, Armenia, Šervān, and eventually Georgia. These invasions were not mere military conquests; moving with the armies were entire nomadic, Turkish-speaking tribes, in migrations which became fateful not only because the foreign Turkish-speaking element established itself permanently in Azerbaijan and Armenia, but also because it spread that language in the northwestern areas of Iran, thereby creating an ethnic barrier between Armenia and Persian-speaking Iran. The penetration of Oḡūz and other Turkish tribes into the Iranian plateau, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, brought about major changes in the ethnic structure of the population of those countries. The mass movements of the population received new impetus with the conquest of Azerbaijan, eastern Armenia, and Šervān by No(Nōyān) and Sübedei (Sobtāy) Bahādor, generals of Jengiz Khan. A little later, in 1236, when Jūrmāḡūn Noyin occupied eastern Georgia, the greater part of eastern Armenia was joined to it, forming the so-called Vilayet (welāyat) of Gurjistan. Meanwhile and during the following decades, numerous nomadic Mongol and Turkmen fighting tribes penetrated into Azerbaijan and Armenia and settled permanently in regions which with their rich pastureland and nearby winter shelters were favorable for cattle raising. After 1258, when Hūlāgū (Hülegü) Khan founded the eastern Il-khanate which included the whole of Iran as well as the major part of Armenia and Georgia, a new unrestrained regime of systematic pillage and oppression was imposed on the peoples of those countries, which led to the massive annihilation of production capacity and the destruction of economic life (see Ḥamdallāh Qazvīnī, Nozhat al-qolūb, pp. 117-19). After the attack by Baiǰu Noyin in 1242, the Vilayet of “Arman” was created in the area of the former domains of the Šah-Armans, and thus in the major part of the entire historic Armenia the domination of the Mongols was established and then it was incorporated within the Il-khanid state. Later (1249), there were certain attempts at shaking off the Mongol yoke, but they were brutally suppressed by the conquerors. However, Prince Smbat of the Orbelid feudal dynasty ruling in the province of Siwnikʿ in southeastern Armenia, had been able to obtain certain rights from the great khan Möngke (Mangū Qāʾān) preserved later on by Hūlāgū Khan and thereafter. Thanks to this feudal immunity, there existed in that part of Armenia relatively bearable conditions which reflected in the economic and cultural life. More favorable were the repeated visits in Qara Qorum (1253-56) of Heṭʿum (Ḥātem) I, King of Cilicia. Thus, the great Khan recognized the sovereignty of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia and promised to support it as an ally in the struggle waged by the Cilician state against the incursions of the surrounding Muslim principalities (see Kirakos Ganjakecʿi, p. 285). During the Mongol domination until the time of Ḡāzān Khan, while the Mongols had not accepted Islam as their religion, there was no discriminatory treatment of Christians living within the boundaries of the state. Even wide latitude was given to the activities of papal missionaries, who had penetrated the Il-khanid court. It was noted above that during this period the Il-khanid state came forward as an ally of the Cilician Armenian kingdom. In 1259-61, rebellions took place against the Il-khanid yoke, particularly in eastern Armenia. These were suppressed by the subjugators. Rebelling against Hūlāgū was Zakʿaria the amir-captain, who eventually was captured and executed. A likewise tragic end befell Ḥasan Jalāl, prince of Xačʿēn (see Kirakos Ganjakecʿi, p. 393). These armed clashes were followed by diplomatic initiatives aiming at creating trust in order to grab certain permissions from Hūlāgū Khan and to restore the former autonomous rights of the Armenian feudal lords. In 1264, Vardan Vardapet Arevelcʿi, a great scholar, spiritual and community agent of his time, went to Hūlāgū trying to influence the Mongol ruler with his authority (see Vseobshchaya istoriya, pp. 190-97). During the governorship of Arḡūn Āqā (q.v.) in 1273, there was a general census and registration of taxable objects. As a consequence, the duties and taxes collected from the population were multiplied, and in the final decades of the century, the condition of the people became increasingly burdensome. Nowrūz, son of Arḡūn Āqā, who had occupied the position of chief amir of the Il-khanate, started new persecutions against Armenian and Georgian feudal lords and princes. Against these pressures, in the beginning of the 1290s rebellions once again broke out, which were brutally suppressed in the course of the punitive raids of Qutluḡšāh, commander of the troops of Ḡāzān Khan. Northern Armenia and eastern Georgia were ruined and plundered, and when Ḡāzān Khan accepted Islam (1295), strong persecutions were initiated against the Armenians, carried out pointedly in Naḵǰavān and nearby areas. Once again the poll tax ǰezya was imposed on the Armenian population (see Hay žołovrdi IV, chap. 37, pars. l, 2). The enlightened vizier Ḵᵛāǰa Rašīd-al-dīn Fażlallāh counseled Ḡāzān Khan to embark upon reforms, but these were unable to prevent the downfall of the Il-khanid state, which after Ḡāzān Khan experienced an acute crisis and disintegrated completely. From the times of the Il-khan Abū Saʿīd (717-36/1316-35), centrifugal actions of local influential Mongol rulers become visible, reaching major proportions in 1335-40 during the dissensions concerning the succession (see ibid., par. 2). During these years of confusion in certain Armenian provinces, the feudal principalities were partially revived, particularly the Orbelids of Siwnikʿ and their vassals the Prošians, within whose boundaries comparatively favorable conditions were created for the development of Armenian academic life, literature, and medieval science. In those years (1282), the famous university of Glajor was founded, which extended its function to the other spiritual and cultural institutions of the province of Siwnikʿ, e.g., the monasteries of Taṭʿev, Hermon, Aprakunis, and Vorotni and elsewhere (see Arevšatyan and Maṭʿevosyan, pp. 45-52). During the period of anarchy which prevailed in the Il-khanid state in 1330 and the following years, the struggle between the Chobanid and Jalayerid amirs ended in the 40s with the victory of the Chobanid Ḥasan(-e) Kūček, adversary of the Jalayerid Ḥasan(-e) Bozorg. The victor took under his domination northern Iran, Persian Iraq, Azerbaijan, and almost all of Armenia. Malek Ašraf, successor of Ḥasan Kūček, subjected the peoples under his rule to plunder and oppression. His domination was put to an end with the invasion of Janï-beg Khan of the Golden Horde and the capture of Tabrīz, after which once again the Jalayerids rose in power, and in 1358 Ḥasan Bozorg’s son Sultan Oways established his rule at Tabrīz (see Hay žołovrdi I, chap. 1). The military prop of all these Turkish-Mongol rulers aiming at a pan-Iranian domination was the nomadic, mostly Turkish-speaking population settled in Azerbaijan and Armenia. By the second half of the 14th century, a violent struggle for political superiority had spread within this element, but it was interrupted temporarily during the years of Tamerlane. After the final invasion and the defeat and capture near Angora of the Ottoman Sultan Bāyażīd, Tamerlane had appointed his son Mīrānšāh as governor of the western principalities. But after Tamerlane’s death in 1405, the power-seeking nomadic amirs everywhere rebelled against Mīrānšāh. The Qara Qoyunlū Qara Yūsof, who had been chased by Tamerlane and had taken refuge in Egypt, returned and reassembling the armed forces of tribes subject to him, was able to reoccupy Tabrīz and extend his rule over the whole of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and northern Mesopotamia (see Ṭʿovma Mecopʿecʿi, Patmuṭʿiwn, pp. 70-73). In 1420, Qara Yūsof died, and Šāhroḵ who had embarked on a punitive campaign against him defeated his son Eskandar, who nevertheless succeeded in repossessing his rule. Eskandar was attempting to curb the separatist operations of the local minor Turkmen and Kurdish principalities, and was promoting and sponsoring individual representatives of Armenian feudalism. By this he aroused discontent against himself and was finally defeated by Šāhroḵ. Then he had a friction with his brother Jahānšāh, appointed by Šāhroḵ. Beaten, Eskandar took refuge in the fort of Erenǰak where he was assassinated by his own son. For a while, Jahānšāh accepted Šāhroḵ’s hegemony and settled in Tabrīz. Then, taking advantage of the weakening of the Timurids, he extended the boundaries of his domain to Khorasan and Fārs. The years of Jahānšāh’s rule (1435-68) may be viewed as a relatively stable period of time. Although in the southern and western regions of Armenia the internal conflicts continued, yet for a while the external invasions had ceased, and the economic life could develop some. Through the efforts of Armenian lay and clerical agents in 1441, the central authority of the Armenian church, the See of the Catholicate of all Armenians, was moved from Cilicia where it had been since 1149, and reestablished at the monastery of Echmiadzin, its foundation place in the province of Ararat in central Armenia. (See Ṭʿovma Mecopʿecʿi, Yišatakaran, pp. 62-72). This event had great significance, since the Armenian church emerged as the only national authority whose rights were recognized by the ruling Muslim powers. As a pan-Armenian center, the patriarchal See would prepare the ground for the country’s independence, establishing cultural and idealistic ties between Armenian colonies in other countries, by founding educational centers and in linking them through traditions. The dispute which was going on between the Qara Qoyunlū and Āq Qoyunlū ended in 1468 with the victory of Uzun Ḥasan (q.v.) over Jahānšāh and the latter’s assassination. Thereupon Uzun Ḥasan occupied Tabrīz and extended his rule to all the countries subjugated by Jahānšāh. In the early period of the rule of the Āq Qoyunlū, particularly during the days of Uzun Ḥasan (r. 857-82/1453-78), attempts were made to introduce control over state finances and to normalize the duties and taxes collected from the populace. Uzun Ḥasan formed a rule-book, known as “Qānun-nāma-ye Ḥasan Pādešāh,” which was also put to use in subsequent centuries. But because of the many small feudal lordships it was impossible to secure a central authority and supervision of taxes and state revenues. After Uzun Ḥasan, specially during the reign of Yaʿqūb Pādešāh (883-96/1478-90) the conditions of the last remnants of Armenian feudalism deteriorated, when everywhere the “Bayt al-mālī” was put into effect. Persecutions and forced apostasies became intensified, the lands of the Armenian feudal lords were confiscated (see Pʿapʿazyan, Beytʿ-ul-mali, pp. 193-203), and in the course of 9th/15th century the Armenian feudal system lost all its political force. However stubborn their resistance, many of the feudal chiefs, for the sake of maintaining their property rights, finally gave up and embraced Islam. On the other hand, those who at the cost of large material sacrifices attempted to keep their landownership, were gradually reduced to the state of minor property owners or were driven out of the ranks of landowning feudal chiefs and went into trade and commerce (see ibid.). Also, since monastic landownership was tolerated, many of the last representatives of the Armenian feudal families, to save the final remnants of their powers, “donated” them to the monasteries and, taking religious vows, attempted to preserve their rights over those properties and to maintain their dominating position vis-à-vis the Armenian working class. The Safavids and their successors. On the ruins of the state of the Āq Qoyunlū rose the Safavid state, founded by Shah Esmāʿīl I (r. 907-30/1501-24), descendant of the famous Sufi Shaikh Ṣafī-al-dīn of Ardabīl. The founders of this new state were leaders of a militant Sufi order. Their military consisted of Shiʿite Turkmen tribes, yet their semi-theocratic state, officially named “State of the Qezelbāš” (Dawlat-e Qezelbāš), was called to regenerate the traditions of Iran and to contribute to the development of a feudal monarchy (Savory, Iran under the Safavids, pp. 1-26). From the outset opposing Ottoman Turkey and unifying under the banner of Shiʿism his military forces of Turkish-speaking nomads wandering in Azerbaijan and Armenia and declaring themselves as qezelbāš or šāhsevan, Shah Esmāʿīl, had strong collisions with the Ottoman empire which by that time had reached the zenith of its might. These conflicts continued with only brief intermissions during the time of his successors, almost during the entire 10th/16th century. These ruinous wars, whose main arena was Armenia, seemed to be of dogmatic-religious nature, yet, in reality, they had political, strategic, and economic reasons, the chief among them being the Ottomans’ intention to conquer Transcaucasia, Dagestan (Dāḡestān) and Azerbaijan and to control the trade routes through Armenia and Azerbaijan and the main centers of silk production. The constant movements of hundreds of thousands of armed fighters and the bloody clashes of the opposing armies devastated the central provinces of the country. The Armenian population was subjected to plunder and slavery. Mass flight and emigration to foreign countries grew to large proportions. In these confused and critical times, the Muslim chieftains in Armenia intensified their pressure on the remnants of Armenian feudalism and their attempts of assimilation by forced apostasy. During the days of the more fanatic rulers the so-called “Jaʿfarī” (i.e., of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādeq) law was put to wider use, whereby an Armenian accepting Islam was able to claim as his alone the entire wealth of his parents (see Persidskie dokumenty, document no. 16). The external invasions ceased partially only after 1590, when the Safavid Shah Abbās I (r. 996-1038/1588-1629), enthroned two years earlier, was forced to sign a peace agreement of heavy conditions with Sultan Moḥammad III, ceding to him Armenia, the whole of Transcaucasia and Azerbaijan. But after settling his account with the Uzbek amirs who had invaded Khorasan, he reorganized his army with advanced weaponry and in 1603 attacked in order to take back these lands, where the 15-year Turkish domination had created severe discontent within all levels of the population. The new redistributions and dispositions of the Ottoman authorities regarding lands and feudal possessions fostered rebellion of the native feudal elements, and many Armenian, Georgian, and Muslim princes took refuge in Iran, receiving a cordial welcome from Shah ʿAbbās. The working population was subjected to unrestrained plunder and oppression by the authorities assigned by the Ottomans, and many hoped that the new campaign started by the shah would free them from that heavy yoke (see Arakel Davrizhetsi, Kniga istoriĭ, pp. 46-47). The Safavid army captured Tabrīz, Naḵǰavān and Erevan (Īravān) and extended its incursion to Ganǰa. It also invaded central Armenia, approaching Erzerum. But when news was received that the Ottoman army had already reached Mūš and was preparing to move in the direction of Erevan, the shah decided to avoid battle, and ordered retreat by destroying and depopulating the villages and towns on their way (see ibid., chap. 4). In the course of its history of many centuries, the Armenian people had not yet been subjected to such a major disaster. Central Armenia in its entirety was in disarray. Detachments of qezelbāš soldiers stormed the whole countryside, leaving behind everything totally devastated. Immense masses were being driven from all directions to the Ararat plain to be sent from there to the steppes of central Iran. The strategic aim of this forced deportation was to depopulate the area which the adversary’s army had to traverse. Yet, at the same time the shah was thinking of relocating this large multitude of refugees in the wide areas around his capital and to promote agriculture, crafts, and trade in the central provinces of the country. For this reason he showed particular eagerness in deporting the population of Julfa (Jolfā), the thriving commercial city on the banks of the Aras river. According to contemporary testimony, the number of deported from this area was in excess of 300,000; the same sources, however, state that in mountainous areas, the population of certain villages succeeded in hiding in the rifts of the mountains and thus avoided the forced exodus (see ibid., p. 69; Eskandar Beg, II, pp. 643-44, 654-57, 665-66; Falsafī, Šāh ʿAbbās III, pp. 201ff]. The relocation of the huge Armenian colony and the founding of large Armenian populated towns and of the Armenian city of New Julfa next to the capital resulted in major changes in Armeno-Iranian relations. From the beginning of the 11th/17th century, the segment of the Armenian nation which remained under Safavid rule, both on its native soil and in its colonies formed on Iranian soil, entered into close relationships with the Safavid state and with political, communal, administrative, and economic circles of Iran, on the whole playing an important role in the country’s life, particularly in its economy. The role of Armenian commercial capital in the country’s internal and especially in its external trade was great. Armenian commerce, by then widely recognized, received the special attention of Shah ʿAbbās and enjoyed the patronage of government authorities. Thus, within a short period of time, It was able to concentrate in its hands the lucrative and productive business of the exportation of silk. Accumulating great material potential, it even succeeded in gaining control of certain institutions which directed the finances of the state (see Savory, Iran under the Safavids, pp. 174-75, 198). High-standing Armenian businessmen were entrusted with the supervision of currency, gold, precious metals, and wealth brought in from abroad, performing, as it were, banking functions. This circumstance definitely earned them the confidence of the Safavid shahs, who often granted the Armenian businessmen the rights of royal merchants—tāǰer-e ḵāṣṣa-ye šarīfa—and gave them diplomatic assignments in the Safavid state’s political and economic dealings with Europe and Russia (see Kukanova, pp. 67-69). The fighting which began with Shah ʿAbbās’ invasion did not end during his reign; it continued with fluctuating success and came to an end only after his death (1038/1629) during the days of his successor Shah Ṣafī, who signed a peace agreement in 1639. By this agreement, the boundaries between the two states which were drawn by the treaty of Amasia in 962/1555 (q.v.), were reconfirmed with minor changes. In accordance with this, in Armenia the Perso-Ottoman boundary began from the mountains of Javaxkʿ, and passing along the Axuryan river, the range of the Armenian mountains, the western slopes of Mt Ararat and along the Vaspurakan mountains joined the Zagros mountains. The Safavid state included within its boundaries the totality of the historic Armenian provinces of Siwnikʿ, Arcʿax, Utikʿ, Pʿaytakaran, and Persarmenia and also the eastern countries of Ararat, Gugarkʿ, and Vaspurakan. According to the new administrative division, these provinces were under the authority of the beglerbegs of Čʿuxur-Sad, Qarabāḡ, and Azerbaijan (see Taḏkerat al-molūk, pp. 100-02). The peace following 1639 lasted eighty years and had a definite significance for the development of the peoples of the two countries, particularly for those who lived within Safavid Iran’s boundaries. The sources testify to the brisk growth of economic life noticed everywhere during the second half of the 11th/17th century, particularly during Shah ʿAbbās II’s reign, 1052-77/1642-67. There was a noticeable resurgence also in monastic-scholastic life. Famous scholars and cultural workers came on the scene. Monasteries and churches were renovated and restored. Secular and church architecture entered a new stage of development (see Arakel Davrizhetsi, Kniga istoriĭ, chaps. 24-26). But, as the century neared its end, the discrimination and repressions aimed at assimilation instigated by the Muslim clerics and the unruly actions of military provincial chiefs, khans, and their functionaries gradually intensified, oppressing and robbing the populace and persecuting the Armenian clergy. The agitation for liberation from foreign yoke which had started among the circles of high-echelon Armenian secular and clerical leaders in the sixteenth century, received new impetus near the end of the seventeenth century. In 1677, with the leadership of Catholicos Yakob of Julfa, a secret meeting was held in Echmiadzin attended by representatives of the clergy, the secular aristocracy, and of the meliks (secular lords) of Siwnikʿ and Arcʿax. The assembly decided to send a delegation to Rome and hoped that by expressing obedience to the Pope they would receive armed assistance to achieve the task of liberation. Catholicos Yakob crossed into Georgia in secret, conducted negotiations with the lay and clerical leaders of Georgia and then traveled to Constantinople with his colleagues, intending to depart for Rome from there to request help from the Pope. But the 82-year old catholicos fell sick at Constantinople in 1680 and died. Of his fellow travelers, only Israel Ori, scion of an Armenian melik family, for about two decades conducted unproductive negotiations with a number of Western governments, and finally became convinced that their only hope was Russia which was getting stronger. In 1701, Ori traveled to Moscow with the Archimandrite Minas Tigranean, and presented to Peter the Great his plan for the liberation of Armenia, with the help of Russia, by means of the military forces of the meliks of Siwnikʿ and Arcʿax. The implementation of that plan was put off until the 1720s, during which time Ori went to Isfahan as ambassador of Russia, to survey the internal situation of the country, and upon his return he died in 1711 (see Persidskie dokumenty, docs. 66-138). During the time of Shah Sultan Ḥosayn (r. 1105-35/1694-1722) the Safavid state experienced a rapid decline. In 1722, the Afghan Maḥmūd son of Mīr Ways seized Isfahan, putting an end to the 200-year Safavid kingdom. Meanwhile, in the provinces of Arcʿax and Siwnikʿ in eastern Armenia (Qarabāḡ and Zangezūr), armed strife spread between rebelling Armenian soldiers and local khans and Turkish-speaking nomadic feudal lords seeking self determination in the face of anarchy. The Armenians and the Georgians were hoping that the Russian army which was moving southward would come to their assistance, but the Russians limited themselves to occupying the areas near the shores of the Caspian Sea and by the treaty concluded at Constantinople in 1724, agreed not to oppose the Turkish occupation of the northwestern provinces of Iran. Having only recently shaken off the yoke of the qezelbāš, the Armenian people reengaged in a struggle for liberation, this time against Ottoman occupation troops. The armed Armenian forces waged heroic battles on the outskirts of Erevan, in Qarabāḡ, in the mountainous regions of Siwnikʿ and elsewhere. Daviṭʿ Beg, leader of the liberation battles being waged in Siwnikʿ, defeated the Ottoman troops and reached the banks of the Aras. He linked with Shah Ṭahmāsp II who was conducting the war against the Ottomans in Azerbaijan. Shah Ṭahmāsp by special edict recognized the dominion of Daviṭʿ Beg over the province of Siwnikʿ (see Hay žołovrdi IV, pt. 1, chap. 3, pars. 3-6). But the figure who won general sympathy and recognition in the fight was Nāder-qolī, the future Nāder Shah, who after capturing Isfahan and chasing the Afghans out of the country, also, after securing the departure of the Russians from the shores of the Caspian Sea, advanced in the direction of Azerbaijan with the purpose of expelling the Ottomans from the country. After the Russo-Iranian agreement signed at Rašt in 1732, the Armenians armed in Ararat, Siwnikʿ, and Arcʿax, including the Armenian meliks and the clergy, were proving themselves allies of Nāder. Nāder’s entry into Transcaucasia and the departure of the Russians from the near-Caspian provinces were creating real bases for military-political cooperation between Armenians and Iranians (see ibid., par. 8). Professing loyalty to Nāder, the Armenian meliks took part in the capture of Ganǰa, where the Russian artillery came to Nāder’s aid. Here the Armenian detachments were consolidated and grew in numbers, and when Nāder moved towards Kars (Qārṣ) to face the main Turkish forces, the detachments of the meliks, under the leadership of Melik Yegan, were accompanying him everywhere. The decisive battle against the main Turkish forces dispatched from Constantinople was fought on 8 July 1735 in the plain of Ełuard located north of Erevan. Here, not only the Armenian military units commanded by Melik Yegan were fighting against the Turks, but also, according to the historian Mīrzā Moḥammad Mahdī Khan’s testimony, armed detachments of the surrounding Armenian villages gave destructive blows to the Turks from the rear. From one side, the attacking Persian infantry and cavalry and from the other side the armed Armenian peasantry totally destroyed the panic-stricken enemy. The Turks had to beg for conciliation, promising to surrender the forts of Ganǰa, Tiflis, and Erevan and to withdraw their troops from Transcaucasia (Lockhart, Nadir Shah, pp. 84ff.). After these events, Nāder was obligated to recognize the rights of the Armenian people. He bestowed honors upon Catholicos Abraham the Cretan, and reinstituted by special edicts the property rights of Echmiadzin and granted privileges to the catholicos. He instructed the new beglerbeg of Erevan to always consult with the catholicos in the matter of governing the land, rather than with the qezelbāš chiefs (see Abraam Kretatsi, Povestvovanie, p. 200). He confirmed also the rights of the Armenian meliks of Arcʿax, creating a self governing administrative unit composed of five maḥāls of the mountainous region of Armenia, the unit being called maḥāl-e Ḵamsa, and appointed Melik Yegan as khan and beglerbeg of that territory. In the spring of the following year after the enthronement held in the plain of Moḡān he granted new positions to the Armenian meliks of Gełarkunikʿ and Erevan. However, he displaced a large number of the Armenian population and nomadic tribes and took them with him to Khorasan (see ibid., p. 209). All this was being done to win over the upper levels of Armenian leadership and to put an end to the Russian orientation of the Armenians. Very soon, it became clear to the Armenian ruling circles that all this was temporary. Beginning in 1746, a new census of the taxpaying population and of arable lands was held and harsher laws for the collection of taxes were put into effect. The sources give testimony that the tax collection was executed in multiple rates. After Nāder’s death (1160/1747) anarchy developed, and once again the khans and beglerbegs in Armenia who craved for power began to stir. Large masses of Turkish-speaking nomads exiled by Nāder to Khorasan returned, and from among those the chieftains of the Javānšīr tribe succeeded in exploiting the dissension within the Armenian meliks and took charge of their fortifications, thus terminating the Armenian autonomy of Ḵamsa (see Hay žołovrdi IV, pt. 1, chap. 4). During the 1760s, particularly during the reign of Empress Catherine II (1762-96) when Russia through new conquests was approaching Transcaucasia, both Georgia’s and Armenia’s lay and spiritual leaders again began to appeal to the Russian court, proposing new plans for placing Georgia and Armenia under the patronage of Russia. The Echmiadzin catholicoi Yakob of Šamax and Simeon of Erevan in 1760 and 1766 appealed to the empress requesting help. In 1768, she issued a special edict to provide help to the Armenians in freeing themselves from the Muslim yoke. In 1780, the famous Russian general Suvorov left for Astrakhan to prepare for the campaign directed at Transcaucasia. A preliminary plan for the restoration of an Armenian state under Russia’s patronage was prepared. However, the czar’s court was obliged to postpone the execution of that plan due to the complicated political and military circumstances of the end of the eighteenth century. In 1783, King Erekli (Herakl) II of Georgia, signed an agreement with Catherine II, whereby Georgia was to enter under Russia’s patronage, while the latter assumed the obligation of defending Georgia against foreign enemies. These developments filled the Armenians, too, with new hopes, but in 1796, Āqā Moḥammad Khan (q.v.), who had founded a new centralized state (see ibid., pt. 1, chap. 5), led a punitive expedition into Transcaucasia which culminated in the sack of Tiflis and the massacre of a large number of its population. However, with the death of Āqā Moḥammad Khan and the ascension of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah in 1212/1779, the Armeno-Iranian relationship entered an entirely new phase (see below). Bibliography : In Armenian: Hay žałovrdi patmuṭʿyun (History of the Armenian people) III-IV, Erevan, 1972-76. Haykakan Sovetakan Hanragitaran (Armenian Soviet Encyclopaedia) 1-10, Erevan, 1974-83. Vracʿ ałbyurnerə Hayastani ew hayeri masin (Georgian sources on Armenia and the Armenians) II, tr. L. Melikʿseṭʿbeki, Erevan, 1934. A. Alpōyačean, Patmuṭʿiwn hay gałtakanuṭʿean (History of Armenian diaspora communities) III, Cairo, 1961. Aṙakʿel Dawrižecʿi (Arakʿel of Tabriz), Girkʿ patmuṭʿeancʿ (Book of histories), Vałaršapat, 1896; Russ. tr. L. A. Khanlaryan, Kniga istoriĭ, Moscow, 1973. S. V. Boṙnazyan, Hayastanə ew Selǰuknerə XI-XII dd. (Armenia and the Saljuqs, 11th-12th centuries), Erevan, 1980. B. L. Čʿugazyan, Hay-iranakan grakan aṙṇčuṭʿyuvnner V-XVIII dd. (Armeno-Iranian literary relations, 5th-18th centuries), Erevan, 1963. S. T. Gasparyan, Spʿyuṙkʿa-hay gałṭʿōǰaxnern aysor (Armenian diaspora centers today), Erevan, 1962. N. Goroyan, Parskastani hayerə (The Armenians of Iran), Tehran, 1968. Kirakos Ganjakecʿi, Patmuṭʿiwn Hayocʿ (History of the Armenians, 13th century), ed. K. A. Melikʿ-Ōhanǰanyan, Erevan, 1961. Leo, Erkeri žołovacu (Collected works) II-III, Erevan, 1967-73. H. Manandyan, Kʿnnakan tesuṭʿyun hay žołovrdi patmuṭʿyan (Critical examination of the history of the Armenian people): Selǰukyan šrǰanicʿ miṇčʿew Sefyanneri hastatumə Iranum XI-XV dd. (From the Saljuq period to the establishment of the Safavids in Iran, 11th-15th centuries), in Erker (Works) III, Erevan, 1977. Matṭʿeos Uṙhayecʿi (Matthew of Edessa), Žamanakagruṭʿiwn (Chronology, 952-1136), Vałaršapat, 1898 (Jerusalem, 1869). H. Pʿapʿazyan, “Sefyan Irani asimilyatorakan kʿałakʿanuṭʿyan harcʿi šurǰə” (On the question of the assimilationist policy of Safavid Iran), Banber Matenadarani 3, Erevan, 1956. Idem, “Beyṭʿ-ul-mali institutə ew hay Feodalneri hołeri bṙnagravumnerə 15-rd d.” (The institution of bayt-al-mālī and the seizures of the lands of Armenian feudal lords in the 15th cent.), Patmabanasirakan Handes, 1958, 2. Stepʿanos Taronecʿi (Stephen Asołik of Tarōn), Patmuṭʿiwn tiezarakan (Universal history), St. Petersburg, 1885. Ṭʿovma Mecopʿecʿi Patmuṭʿiwn Lank ṭʿemuray ew yaǰordacʿ iwrocʿ (History of Tamerlane and his successors), Paris, 1960. Idem, Yišatakaran, Tiflis, 1892. In Russian: Abraam Kretatsi, Povestvovanie, tr. and ed. N. K. Korganyan, Erevan, 1973. S. S. Arevshatyan and A. S. Matevosyan, Gladzorskiĭ universitet tsentr prosveshcheniya srednevekovoĭ Armenii, Erevan, 1984. Armyano-russkie otnosheniya v pervoĭ treti XVIII veka II/1, Erevan, 1964. V. V. Bartol’d, Khudud al-Alem (Ḥodūd al-ʿālam), rukopis’ Tumanskogo, Leningrad, 1930. S. T. Eremyan, Kul’tura rannefeodal’noĭ Armenii IV-VII vv., Erevan, 1980. A. G. Ioannisyan, “Dvizhenie tondrakidov v Armenii,” Voprosy Istorii 10, 1954. N. G. Kukanova, Ocherki po istorii russko-armyanskikh torgovykh otnosheniĭ v XVII-pervoĭ polovine XIX veka, Saransk, 1977. Persidskie dokumenty Matenadarana. Ukazy, pt. 2, ed. A. D. Papazyan, Erevan, 1956. Svedeniya arabskikh pisateleĭ o Kavkaze, Armenii i Azerbaidzhane, Sbornik materialov dlya opisaniya mestnosteĭ i plemyon Kavkaza 38, Tiflis, 1903. A. N. Ter-Gevondyan, Armeniya i Arabskiĭ khalifat, Erevan, 1977. Vseobshchaya istoriya Vardana Velikogo, tr. H. Emin, Moscow, 1861. In other languages: Abraham Kretatsi, tr. M. F. Brosset, L’histoire des événements sous le règne de Nadir Chah, Collection d’historiens armeniens II, St. Petersburg, 1874-76. N. Falsafī, Zendagānī-e Šāh ʿAbbās-e Awwal, 4 vols., Tehran, 1334-46 Š./1955-67. A. Kasravī, Šahrīārān-e gomnām, Tehran, 1335 Š./1956. L. Lockhart, Nadir Shah, repr. New York, 1973. V. Minorsky, Studies in Caucasian History, Cambridge, 1953. Ḥamdallāh Qazvīnī, Nozhat al-qolūb, Tehran, 1336 Š./1958. R. Savory, Iran under the Safavids, Cambridge, 1980. Šehāb-al-dīn Moḥammad Nasavī, Sīrat-e Jalāl-al-dīn, ed. M. Mīnovī, Tehran, 1344 Š./1965.
(H. Papazian)
Armeno-Iranian relations under the Qajars up to the conclusion of the Treaty of Torkamāṇčāy. The fall of the Safavids and the Russian invasion of Transcaucasia inspired the Christian population of the region to seek emancipation from Iran. A number of Armenian and Georgian leaders believed the numerous promises of Peter the Great and began to dream of autonomy under the protection of the Russian empire. As the eighteenth century progressed the Armenians and Georgians continued to look to Russia, the only Christian power in the region, for their eventual emancipation. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century they both received assurances from Catherine the Great, who continued Peter’s expansionist policy. Although a minority, the cooperation of Transcaucasia’s Armenian population figured largely in the Russian plan. The Russians hoped that the Armenian population, together with the Georgians (to whom Russia had granted protection by the Treaty of Georgievsk in 1783) would rise up against their Muslim “overlords” and aid their Christian “liberators” in annexing Transcaucasia. A number of promises and guarantees were extended to the leaders of both peoples. Catherine’s political offensive in Transcaucasia coincided with the rise of the Qajars and the speedy reunification of Iran under Āqā Moḥammad Khan (r. 1193-1212/1779-97). The Russian overtures in Transcaucasia angered Āqā Moḥammad Khan (q.v.), who planned to re-create the Safavid empire and who considered Transcaucasia, not only part of Iran, but a part of the ancestral Qajar tribal domains, granted to them by the Safavids. He did not waste time on political maneuvers, but instead, invaded the region, blinded or beheaded disloyal governors and officials, and sacked Tiflis, the center of Georgia in 1796. His infamous massacre of Armenians and Georgians in that city (one of whose victims was the great Armenian bard Sayat Nova) turned the Armenians of Transcaucasia even closer to Russia. Āqā Moḥammad Khan’s assassination in 1796 ended his short but violent reign and began a new page in Irano-Armenian relations. Āqā Moḥammad Khan’s nephew and heir, Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah (r. 1212-50/1797-1834), after stabilizing internal rebellions and witnessing the loss of Georgia to the Russians in 1801, embarked on a policy of cooperation with the Armenians of Transcaucasia, now the only remaining Christians in the region. Together with his son, ʿAbbās Mīrzā (q.v.), an advocate of modernization, and the new, capable governor of eastern Armenia, Ḥosayn-qolī Khan Qāǰār (q.v.), they initiated a benevolent policy which echoed that of Shah ʿAbbās. The Armenians, composing barely 20 percent of the population of eastern Armenia, received numerous privileges, decrees, and honors. The right to construct and maintain their own churches and schools, the right to practice their faith freely and openly, the exemption from military service, fair and uniform taxes, answering to their own local officials and courts, and equality before the law in the šarīʿa courts were the culmination of this policy. A secondary effect was the segregation of the Armenian cultural and religious life. Only in crafts and commerce did some mingling occur, although most guilds continued to be segregated. Linguistically, however, a significant number of Persian words entered the Eastern Armenian, particularly the Erevani dialect, as found in the literary works of Khatchatur Abovian, the father of Eastern Armenian literature. The renewed political interest in the region once more made it a center for the important trade between east and west. Various goods from Russia, the Ottoman empire, Iran, Europe, and the Orient passed through Eastern Armenia. The Armenians in Iran proper, particularly the Armenian merchants of Tabrīz kept the commercial ties between the two communities. It is not surprising, therefore, that in a short time the province enjoyed the same prosperity that it had at the height of the Safavids. The Armenian catholicos (supreme patriarch), whose Holy See was within Eastern Armenia, and the Armenian meliks (secular lords) not only corresponded with the shah and ʿAbbās Mīrzā, but frequently visited and exchanged gifts with Iranian officials. The Qajars reaped the benefits of this policy when the majority of the Armenians of Transcaucasia failed to cooperate with the Russians during the First Perso-Russian War (1804-1813; q.v.). The loss of most of Transcaucasia following the Treaty of Golestān (q.v.) and the actions of certain Iranian zealots (particularly Ḥasan Khan Qāǰār, q.v.) and Armenian nationalists (such as Nerses of Aštarak) initiated the deterioration of Armeno-Iranian relations. A large number of Armenians in the Erevan region still kept faith with the Persians, however. The inability of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah to forestall the better-equipped Russian forces, combined with the British abandonment of their promises of military and financial aid, resulted in Iran’s defeat in the Second Perso-Russian War (1826-1828; q.v.). The Treaty of Torkamāṇčāy (q.v.) brought the rest of Transcaucasia under Russian rule and the Armenians of Eastern Armenia became subjects of the Russian empire. Bibliography : M. Atkin, Russia and Iran, 1780-1828, Minneapolis, 1980. Bāmdād, Reǰāl I, Tehran, 1968. J. F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus. London, 1908. G. A. Bournoutian, Eastern Armenia in the Last Decades of Persian Rule, 1807-l828: A Political and Socioeconomic Study of the Khanate of Erevan on the Eve of the Russian Conquest, Malibu, 1982. V. Gregorian, “The Impact of Russia on the Armenians and Armenia,” in W. S. Vucinich, ed., Russia and Asia, Palo Alto, 1972. F. Kazemzadeh, “Russian Penetration of the Caucasus,” in T. Hunczak, ed., Russian Imperialism from Ivan the Great to the Revolution, New Brunswick, 1974. D. M. Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 1765-1832, New York, 1967. J. Morier, A Second Journey Through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor to Constantinople between the years 1810-1816, 2 vols., London, 1818. M. Sarkisyanz, A Modern History of Transcaucasian Armenia, Nagpur, 1975.
(G. Bournoutian)
Armeno-Iranian relations 1828-1925. As the result of the defeat of Iran in the second Perso-Russian war and the Treaty of Torkamāṇčāy of 1243/1828 signed by the two parties, the greater part of Eastern Armenia was annexed to the Russian empire, but a large number of Armenians remained in Iran in areas where traditionally Armenians had settled: Mākū (Artaz), Ḵoy (Her), Salmās (Zarewand), and Arasbārān (Parspatunikʿ), and the region of Urmia (Parskahaykʿ). These, regions, according to nineteen-century administrative division, became a part of the northwestern Iranian province of Azerbaijan, and were subject directly to the Viceroy (Nāyeb-al-salṭana) at Tabrīz, then ʿAbbās Mīrzā (q.v.), the eldest son of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah. The fifteenth article of the treaty provided for the mass emigration of Armenians from these areas, including Tabrīz itself, to Russian Armenia, where a new administrative district, the so-called Armenian March, had been created (Hay žołovrdi patmuṭʿyun V, pp. 162, 171). During the years 1828-29, about 45,000 Armenians left Iran (ibid., p. 175; Goroyan, Parskastani hayerə, pp. 75-93), but a large number of Armenians remained, also, in the areas of Mākū, Ḵoy, Tabrīz, and the villages of Arasbārān (Qaradāḡ) (ibid., pp. 102-208; Frangean, Atrapatakan, pp. 97-101). ʿAbbās Mīrzā tried to stem the exodus from the area under his rule of its entire Armenian population, and tried to win their affection by various means. He promised concessions to the Armenian mercantile class of Tabrīz and broad privileges for the upper class and clergy. He provided funds for the renovation of the monastery of the Apostle Thaddeus, in an attempt to elevate the authority of that spiritual center as the focus of Armenian national authority of the Diocese of Azerbaijan, partly in opposition to Ečmīādzīn (Echmiadzin), which was by now outside Iranian jurisdiction (Goroyan, op. cit., pp. 81-82, 93). Geographical division, however, did not keep the Armenians of Azerbaijan separated from their compatriots in Russian-ruled central Armenia—the land of Ararat, Arcʿax, and Siwnikʿ—or from the Western Armenians in the Ottoman empire. In order to have better access to the Iranian provincial administration, the Armenian Diocese of Azerbaijan transferred its seat in the 1830s from St. Thaddeus of Tabrīz (Ačemean, S. Ṭʿadēi vankʿə, p. 11; Martirosyan, “Iranahay gałuṭʿi patmuṭʿyunicʿ,” p. 196). The Diocese of Azerbaijan as well as that o southern Iran (at the Monastery of Amenapʿrkičʿ, New Julfa, Isfahan), the latter having authority over the Armenians of India, most of whom had gone there from Iran, were both regarded as “dominical” and subject to the catholicos of all Armenians at Echmiadzin. Some scions of Armenian feudal families settled in Tabrīz or Tehran and took up administrative and financial posts. These included such figures as Manučehr Khan Moʿtamad-al-dawla, who was captured by Āqā Moḥammad Khan (q.v.) at the end of the previous century in the conquest of Tiflis. He was made first chief eunuch, later provincial governor of Gīlān, Fārs, Kermānšāh, and Isfahan, and took part in the negotiations at Torkamāṇčāy. Of his brother’s sons, Mīrzā Rostam Khan, Āḡālar Khan, and Solaymān Khan also occupied high posts (Haykakan Sovetakan Hanragitaran III, p. 517; Goroyean, op. cit., pp. 98-99). Dawiṭʿ Khan Melikʿ Šahnazareancʿ Šahpʿotean, son of Catur Khan, of the Melikʿ-Šahnazareans of Gełarkʿunikʿ, occupied high positions in the foreign ministry. He was appointed extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador at Baghdad, Paris, and elsewhere. His reports, which are published, contain plans for basic reforms in the country (Hay žołovrdi patmuṭʿyun V, p. 519). The Armenian merchants in Azerbaijan, Gīlān, Isfahan, Shiraz, and other centers of trade continued to play an important part in trade with Russia and European countries. There were large commercial houses in Tabrīz, Marāḡa, Ardabīl, Rašt, New Julfa (near Isfahan), and Shiraz, with agencies at the ports of Anzalī and Būšehr, which belonged to Armenian merchants; these firms exported dried fruit, leather, and other goods. From Russia they imported cotton and flaxen stuffs, ceramic and glass vessels; from Europe, fabric, tools, and machinery needed for the developing manufacturing industry (Goroyean, op. cit., pp. 130-34; Frangean, op. cit., pp. 185-89). Iranian-Armenian merchants established in the Transcaucasus and in Russian cities—Tiflis, Baku, Astrakhan, Rostov, Moscow, and other trading centers—maintained ties with Armenian merchants in Iran, facilitating a large part of the trade between the two countries. The Armenian mercantile class in Iran also played the role of Kulturträger to a certain extent, acting for the diffusion of Western civilization; Armenian government officials took upon themselves the same mission. One of these figures was the above-mentioned Dawiṭʿ Khan. But the greatest Iranian-Armenian diplomat, educator, publicist, and writer was Mīrzā Malkom Khan (q.v.). A liberal thinker and activist, he became a major force in the intellectual awakening of Iran and was instrumental in fostering the constitutional movement in Iran. At the end of the century, Yovhannēs Khan Masehean held the position of palace dragoman, and other high diplomatic posts, defending Iran’s state interests at a number of international conferences. He was an important educator and cultural figure, and president of the Tehran “Society of Philomaths.” Later, he produced the highly-acclaimed Armenian translation of the works of Shakespeare. At Tehran, where the Armenian population grew rapidly, Masehean in 1894 founded the first Iranian-Armenian newspaper, Šawił (Path). In the following decades about thirty Armenian newspapers and monthlies were founded in cities with sizable Armenian populations (Tabrīz, Rašt, Isfahan) (Haykakan Sovetakan Hanragitaran VII, pp. 266-67; Hay zołovrdi patmuṭʿyun VI, pp. 718-19). Many other important Armenian public figures are known from the period of the Qajar dynasty. There were strong cultural ties between the Armenians of Iran and those of Russian Armenia and the Transcaucasus. Instruction in schools paralleled the curriculum in Caucasian Armenian schools. There were elementary and middle schools in cities and in many villages; their free operation was ensured by firmans of Nāṣer-al-dīn and Moẓaffar-al-dīn Shah. Eastern Armenian newspapers and literature circulated widely in the Iranian-Armenian communities; and Raffi (Yakob Melikʿ-Yakobean), the novelist, is particularly notable amongst the Iranian-Armenian writers who contributed to the development of Armenian literature. The Iranian-Armenian community was always absorbed, and often involved, in issues affecting the whole Armenian nation. Morally, materially, and sometimes militarily, it participated in the liberation movement of the Western Armenians, which began in the 1890s against Ottoman tyranny. Many young men joined the partisan groups that left the Caucasus through Mākū and Salmās for Van, to participate in the battle for freedom. In the days of the anti-Armenian policy of Sultan ʿAbd-al-Ḥamīd II and the mass killings of 1896, many Armenian refugees found refuge in the Armenian villages of Salmās and Urmia (Frangean, op. cit., p. 68). Iranian-Armenians of every region took an active part in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11. The famed partisan and folk hero Epʿrem Dawṭʿean, later called Yeprem Khan, directed Armenian armed revolutionary units; there were other such figures, and researchers have pointed out that of twenty-four major revolutionary leaders, some sixteen were Armenians (Ṣafāʾī, Rahbarān, p. 567). Voluntary units of Armenian fedayeen enlisted in the Transcaucasus and in Ottoman-occupied Western Armenia also came to the aid of the Iranian revolution. The Armenian armed units under Kʿeṙi (Aršak Gafafean), together with the Azerbaijani moǰāhedīn fighting under the general command of Sattār Khan, participated in the defense of Tabrīz (Haiykakan Sovetakan Hanragitaran IV, pp. 452-53). In 1909 Yeprem Khan’s Armenian fedayeen groups fought victoriously at Rašt, linked up with the forces of Sepahdār Tonokābonī and Sardār Asʿad Baḵtīarī, and entered Tehran in triumph. After this victory, Yeprem Khan was made general commander of the armed forces of the provisional government, and was killed fighting counter-revolutionaries near Hamadān in 1912 (Ēlmar, Epʿrena, pp. 572-89). The years of World War I were tragic for the Armenian people, most of whom lived in the Ottoman territory. Taking advantage of war conditions, the Turkish government started mass deportation of Armenians from their traditional homeland. More than 1.5 million Armenians were uprooted, and a very large number of them lost their lives on the road into exile (Rāʾīn, Qatl-e ʿām, pp. 62-63). Although Iran had declared neutrality from the beginning of the war, much of the country was still subjected to enemy occupation and destruction; the incursion of Turkish forces into Iran and their entry into Tabrīz was particularly hard upon the Assyrians and the Armenians of Azerbaijan. Although the Iranian authorities in Tabrīz were able to prevent the slaughter of the Armenian inhabitants, there were massacres of Armenians at Mākū, Salmās, and especially Ḵoy; many Armenians fled to the Caucasus, reaching as far as Tiflis (Mamean, ed., Yušamatean, p. 74). In April, 1915, near the village Dīlmān of Salmās, Russian forces which included Armenian volunteer units dealt a crushing blow to the Ottoman armies of Ḵalīl Pasha and drove them out of Iran, eventually reaching Van, where the Armenians had been putting up a last-ditch defense against the Turkish enemies (Haykakan sovetakan Hanragitaran III, p. 387; Hay žołovrdi patmuṭʿyun VI, p. 567). The February uprising and Great October Revolution of 1917 that gripped Russia produced profound reactions in neighboring countries, particularly in Iranian political life. The withdrawal of Russian forces from the southern front, Iran’s northern districts, and the Transcaucasus, presented to the Turks a fresh opportunity to attack broad areas of northwestern Iran, with grievous results again for the local Armenian and Assyrian populations. Pursued by the Turks, the Armenians of the Van area were unable to enter the Transcaucasus and were forced to flee to Iran, where at Salmās and Urmia they joined masses of local Armenians intending to flee via Hamadān to the more secure regions of central and southern Iran; at New Julfa (Isfahan) and in surrounding villages, far from the horrors of war, their compatriots had dwelt for centuries. But a small group of refugees scattered at Hamadān, whilst at the demand of the British occupation authorities the rest moved towards Iraq, suffering great losses on the road. The refugees were lodged finally at Baʿqūba camp (Haykakan Sovetakan Hanragitaran IV, p. 462). In 1918-20, when the newly-created republics of the Transcaucasus seceded from Russia, relations between Iran and the Republic of Armenia did not take decisive shape. Some time after the establishment of Soviet rule in Armenia diplomatic relations were resumed, in the course of which an agreement was concluded for partial immigration and for the transport to Soviet Armenia via Iran of Western Armenians who had found shelter in Iraq in 1917 (ibid.). In 1922, when Armenia, as a part of the Transcaucasian Federative Republic, was joined to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, relations between Armenia and Iran were conducted by the diplomatic representatives of the USSR. Many intellectuals had emigrated from Armenia in the early 1920s; these emigrés participated in and contributed to the educational and cultural life of Iran, especially of Azerbaijan, but this was not to be a lasting effect, for many returned, and Iran experienced renewed turbulence with a change of dynasty. In the twilight of Qajar Iran, the Iranian-Armenians continued actively to participate in the social and political affairs of the country. Although as a religious unit the community continued to be dominated by the Diocese of Azerbaijan in the north and by that of India and Persia in the south, at New Julfa, the role of the expanding Armenian community of Tehran was becoming crucial in the establishment of ties with the authorities of the central government. Bibliography : Haykakan Sovetakan Hanragitaran (Armenian Soviet encyclopædia) III-VI, Erevan, 1977-80. Hay žołovrdi patmuṭʿyun (History of the Armenian people) V-VI, Erevan, 1974-81. N. H. Goroyean, Parskastani hayerə (The Armenians of Persia), Tehran, 1968. E. Frangean, Atrpatakan (Azerbaijan), Tiflis, 1905. H. Ačemean, S. Ṭʿadēi vankʿə (The monastery of St. Thaddeus), Tehran, 1960. A. Mamean, ed., Yušamatean Tēr-Nersēs arkʿepiskopos Melikʿ-Ṭʿangeani (Memorial volume of Lord Nersēs Archbishop Melikʿ-Ṭʿangean), Tehran, 1968. Ēlmar, Epʿrem, Tehran, 1964. H. H. Martirosyan, “Iranahay gałuṭʿi patmuṭʿyunicʿ,” (From the history of the Iranian-Armenian settlement), Merjavor ev Miǰin Arevelkʿi erkrner ev žołovurdner (Lands and peoples of the Middle East), VIII: Iran, Erevan, 1975. E. Ṣafāʾī, Rahbarān-e mašrūṭa, Tehran, 1344 Š./1965. E. Rāʾīn, Qatl-e ʿam(m)-e armanīān dar dawrān-e salāṭīn-e Āl-e ʿOṯmān, Tehran, 1973.
(H. Papazian)
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