The last King of Armenia was Leo VI of
Lusignan
(1373, d.
Cambridge Medieval History - v4 - Eastern Roman Empire
Without
provocation, the Sultan of Aleppo, Ghiyāth-ad-Dīn Ghāzī, son of Saladin,
sent an embassy to demand that Leo should do homage or fight. Leo had
the envoys taken for diversion into the country for a few days while he
marched on the sultan, who was peacefully awaiting the return of his
embassy. The sultan's army fled before the sudden attack of the Arme-
nians, and he was obliged to pay Leo a larger tribute than he had hoped
to extort for himself.
Leo's last war, waged against his other old enemy, Iconium, was not
so successful. Too ill to fight himself, he sent the baïle Adam and the
grand-baron Constantine against 'Izz-ad-Dīn Kai-Kā’ūs 1, who had laid
CH. VI.
## p. 174 (#216) ############################################
174
Succession problems after Leo's death
siege to the fortress of Kapan. Adam withdrew from the campaign after
a quarrel with his colleague, and, by a feigned retreat and sudden volte
face, the Turks defeated the Armenians and continued their interrupted
siege of Kapan. But on hearing that Leo was ravaging Iconian territory,
the sultan made haste to return to his own country and to make
peace
with Armenia (1217).
Two years later Leo died, to the sorrow of his people. He had made
Armenia strong and respected, but even in his reign the old ambitions
of the princes were abreast of opportunity. When Leo was away in
Cyprus, visiting the relatives of his queen, Hethum of Lambron revolted
and invaded the king's territory. Leo was strong enough to seize and
imprison the rebel and his two sons on his return, but the revolt shewed
that Leo's power rested on the perilous foundation of his own personality,
and could not withstand the strain applied to it immediately after his
death.
Leo left no son. He had once adopted Ruben-Raymond of Antioch
as heir to the Cilician throne, but he repented of his choice on proving
the youth's incapacity. In the end, he left the crown to his daughter
Zabel under the regency of two Armenian magnates. One of the regents
was soon killed, but his colleague, the grand-baron Constantine, became
for a time the real ruler of the country. Though never crowned himself,
he made and unmade Armenian kings for the next six years (c. 1220-1226).
His first act was to discrown Ruben-Raymond of Antioch, who with
the help of crusaders had entered Tarsus and proclaimed himself king.
Constantine defeated the invaders at Mamistra, and imprisoned Ruben
at Tarsus, where he died. He then gave the crown to Philip of Antioch
(1222), to whom, with the consent of the Armenian princes and ecclesias-
tics, he had married Zabel. But the new king was a failure. He had
promised to conform to the laws and ceremonies of Armenia, but on the
advice of his father, Bohemond the One-Eyed, Prince of Antioch, he
soon broke his word, and began to favour the Latins at the expense of
the Armenians. He sent in secret to his father the royal ornaments of
Armenia and many other national treasures, and then tried to flee with
Zabel. Constantine caught and imprisoned him, and demanded the
return of the stolen heirlooms from Bohemond as the price of Philip's
safety. Bohemond preferred to let his son die in a foreign prison.
For the third time Constantine decided the fate of the Armenian
With the approval, not of the lady but of the Armenian
magnates, he married Zabel to his own son Hethum (Hayton). After
founding a dynasty of his own blood, he discrowned no more kings,
but with Hethum's consent he undertook to reorganise the Cilician
State, deeply rent by the succession question and shorn of part of Isauria
by watchful Iconium. Nevertheless, for the sake of peace, Constantine
made an alliance with the Sultan of Iconium, and conciliated the
principality of Lambron which had revolted in the reign of Leo the
crown.
## p. 175 (#217) ############################################
Armenian alliance with the Mongols
175
Great. Later on in Hethum's reign Constantine again governed Cilicia
in his son's absence.
The change of dynasty brought with it a change in policy. Cilicia
was no longer molested by the Greeks; and the Seljūqs of Iconium,
though troublesome for some years to come, were losing power. The
paramount danger to the Armenians, as to the Seljūqs themselves, came
from the Mamlūks of Egypt, and the crucial question for Armenian
rulers was where to turn for help against this new enemy. After more
than a century's experience the Armenians could not trust their Latin
neighbours as allies. Hethum I (1226–1270), though anxious to keep their
good will, and with his eyes always open to the possibility of help from
the West, put his trust not in the Christians but in the heathen Mongols,
who for half a century were to prove the best friends Armenia ever had.
At the beginning of Hethum's reign, the Mongols were overrunning
Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, but they did good service to the
Armenians by conquering the Seljūqs of Iconium and depriving them
of most of their Syrian and Cappadocian territories. Hethum made a
defensive and offensive alliance with Bachu, the Mongol general, and
in 1244 became the vassal of the Khan Ogdai. Ten years later he did
homage in person to Mangu Khan, and cemented the friendship between
the two nations by a long stay at the Mongol court.
Meanwhile the Seljūqs, who had incited Lambron to revolt early in
the reign, took advantage of Hethum's absence to invade Cilicia under
the Sultan 'Izz-ad-Dīn Kai-Kā’ūs II. Hethum defeated the Turks on
his return, seized several important towns, and recovered the whole of
Isauria.
His triumph gave him brief leisure. The rest of his reign was filled
with a struggle against the Mamlūks, whose northward advance was
fortunately opposed by the Mongols. Hethum and the Khan's brother
Hūlāgū joined forces at Edessa to undertake the capture of Jerusalem
from the Mamlūks. The allies defeated Nāşir, Sultan of Aleppo, and
divided his lands between themselves, but all hope of further success
vanished with the Khan's death. Hūlāgū hastened back to Tartary on
receiving the news, leaving his son Abāghā in charge of an army of
20,000 (1259). Baibars, Sultan of Egypt, took the opportunity to enter
Syria, and defeated the Mongols more than once. He seized Antioch
from the Christians and invaded Armenia with a large army. One of
Hethum's sons was slain, the other (afterwards Leo III) was taken captive.
The Mamlūks wasted part of Cilicia, disinterred the bones of Armenian
kings, and retraced their steps with numerous captives and much plunder.
All that Hethum could do was to ransom his son by sacrificing the castle
of Derbessak and by dismantling two other fortresses on the frontier. He
entrusted to Leo the government of the country, and after a turbulent
reign of forty-four years retired into a monastery.
Leo III (1270-1289) had to face the same problems that had troubled
CH, VI.
## p. 176 (#218) ############################################
176
War with the Mamlūks and Seljūqs
his father-internal revolt and the enmity of Egypt and Iconium. In
addition he was scourged by personal illness and by a visitation of plague
and famine. Taking advantage of disaffection among the Armenian
princes, who had revolted unsuccessfully against Leo, Baibars invaded
Cilicia with an army of Turks and Arabs. Leo was deserted and fled to
the mountains, leaving the country defenceless. Sis repulsed the invaders,
but Tarsus capitulated. Its magnificent buildings were set on fire,
thousands of its people were massacred, and thousands more led into
captivity (1274). This disaster was followed by famine and plague. Leo
himself fell ill; his two sons died.
Scarcely healed of his sickness, the king had to face a second Mamlūk
invasion. But this time the Armenian princes rallied to him, and as
usual saved their country from final catastrophe. The Mamlūks were
caught in a trap, and suffered losses so great that the corpses of the
dead prevented the living from taking flight. Baibars, gravely wounded
by an arrow, reached Damascus to die (1276).
The Khan Abāghā sent delegates to congratulate Leo on his victory,
and to propose that he should add Turkey (Rūm or Asia Minor) and
several Mesopotamian towns to his Cilician kingdom. Leo wisely refused
this offer of a vast realm, but he agreed to the Khan's other proposal of
addressing letters to the Pope and the kings of the West to ask them to
join the Mongols for the capture of the Holy Land from the Mamlūks.
On 25 November 1276 John and James Vassal, the messengers of Abāghā
Khan, announced to Edward I of England their approaching arrival in
the West with letters from the Mongol Emperor and the King of Armenia.
After defeating the Seljūgs of Iconium (1278), who had invaded
Armenian territory while the Armenians were repulsing the Mamlūks,
Leo was bound by his alliance to go to the help of the Mongols, who
were again at war with the Mamlūks. The Armenians joined the
Mongol army under Mangū Tīmūr without mishap, and met the
Mamlūks, led by Saif-ad-Dīn Qalā’ūn al-Alfi, at Hims on the Orontes
(1281). The Mamlūks would have been defeated but for the inexplicable
conduct of Mangū Tīmūr, which gave the day to the sultan, already at
the point of flight. As a result, Leo barely escaped to Armenia with
thirty horsemen. The Mongols returned to face the anger of their Khan,
who beheaded both the generals and forced the soldiers to wear women's
clothes. After this disaster the Mongols were hostile to Armenia for
two years, because Abāghā's successor hated the Christians. But on
the accession of another Khan in 1284, the Mongols resumed their old
friendship with the Armenians, and Leo was able to spend the last five
years of his reign in works of peace.
Prosperity vanished with Leo's death. Under his son Hethum
(Hayton) II the One-Eyed (1289–1305), Armenia was in a peculiarly
difficult position. The Mamlūk rulers of Syria and Palestine were bent
on annihilating Armenia, the last bulwark of Christendom. Hethum had
## p. 177 (#219) ############################################
Unstable government of Hethum II
177
no reliable allies. The Mongols were not only losing power, but were
turning towards Islām. The Christians of the West were broken reeds,
for the time of great impulses and united effort was past, even if the
Armenian people had not opposed religious agreement with Rome.
Hethum himself weakened Cilicia by his fitful sovereignty. The author
of a national chronicle in verse, he preferred the part of monk to that of
king, and long refused to be crowned. He abdicated three times, once
to enter a monastery, once to turn Franciscan, once to become “Father
of the King” to his nephew Leo IV. At a fourth juncture abdication
was thrust upon him. As a result he ruled Cilicia for little more than
half the time that elapsed between his accession in 1289 and his death
in 1307. From 1290 to 1291, and again from 1294 to 1296, he entrusted
the government to his brother Thoros III. Thoros in his turn became
a monk, and when Hethum went with him to Constantinople to see their
sister Ritha he left a third brother Smbat (Sempad) to rule Armenia
in his absence (1296–1297). This time he did not intend to abdicate,
but Smbat had himself crowned at Sis with the consent of Ghāzān Khān,
the Mongol ruler of Persia, and married a Tartar princess. On Hethum's
return, Smbat drove him and Thoros out of Cilicia. They appealed in
vain to the khan and to their kinsfolk in Cyprus and Constantinople.
Smbat seized them near Caesarea in Cappadocia and imprisoned them in
the High Fortress (Bardsrberd), where Thoros was put to death and
Hethum blinded and left in chains (1298). This coup d'état was reversed
by a fourth brother Constantine, who dethroned and imprisoned Smbat.
When, however, the Armenians wished to reinstate Hethum, who was
slowly recovering his sight, Constantine repented of his loyalty and tried
to release Smbat. But, with the help of Templars and Hospitallers,
Hethum in his turn seized his brothers and sent them to Constantinople
(1299). After this experience he did not abdicate again for six years.
Such unstable government did not help the Armenians to resist the
Mamlūks. But Hethum was a good soldier when the militant side of
his nature was uppermost, and until 1302, when the Tartar alliance was
lost, he defended Cilicia with moderate success. It was the threat of
invasion by Ashraf, the successor of Qalā'un, that finally decided him to
be crowned (1289). He sent troops to guard the frontiers and appealed
for help to Arghūn Khān and to Pope Nicholas III. Nothing but vague
promises from Philip the Fair came of these appeals, but indirectly
Cilicia was saved by the Christians, who at the Pope's instigation laid
siege to Alexandria. After taking Romkla, the seat of the Katholikos,
and massacring its inhabitants, the sultan hurried back to Egypt with
the Katholikos in his train, and Hethum gained peace and the release of
the Katholikos at the price of several fortresses (1289-1290).
Some years later, during the contention between Hethum and his
brothers, Susamish, viceroy of Damascus, prepared to invade Cilicia at
the head of a Mamlūk army. Hethum scattered his troops and handed
C. MED. H. VOL. IV. CH. VI.
12
## p. 178 (#220) ############################################
178
Loss of the Mongol alliance
him over to Ghāzān Khān. After this success, Hethum and the khan
took the offensive, and tried to seize Syria and Palestine from the
Mamlūks. But the khan suddenly returned to Persia to repress the
revolt of his kinsman Baidū, and left his troops under the command of
Quțlughshāh. Although Hethum and Qutlughshāh were at first successful,
they were finally, after losing many men in the Euphrates, compelled
to retreat.
Ghāzān Khān had promised on leaving Hethum that he would come
back to undertake the conquest of the Holy Land for the Christians, but
in 1302 he died. His successor, Uljāitū, far from fulfilling that promise,
turned Musulman and forswore the ancient alliance with Armenia. The
Mongols made war on the Armenians and spent a year reducing Cilicia
to a heap of ruins. Turks and Mamlūks then invaded the country three
times, and levelled the ruins left standing by the Mongols. Again
Hethum was roused to action. As the enemy were about to depart laden
with plunder, he attacked them and killed or captured nearly seven
thousand of their men. The Sultan of Egypt made peace; and for a
time the Turks disappeared from Cilicia.
All through Hethum's reign, the defence of Cilicia depended upon
the military qualities of himself and of his people alone. He made the
most of his diplomatic opportunities, but with no appreciable result. He
tried hard to keep the Mongol alliance, but even before 1302 the khan
could not help him against Ashraf and would not help him against his
brother Smbat. He made marriage alliances with Constantinople and
Cyprus, giving his sister Mariam in marriage to Michael IX, son of the
Emperor Andronicus, and marrying another sister Zabel to Amaury,
brother of the King of Cyprus. After the loss of the Mongol alliance, he
redoubled the efforts of his predecessor to earn Western help by religious
concession. The Katholikos Grigor VII Anavarzetsi prepared a profession
of faith in nine chapters, and proposed to introduce into the Armenian
Church various changes of ritual conforming to the Roman usage. Before
anything further was done, the Katholikos died and Hethum resigned
the crown to his nephew Leo IV (1305–1307). In 1307 Leo and his
uncle summoned the princes and the ecclesiasties to the First Council of
Sis. There, owing to the king's insistence, the profession of faith drafted
by the late Katholikos was read and adopted. But when the people knew
of it, their fury overleapt the bounds of loyalty and patriotism. In their
anger they roused Bilarghu the Mongol against Hethum and Leo. Al-
ready in Cilicia, Bilarghu treacherously invited the king and his uncle to
Anazarbus, where he put them to death with the princes of their persuasion
(13 August 1307).
All hope of gaining Western aid in return for religious concession was
once more deferred. The only tangible fruit of Hethum's advances to the
Latins had been the help given him by the Templars and Hospitallers
against his rebellious brothers. Tried and found wanting time after time,
## p. 179 (#221) ############################################
Overtures to the West. Nationalist reaction
179
the rulers of the West were nevertheless Armenia's only possible friends.
Like Hethum, his successor Oshin? (1307–1320) worked steadily for
their co-operation. Like Hethum, he made marriage alliances, sought
religious accommodation, sent despairing appeals for help. And like
Hethum he was left to defend Armenia himself.
Isabel of Lusignan, daughter of King Hugh III, was his first wife, and
her successor was Joan of Anjou, niece of King Robert of Naples and
daughter of Philip I of Anjou-Taranto, known as Philip II, Latin Emperor
of the East. Besides marrying into two Western families, Oshin tried
to solve the religious problem. In 1316 he summoned to Adana an as-
sembly which examined and adopted the ecclesiastical settlement made
at Sis nine years before. The king and the Katholikos Constantine II
had the dogma of the Procession of the Holy Ghost proclaimed in con-
formity with Catholic teaching. But once more the angry people frustrated
the will of their rulers, and only the overwhelming peril from the Mam-
lūks could dull the edge of religious discord. As appeals for help sent to
John XXII and to Philip of Valois were fruitless, the burden of defending
Cilicia fell upon Oshin. He had expelled Bilarghu and his Mongols
from the country at the beginning of his reign, avenging on them the
death of his kinsmen. After this he had found time to build strongholds
and churches, especially in Tarsus, where he restored and strengthened
the famous ramparts, and built the magnificent church now known as
Kilisa-jāmi' (=church-mosque). But in the middle of his religious troubles
the Mamlūks again threatened Cilicia, and he spent the last years of his
reign defending the country single-handed. For twenty years after his
death (1320–1340) Armenia struggled unavailingly against the rising
power of the Mainlūks.
The minority of Oshin's son Leo V (1320–1342) produced a nationalist
crisis. The long-continued friendship of Armenian rulers with the Latins,
their adoption of Latin institutions, and their intermarriage with Latin
families, had made their court more Latin than Armenian; while their
friendly discussions with the Papacy had strengthened the cause of the
Uniates, who worked for a complete union of the Armenian Church with
Rome. But Leo's minority gave the nationalists their chance. The
government was in the hands of a council of regency composed of four
barons, Leo himself being under the guardianship of Oshin of Gorigos.
Oshin married Leo's mother, exiled the king's Lusignan cousins, and
married him to his own daughter in order to counteract Latin in-
fluences. When Leo came to power, however, he undid Oshin's work.
He married a Spanish wife connected with the Lusignans (Constance of
Aragon, widow of Henry II of Lusignan), recalled his cousins, and finally
put Oshin to death. During his reign Cilicia was confined to its ancient
boundaries, but though the country's defences were in ruins and the
i Probably the brother of Leo IV, and not, as some writers say, of Hethum.
12-2
CH. v.
## p. 180 (#222) ############################################
180 The Mamlūks conquer Armenia. The Lusignans
princes were occupied with political and ecclesiastical disputes, Leo im-
mersed himself in religious discussions.
Meanwhile Nāşir, Sultan of the Mamlūks, on hearing that Europe
was preparing for a new crusade, made an alliance with the Tartars and
Turkomans for the conquest of Armenia. Devastated and plundered by
successive armies of Tartars, Turkomans, and Mamlūks, Cilicia was once
more saved from complete destruction by a few heroic Armenians. They
hid in passes through which the enemy had to march, and massacred
several thousand Mamlūks. The sultan agreed to a fifteen years' truce
on condition that the Armenians paid to the Egyptians an annual tribute
of 50,000 florins, half the customs and revenue from the maritime trade
of Ayas, and half the sea-salt. In return, the sultan undertook to
rebuild Ayas and the other fortresses at his own expense, and not to
occupy any stronghold or castle in Cilicia with his troops.
At last, about 1335, Philip VI of France decided to go to the help of
the Armenians, and Nāşir resolved to conquer them. The net result of
the two decisions might have been foreseen. On the one hand, Leo received
10,000 forins from Philip with a few sacks of corn from the Pope; on the
other, Armenia was invaded and conquered by the Mamlūks. Leo fled
to the mountains (1337); but after forcing him to swear on Bible and
Cross never again to enter into relations with Europe, Nāşir left him to
rule what was left of his country until his death in 1342. He was the
last of the Rubenian-Hethumian rulers, who thus left Armenia as they
had found it, a prey to the foreigner.
For a generation after Leo's death (1342–1373), Armenia was ruled
by Latin kings. Two of them were Lusignan princes connected by mar-
riage with the Hethumian dynasty, and the other two were usurpers not
of royal blood.
The Lusignans derived their claim to the Armenian crown from the
marriage of Zabel, sister of Hethum II, to Amaury of Tyre, brother of
Henry II of Cyprus (1295). John and Guy, two sons of this marriage, were
in the service of the Emperor at Constantinople when Leo V died. Some
months after Leo's death, John, the younger, was called upon to admini-
ster the Cilician kingdom, not as king, but as baïle or regent. At his
suggestion, the elder brother Guy left Constantinople and accepted the
crown of Armeno-Cilicia in 1342.
Crowned by the Katholikos according to Armenian rites, Guy acted
at first as an Armenian patriot, refusing to pay tribute to the Sultans of
Egypt and Turkey. But when Egyptian invasions followed, Guy not only
adopted the time-honoured custom of appealing for help to the Pope
(Clement VI) and of promising to effect if possible the union of the Ar-
menian Church with Rome, but surrounded himself with Latin princes
to whom he entrusted the defence of towns and fortresses. The Pope
actually sent a thousand horsemen and a thousand pieces of Byzantine
## p. 181 (#223) ############################################
Failure and exile of Leo VI
181
was at
silver, but the Armenians, resenting Guy's Latinising policy, assassinated
him with his brother Bohemond and the Western knights who had come
to his aid (1344). His other brother John had died a natural death a
few months earlier.
The next king, the usurper Constantine IV, son of Baldwin, marshal
of Armenia, was more successful (1344-1363). With the help of. Theo-
dates of Rhodes and Hugh of Cyprus he repulsed an Egyptian invasion
with great slaughter, leaving Ayas alone in the enemy's hands. He hoped
that the news of his success would move Europe to help him, but when
his embassy returned empty-handed from Venice, Paris, London, and
Rome, he marched without allies against the Mamlūks, drove them from
the country, and captured Alexandretta from them (1357). As a result
of his victory and of his efforts to subdue the religious discord, Armenia
peace
for the rest of his life.
Constantine IV was succeeded by a second usurper, Constantine V,
son of a Cypriot serf who had become an Armenian baron. Elected king
because of his wealth, he offered the crown to Peter I, King of Cyprus,
but when Peter was assassinated in 1369 Constantine kept the throne
himself. Four years later, the Armenians put him to death, and during
the anarchy which followed they entrusted the government to the widow
of Constantine IV, Mary of Gorigos, who had already played an active
part in Armenian politics before the king's assassination.
The last King of Armenia was Leo VI of Lusignan (1373, d. 1393).
His father was John, brother of King Guy, and his grandmother was
Zabel, sister of Hethum II. He himself had been imprisoned with his
mother Soldane of Georgia by Constantine IV, who had wished to destroy
the royal Armenian line. His reign was not a success. All his efforts to
avert the long-impending doom of Cilicia were powerless. He fought
energetically against the Mamlūks, but was led captive to Cairo (1375).
There he appointed as almoner and confessor John Dardel, whose recently-
published chronicle has thrown unexpected light upon the last years of
the Cilician kingdom. In 1382 the king was released and spent the rest
of his life in various countries of Europe. He died in 1393 at Paris,
making Richard II of England his testamentary executor, and his epitaph
is still preserved in the basilica of Saint-Denis. After his death, the Kings
of Cyprus were the nominal Kings of Armenia until 1489, when the title
passed to Venice. Almost at the same time (1485), by reason of the mar-
riage (1433) of Anne of Lusignan with Duke Louis I of Savoy, the rulers
of Piedmont assumed the empty claim to a kingdom of the past.
During the exile of Leo VI, Greater Armenia was enduring a prolonged
Tartar invasion. After conquering Baghdad (1386), Tamerlane entered
Vaspurakan. At Van he caused the people to be hurled from the rock
which towers above the city; at Ernjak he massacred all the inhabitants;
at Sīwās he had the Armenian garrison buried alive. In 1389 he devas-
tated Turuberan and Taron; in 1394 he finished his campaign at Kars,
-
-
CH. VI.
## p. 182 (#224) ############################################
182
Armenia under Muslim rule
where he took captive all the people whom he did not massacre, and
passed on into Asia Minor. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the
old Armenian territory had been divided among its Muslim conquerors-
Mamlūks, Turks, and Tartars. Yūsuf, Sultan of Egypt, ruled Sassun;
the Emir Erghin governed Vaspurakan from Ostan; and Tainerlane's
son, Mīrān Shāh, reigned at Tabriz. These Musulman emirs made war
upon one another at the expense of the Armenian families who had not
migrated to Asia Minor on the fall of the Bagratid kingdom. By the
close of the fifteenth century Cilicia, too, was finally absorbed into the
Ottoman Empire.
Kings and kingdom had passed, but the Armenians still possessed
their Church. In the midst of desolation, schools and convents maintained
Armenian art and culture, and handed on the torch of nationality. Some
of the Armenian manuscripts which exist to-day were written in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The long religious controversy, of
which the Uniates were the centre, survived the horrors of the period,
and continued to agitate the country. Among the protagonists were
John of Khrna, John of Orotn, Thomas of Medzoph, Gregory of Tathew,
and Gregory of Klath. In 1438 Armenian delegates attended the Council
of Florence with the Greeks and Latins in order to unify the rites and
ceremonies of the Churches.
The most important work of the Church was administrative. During
Tamerlane's invasion the Katholikos had established the pontifical seat
among the ruins of Sis. But towards the middle of the next century Sis
rapidly declined, and it was decided to move the seat to Echmiadzin
in the old Bagratid territory. As Grigor IX refused to leave Sis, a new
Katholikos, Kirakos Virapensis, was elected for Echmiadzin, and from 1441
the Armenian Church was divided for years between those who accepted
the primacy of Echmiadzin and those who were faithful to Sis. Finally,
the Katholikos of Echmiadzin became, in default of a king, the head of the
Armenian people. With his council and synod he made himself respon-
sible for the national interests of the Armenians, and administered such
possessions as remained to them. After the Turkish victory of 1453,
Mahomet II founded an Armenian colony in Constantinople and placed it
under the supervision of Joakim, the Armenian Bishop of Brūsa, to whom
he afterwards gave the title of “Patriarch” with jurisdiction over all the
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. From that time to this, the Arme-
nian Patriarch of Constantinople has carried on the work of the Katholikos
and has been the national representative of the Armenian people.
לל
## p. 183 (#225) ############################################
183
CHAPTER VII.
(A)
THE EMPIRE AND ITS NORTHERN NEIGHBOURS.
While the Germans impressed their characteristic stamp on both the
medieval and modern history of Western Europe, it was reserved for the
Eastern Slavs, the Russians, to build a great empire on the borderlands
of Europe and Asia. But the work of civilisation was far more difficult
for the Russians than for the German race. The barbaric Germans settled
in regions of an old civilisation among the conquered Romans and
Romanised peoples, whereas the geographical and ethnical surroundings
entered by the Eastern Slavs were unfavourable, in so far as no old in-
heritance existed there to further any endeavours in civilisation; this
had to be built up from the very foundations. Boundless forests, vast
lakes and swamps, were great obstacles to the colonisation of the immense
plain of eastern Europe, and the long stretch of steppes in southern
Russia was for many centuries the home of Asiatic nomads, who not only
made any intercourse with Greek civilisation impossible but even en-
dangered incessantly the results of the native progress of the Russian
Slavs.
The growth of the Russian empire implies not only the extension of
the area of its civilisation but also the absorption of many elements
belonging to foreign races and speaking foreign tongues, and their
coalescence with the dominant Russian nation.
It was only the southernmost parts of the later Russian empire that
had from time immemorial active connexions with the several centres of
ancient Greek civilisation. In the course of the seventh century B. c.
numerous Greek colonies were founded on the northern shore of the
Black Sea, such as Tyras, Olbia, Chersonesus, Theodosia, Panticapaeum
(now Kerch), and Tanais. These towns were the intermediaries of the
commerce between the barbaric peoples of what is now Russia and the
civilised towns of Greece. They were at the same time centres of Greek
civilisation, which they spread among their nearest neighbours who in-
habited the southern steppes of Russia and were known in history first
under the name of Scythians and then of Şarmatians. Of what race these
peoples were, is not clearly established.
CH. VII.
## p. 184 (#226) ############################################
184
Alans, Goths, and Huns
The ancient historians mention several tribes who lived to the north
and north-west of the Scythians and Sarmatians, and were in all proba-
bility Slavs or Finns.
The Scythian and Sarmatian nomads were a continuous danger
to the security of the Greek colonies; they extorted from them regular
yearly tributes. Still the chief towns to the north of the Black Sea
did succeed though with difficulty in maintaining their existence during
the whole period of the Scythian and Sarmatian dominion. These
towns in course of time exchanged Greek independence for a Roman
protectorate.
After the Sarmatians there appeared new enemies of the Greek colonies
along the northern littoral of the Black Sea. Already in the first cen-
tury of our era the name of the Sarmatians is superseded by that of
Alans, which new generic name, according to the explanation of ancient
historians, comprehends several nomadic races, mainly Iranian.
In the second and third centuries A. D. new immigrants poured in to the
northern shores of the Black Sea. The western part of the steppes was
occupied by German races, especially by the Goths, the eastern part by
Asiatic Huns. The Goths remained more than two centuries in the
steppes of southern Russia and the lands bordering the Black Sea,
whence they made incursions into the Roman Empire. By the inroad of
overwhelming masses of the Huns the Gothic state was subverted in
A. D. 375, and the Goths disappeared slowly from the borders of the Black
Sea. Only a small part of them remained, some in the Caucasus and
others till much later in the Crimea. The other Goths acquired new
homes in other lands of Europe. Of the Greek colonies on the north
of the Black Sea only those in the Crimea outlived the Gothic period.
With the expansion of the power of the Huns a new period begins
in the history of Eastern and Central Europe. Hitherto Asia sent its
nomads only as far as the steppes of southern Russia. The Huns are the
first nomads who by their conquests extend Asia to the lands on the
central Danube. Like a violent tempest their hordes not only swept
over the south Russian steppes but also penetrated to Roman Pannonia,
where Attila, their king, in the first half of the fifth century founded
the centre of his gigantic but short-lived empire. After Attila's death
his empire fell to pieces, and the Huns disappeared almost entirely
among the neighbouring nations. Only a small part fled to the Black
Sea, where they encountered the hordes of the nomadic Bulgars, a people
in all probability of Finnish (Ugrian) origin, but mixed with Turkish
elements. The Bulgars were originally settled in the lands between
the rivers Kama and Volga, where even later the so-called Kama and
Volga Bulgars are found, but part of them moved at an unknown time
to the south-west, and when the Huns had migrated to Pannonia came
to the Black Sea, where they appear already in the second half of the fifth
## p. 185 (#227) ############################################
Bulgars, Avars, and Turks
185
century. Before they arrived there they had lived under so strong a
Turkish influence that they could easily blend with the remnants of the
Huns. The Greek authors of the sixth century especially mention in
these regions two Bulgarian tribes, the Kutrigurs or Kuturgurs and the
Utigurs or Utrigurs. The Kutrigurs roamed as nomads on the right
bank of the Don to the west, the Utigurs from the Don to the south,
eastwards of the Sea of Azov. After the departure of the other Bul-
garian hordes in the second half of the seventh century only the Utigurs
remained in the lands near the Black Sea; they are later known as the
Black Bulgars.
Like other barbarians the hordes of the Bulgars were an unceasing
source of trouble to the Eastern Roman Empire. Justinian was forced
to pay a yearly tribute to the Kutrigurs. But, as even this subsidy did
not restrain them from frequent invasions, he made use of the common
Byzantine policy, bribing the Utigurs to be their enemies.
The Utigurs violently attacked the Greek colonies situated on both
shores of the Cimmerian Bosphorus. Panticapaeum, better known to the
Byzantine authors as Bosphorus, resisted only a short time, and finally had
to acknowledge the Utigurs' supremacy in order to save some sort of
autonomy. In 522, during Justinian I's reign, Bosphorus had a Greek
garrison.
Immediately after the Huns other nomads from Asia thronged to
Europe. They were part of a people named by the Chinese Yuan-Yuan
but calling themselves Yü-kue-lü, who in Europe became known by the
name of Avars. This nation appeared in the territory of the empire of
the T'o-pa, founded by a secession from the Chinese Empire.
The empire of the T'o-pa was short-lived. The Yuan-Yuan revolted
against their masters and founded on a part of their territory a separate
state, for a time under the supremacy of the T'o-pa, but in the second
half of the fourth century they rose to such power that they tried to
gain their independence. They succeeded in this endeavour under their
chief Shelun (402–410), who assumed the title of Khagan. From that
time down to the sixth century the Yuan-Yuan became the foremost
people in Central Asia. They ruled over Eastern Turkestan, and over
the present territories of Mongolia and Manchuria as far as Korea. But
from the end of the fifth century the empire of the Yuan-Yuan was
already in decline.
The subdued races took advantage of this weakness and endeavoured
to shake off their yoke. The Chinese call these hordes T'u-küe, the
nearest they could get to Turks. The Chinese knew of a long series
of Turkish hordes and counted them among their tributary tribes.
Some of these hordes were also under the dominion of the Huns. In the
middle of the sixth century the half mythical chieftain Tu-mên united
the numerous Turkish tribes and rose to the leadership of the whole
CH. VII.
## p. 186 (#228) ############################################
186
The Avars in Europe
Turkish nation in northern and central Asia, whereupon the Turks
allied themselves with the T'o-pa against the Yuan-Yuan. These suc-
cumbed, their Khagan A-na-kuei (Anagay) in 552 committed suicide,
and their empire came to an end.
That part of the Turks which formerly was under the dominion of
the Yuan-Yuan remained in their homes and acknowledged the supremacy
of T'u-mên, but the other part migrated to the west into the steppes of
southern Russia and further into Pannonia. These new nomadic hordes
appear in Europe under the name of Avars. But according to Theo-
phylact Simocatta the European Avars were not the genuine Avars but
Pseudo-avars. In any case they, like the other Asiatic nomads, were not
an ethnically pure race but a mixed people.
During the migration the number of the Avars increased considerably,
since other tribes, kindred as well as foreign, joined them, and among
these was also a part of the Bulgars. Soon after their arrival in Europe
in 558 the Avars encountered the Eastern Slavs, called Antae in the
ancient histories, the ancestors of the later South Russian Slavonic races.
The Avars repeatedly invaded the lands of the Antae, devastating the
country, dragging away the inhabitants as prisoners, and carrying with
them great spoils.
A few years later, in 568, they appear in Pannonia, which they selected
as the centre of their extensive dominion, and where they roamed for two
centuries and a half. From there they made their predatory incursions
into the neighbouring lands, especially into the Balkan peninsula, often in
company with the Slavs. The worst period of these devastations by the
Avars lasted no longer than about sixty years, for they soon experienced
several disasters. From the western Slavonic lands they had been driven
by Samo, the founder of the first great Slavonic empire (623–658), and
in the East the Bulgarian ruler Kovrat, who was in friendly relations
with the Greeks, shook off their yoke. After 626, when the Avars
beleaguered Constantinople in vain, the Balkan peninsula remained un-
molested by their inroads, their last hostile incursion being the aid they
gave to the Slavs in their attack on Thessalonica. Moreover there began
in their dominion internal disorders which were in all probability the
principal cause of the downfall of their power. In 631 there arose a
severe conflict between the genuine Avars and their allied Bulgarian
horde, because the chieftain of the Bulgarians had the courage to com-
pete with an Avar for the throne. A fight arose between the two
contending parties, which resulted in the victory of the Avars. The
vanquished Bulgarian and 9000 of his followers with their families were
driven from Pannonia.
During the period in which the dominion of the Avars reached from
the middle course of the Danube almost to the Dnieper, there flourished
between the Sea of Azov and the Caspian the dominion of the Chazars,
## p. 187 (#229) ############################################
Chazars and Turks
187
nomads of another Turkish race, which in course of time became a half-
settled nation. The Chazars formed one of the best-organised Turkish
states and their dominion lasted several centuries. Their origin is entirely
unknown.
The history of the Chazars becomes clearer with the beginning of the
sixth century, when they made repeated inroads into Armenia, crossed
the Caucasus, and extended their dominion to the river Araxes. The
Chazar warriors not only devastated Armenia, but pushed their inroads
even into Asia Minor. Kawad (Kobad), King of Persia, sent an army of
12,000 men to expel them, and conquered the land between the rivers
Cyrus and Araxes. Having moreover occupied Albania (Shirvan), Kawad
secured the northern frontier of the land by a long wall stretching from
the sea to the Gate of the Alans (the fortress of Dariel) and con-
taining three hundred fortified posts. The Persians ceased to keep
this wall in good repair, but Kawad's son Chosroes I Nūshirwān
(531-578), with the consent of the ruler of the Chazars, had erected the
Iron Caspian Gate, from which the neighbouring town near the Caspian
Sea was called in Arabic Bāb-al-abwāb, Gate of Gates, and in Persian
Darband (gate). The ramparts, however, erected by Chosroes near Dar-
band and running along the Caucasian mountains for a distance of 40
parasangs (about 180 miles) were of no great use, as the Chazars forced
their way by the Darband gate into Persia and devastated the land.
In the last quarter of the sixth century the Chazars were a part of
the great Turkish empire, founded by T'u-mên. His son, whose name is
given in the Chinese annals as Sse-kin and by the Greek authors as Askin
or Askil (553-569), ruled over an immense territory stretching from the
desert of Shamo as far as the western sea, and from the basin of the river
Tarim to the tundras near the river Kien (Kem or Yenisey). The
Turkish empire was further extended by his successor Khagan Dizabul,
named also Silzibul, in Turkish Sinjibu. During his reign also the
Chazars belonged to the Turkish empire.
The Persian empire was a great obstacle to the tendency of the
Turks to expand, and as the Byzantines were also the enemies of the
Persians, the Turks sought to conclude alliances with them against the
common foe. Khagan Sse-kin in 563 was the first to send an embassy
to the Byzantines to negotiate a treaty of alliance, and under Justin II
in 568 another mission was sent by the Turks to Constantinople. In
return the Greeks also sent their ambassadors to the Turks; and in
569 Zemarchus journeyed from Cilicia to Central Asia as Justin II's
envoy.
Among other embassies of the Greeks to the Turks should be men-
tioned that of Valentinus in 579, which was to notify the accession of the
new Emperor Tiberius II to the throne. On Valentinus' second journey
he had 106 Turks among his retinue. At that time there lived a
CH. VII.
## p. 188 (#230) ############################################
188
Growing power of the Chazars
considerable number of Turks in Constantinople, principally those who
had come there as attendants of Byzantine envoys on their return journey.
After a long and arduous journey, Valentinus arrived at the seat of
Khagan Turxanth in the steppes between the Volga and the Caucasus,
evidently one of the khagans subordinate to the supreme khagan who
ruled over the Chazars, and from here the Byzantine embassy continued
its way into the interior of the Turkish empire to reach the supreme
khagan. During their stay there Turxanth acted in open enmity against
the Byzantines, assaulting their towns in the Crimea, assisted by Anagay,
prince of the Utigurs and vassal of the Turks.
The power of the Turks declined during the reign of Sinjibu's suc-
cessors. At the end of the sixth century there began contests for the
khagan's throne. Although the supreme khagan was able in 597 to sub-
due the revolt with the aid of the three other khagans, the disturbances
were soon renewed, and the horde of Turks dwelling between the Volga
and the Caspian Sea, the Chazars, freed themselves from the power of
the supreme Turkish khagan in the early years of the seventh century.
During the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries the empire of the
Chazars was very powerful. As soon as the Chazars became independent
of the supremacy of the Turkestan Turks, they expanded their dominion
in all directions to the injury of the Black Sea Bulgars (Utigurs), the
Crimean Greeks, and other peoples. The Bulgarians were for a long
period in the seventh century the allies of the Byzantines. In 619
Organas, lord of the “Huns” (obviously the Utigurs), came with his
magnates and their wives to Constantinople and embraced with them
the Christian faith. In like manner Kovrat, Khan of the Bulgars, having
freed himself from the power of the Avars (635), became an ally of the
Byzantines. But when Kovrat died and his sons had divided his realm
between them, Batbayan, the youngest of them, who remained near the
Sea of Azov, was compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of the Chazars
and to pay them a tribute.
When in the second half of the seventh century the Arabian Caliphate
succeeded the Persian empire, the Chazars waged wars with the Arabs.
Their relations with the Byzantines did not change. ) They had been the
steady allies of the Greeks against the Persians, 'and remained their
allies also against the Arabs, in spite of frequent conflicts due to their
opposing interests in the Crimean peninsula.
During the reign of the third Caliph, Othman, the Arabs consolidated
their power in Armenia and even took a part of their lands from the
Chazars. After 683 Armenia was again menaced by the Chazars, but
in 690 they were severely defeated and many were burned in churches
where they had sought shelter. According to Makin, the Arabs passed
the Caspian gate and killed many Chazars; those who survived were
compelled to embrace Islām.
## p. 189 (#231) ############################################
Relations with the Empire
189
At the beginning of the eighth century the Chazars already ruled
over a part of the Crimea, and conquered almost the whole of the peninsula
before the end of the century; only the town of Cherson kept its in-
dependence, although for a short time it fell under their rule. Towards
the end of the seventh century Justinian II, the dethroned Emperor
(685-695), was sent there into exile. Some time later he tried to regain
his throne, but when the inhabitants of the city attempted to hinder his
design, he fled to the Gothic town of Doras in the Crimea, whence he
sent to the Khagan of the Chazars, Vusir (Wazir) Gliavar, asking for a
hospitable reception. This the khagan accorded him with much kindness,
and gave him his sister Theodora in marriage. Justinian then lived some
time in Phanagoria or Tamatarcha (on the peninsula now called Taman),
which at that time belonged to the Chazars. But the Emperor Tiberius
Apsimar induced the khagan by incessant bribes to turn traitor and to
send him Justinian either dead or alive. The khagan ordered his tuduns
(lieutenants) in Phanagoria and Bosphorus to slay Justinian. The plans
for the execution of the treachery were ready, but Theodora warned her
husband in time, and he fled to the Bulgarian prince Tervel, who even
aided him to regain his throne in 705.
Justinian now turned all his thoughts to wreaking his revenge on
the inhabitants of Cherson. Three times he sent fleets and troops to
the Crimea, but no sooner did the third army begin to beleaguer Cherson
with some success than the forces of the Chazars arrived and relieved the
town. Cherson retained thereafter its autonomy under an elected ad-
ministrator (proteuon) until the time of the Emperor Theophilus, that is
for more than a century.
From Byzantine sources we learn that the Emperor Leo the Isaurian
sent an ambassador to the Khagan of the Chazars to ask the khagan's
daughter as a bride for his son Constantine, who was then in his fifteenth
year. The Chazar princess was christened and named Irene (732). In
750 she became the mother of Leo, surnamed the Chazar. She introduced
into Constantinople the Chazar garment called toitzakia, which the
Emperors donned for festivities.
In the eighth century the Chazars had wars with the Arabs with
alternating success. Georgia and Armenia were devastated by these wars
during a period of eighty years. In 764 the Chazars again invaded these
territories, but after that they are not mentioned by the Arabian authors
before the end of the eighth century. The Khagan of the Chazars then
made an inroad into Armenia in 799 with a great army and ravaged it
cruelly, but finally he was expelled by the Caliph Hārūn ar-Rashid.
This was, as far as we know, the last predatory expedition of the Chazars
into a land south of the Caucasus.
The organisation of the imperial power of the Chazars is very inter-
esting. At the head of the State was the supreme khagan (ilek), but his
power was only nominal. The real government was in the hands of his
-
CA. VIL
## p. 190 (#232) ############################################
190
Chazar institutions
deputy, called khugan bey or even simply khagan and isha. He was the
chief commander of the forces and chief administrator. The supreme
khagan was never in touch with his people; he lived in his harem and
appeared in public only once every four months, when he took a ride
accompanied by a bodyguard which followed him at a distance of a mile.
His court numbered four thousand courtiers and his bodyguard twelve
thousand men, a number which was always kept undiminished.
The supreme Khagan of the Chazars practised polygamy, having
twenty-five legal wives, who were every one of them daughters of neigh-
bouring princes. Moreover he kept sixty concubines. The main force of
the Chazar army was formed by the bodyguard of 12,000. These troops
are called by the Arabian writers al-arsīya or al-lārisīya, which Westberg
says should be karisiya, because the overwhelming majority of them were
Muslim mercenaries from Khwārazm, the Khiva of our days. In addition
to these, men belonging to other nations (Mas“ūdi mentions “Russians”
and Slavs) were also taken into the bodyguard or other service of the
khagan. This Musulman bodyguard stipulated that it should not be
obliged to take part in a war against co-religionists, and that the vizier
must be chosen from its ranks.
בל
An ideal tolerance in religion was exercised in the dominions of the
Chazars. The Chazars proper (Turks) were originally all heathen and
Shamanists.
provocation, the Sultan of Aleppo, Ghiyāth-ad-Dīn Ghāzī, son of Saladin,
sent an embassy to demand that Leo should do homage or fight. Leo had
the envoys taken for diversion into the country for a few days while he
marched on the sultan, who was peacefully awaiting the return of his
embassy. The sultan's army fled before the sudden attack of the Arme-
nians, and he was obliged to pay Leo a larger tribute than he had hoped
to extort for himself.
Leo's last war, waged against his other old enemy, Iconium, was not
so successful. Too ill to fight himself, he sent the baïle Adam and the
grand-baron Constantine against 'Izz-ad-Dīn Kai-Kā’ūs 1, who had laid
CH. VI.
## p. 174 (#216) ############################################
174
Succession problems after Leo's death
siege to the fortress of Kapan. Adam withdrew from the campaign after
a quarrel with his colleague, and, by a feigned retreat and sudden volte
face, the Turks defeated the Armenians and continued their interrupted
siege of Kapan. But on hearing that Leo was ravaging Iconian territory,
the sultan made haste to return to his own country and to make
peace
with Armenia (1217).
Two years later Leo died, to the sorrow of his people. He had made
Armenia strong and respected, but even in his reign the old ambitions
of the princes were abreast of opportunity. When Leo was away in
Cyprus, visiting the relatives of his queen, Hethum of Lambron revolted
and invaded the king's territory. Leo was strong enough to seize and
imprison the rebel and his two sons on his return, but the revolt shewed
that Leo's power rested on the perilous foundation of his own personality,
and could not withstand the strain applied to it immediately after his
death.
Leo left no son. He had once adopted Ruben-Raymond of Antioch
as heir to the Cilician throne, but he repented of his choice on proving
the youth's incapacity. In the end, he left the crown to his daughter
Zabel under the regency of two Armenian magnates. One of the regents
was soon killed, but his colleague, the grand-baron Constantine, became
for a time the real ruler of the country. Though never crowned himself,
he made and unmade Armenian kings for the next six years (c. 1220-1226).
His first act was to discrown Ruben-Raymond of Antioch, who with
the help of crusaders had entered Tarsus and proclaimed himself king.
Constantine defeated the invaders at Mamistra, and imprisoned Ruben
at Tarsus, where he died. He then gave the crown to Philip of Antioch
(1222), to whom, with the consent of the Armenian princes and ecclesias-
tics, he had married Zabel. But the new king was a failure. He had
promised to conform to the laws and ceremonies of Armenia, but on the
advice of his father, Bohemond the One-Eyed, Prince of Antioch, he
soon broke his word, and began to favour the Latins at the expense of
the Armenians. He sent in secret to his father the royal ornaments of
Armenia and many other national treasures, and then tried to flee with
Zabel. Constantine caught and imprisoned him, and demanded the
return of the stolen heirlooms from Bohemond as the price of Philip's
safety. Bohemond preferred to let his son die in a foreign prison.
For the third time Constantine decided the fate of the Armenian
With the approval, not of the lady but of the Armenian
magnates, he married Zabel to his own son Hethum (Hayton). After
founding a dynasty of his own blood, he discrowned no more kings,
but with Hethum's consent he undertook to reorganise the Cilician
State, deeply rent by the succession question and shorn of part of Isauria
by watchful Iconium. Nevertheless, for the sake of peace, Constantine
made an alliance with the Sultan of Iconium, and conciliated the
principality of Lambron which had revolted in the reign of Leo the
crown.
## p. 175 (#217) ############################################
Armenian alliance with the Mongols
175
Great. Later on in Hethum's reign Constantine again governed Cilicia
in his son's absence.
The change of dynasty brought with it a change in policy. Cilicia
was no longer molested by the Greeks; and the Seljūqs of Iconium,
though troublesome for some years to come, were losing power. The
paramount danger to the Armenians, as to the Seljūqs themselves, came
from the Mamlūks of Egypt, and the crucial question for Armenian
rulers was where to turn for help against this new enemy. After more
than a century's experience the Armenians could not trust their Latin
neighbours as allies. Hethum I (1226–1270), though anxious to keep their
good will, and with his eyes always open to the possibility of help from
the West, put his trust not in the Christians but in the heathen Mongols,
who for half a century were to prove the best friends Armenia ever had.
At the beginning of Hethum's reign, the Mongols were overrunning
Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, but they did good service to the
Armenians by conquering the Seljūqs of Iconium and depriving them
of most of their Syrian and Cappadocian territories. Hethum made a
defensive and offensive alliance with Bachu, the Mongol general, and
in 1244 became the vassal of the Khan Ogdai. Ten years later he did
homage in person to Mangu Khan, and cemented the friendship between
the two nations by a long stay at the Mongol court.
Meanwhile the Seljūqs, who had incited Lambron to revolt early in
the reign, took advantage of Hethum's absence to invade Cilicia under
the Sultan 'Izz-ad-Dīn Kai-Kā’ūs II. Hethum defeated the Turks on
his return, seized several important towns, and recovered the whole of
Isauria.
His triumph gave him brief leisure. The rest of his reign was filled
with a struggle against the Mamlūks, whose northward advance was
fortunately opposed by the Mongols. Hethum and the Khan's brother
Hūlāgū joined forces at Edessa to undertake the capture of Jerusalem
from the Mamlūks. The allies defeated Nāşir, Sultan of Aleppo, and
divided his lands between themselves, but all hope of further success
vanished with the Khan's death. Hūlāgū hastened back to Tartary on
receiving the news, leaving his son Abāghā in charge of an army of
20,000 (1259). Baibars, Sultan of Egypt, took the opportunity to enter
Syria, and defeated the Mongols more than once. He seized Antioch
from the Christians and invaded Armenia with a large army. One of
Hethum's sons was slain, the other (afterwards Leo III) was taken captive.
The Mamlūks wasted part of Cilicia, disinterred the bones of Armenian
kings, and retraced their steps with numerous captives and much plunder.
All that Hethum could do was to ransom his son by sacrificing the castle
of Derbessak and by dismantling two other fortresses on the frontier. He
entrusted to Leo the government of the country, and after a turbulent
reign of forty-four years retired into a monastery.
Leo III (1270-1289) had to face the same problems that had troubled
CH, VI.
## p. 176 (#218) ############################################
176
War with the Mamlūks and Seljūqs
his father-internal revolt and the enmity of Egypt and Iconium. In
addition he was scourged by personal illness and by a visitation of plague
and famine. Taking advantage of disaffection among the Armenian
princes, who had revolted unsuccessfully against Leo, Baibars invaded
Cilicia with an army of Turks and Arabs. Leo was deserted and fled to
the mountains, leaving the country defenceless. Sis repulsed the invaders,
but Tarsus capitulated. Its magnificent buildings were set on fire,
thousands of its people were massacred, and thousands more led into
captivity (1274). This disaster was followed by famine and plague. Leo
himself fell ill; his two sons died.
Scarcely healed of his sickness, the king had to face a second Mamlūk
invasion. But this time the Armenian princes rallied to him, and as
usual saved their country from final catastrophe. The Mamlūks were
caught in a trap, and suffered losses so great that the corpses of the
dead prevented the living from taking flight. Baibars, gravely wounded
by an arrow, reached Damascus to die (1276).
The Khan Abāghā sent delegates to congratulate Leo on his victory,
and to propose that he should add Turkey (Rūm or Asia Minor) and
several Mesopotamian towns to his Cilician kingdom. Leo wisely refused
this offer of a vast realm, but he agreed to the Khan's other proposal of
addressing letters to the Pope and the kings of the West to ask them to
join the Mongols for the capture of the Holy Land from the Mamlūks.
On 25 November 1276 John and James Vassal, the messengers of Abāghā
Khan, announced to Edward I of England their approaching arrival in
the West with letters from the Mongol Emperor and the King of Armenia.
After defeating the Seljūgs of Iconium (1278), who had invaded
Armenian territory while the Armenians were repulsing the Mamlūks,
Leo was bound by his alliance to go to the help of the Mongols, who
were again at war with the Mamlūks. The Armenians joined the
Mongol army under Mangū Tīmūr without mishap, and met the
Mamlūks, led by Saif-ad-Dīn Qalā’ūn al-Alfi, at Hims on the Orontes
(1281). The Mamlūks would have been defeated but for the inexplicable
conduct of Mangū Tīmūr, which gave the day to the sultan, already at
the point of flight. As a result, Leo barely escaped to Armenia with
thirty horsemen. The Mongols returned to face the anger of their Khan,
who beheaded both the generals and forced the soldiers to wear women's
clothes. After this disaster the Mongols were hostile to Armenia for
two years, because Abāghā's successor hated the Christians. But on
the accession of another Khan in 1284, the Mongols resumed their old
friendship with the Armenians, and Leo was able to spend the last five
years of his reign in works of peace.
Prosperity vanished with Leo's death. Under his son Hethum
(Hayton) II the One-Eyed (1289–1305), Armenia was in a peculiarly
difficult position. The Mamlūk rulers of Syria and Palestine were bent
on annihilating Armenia, the last bulwark of Christendom. Hethum had
## p. 177 (#219) ############################################
Unstable government of Hethum II
177
no reliable allies. The Mongols were not only losing power, but were
turning towards Islām. The Christians of the West were broken reeds,
for the time of great impulses and united effort was past, even if the
Armenian people had not opposed religious agreement with Rome.
Hethum himself weakened Cilicia by his fitful sovereignty. The author
of a national chronicle in verse, he preferred the part of monk to that of
king, and long refused to be crowned. He abdicated three times, once
to enter a monastery, once to turn Franciscan, once to become “Father
of the King” to his nephew Leo IV. At a fourth juncture abdication
was thrust upon him. As a result he ruled Cilicia for little more than
half the time that elapsed between his accession in 1289 and his death
in 1307. From 1290 to 1291, and again from 1294 to 1296, he entrusted
the government to his brother Thoros III. Thoros in his turn became
a monk, and when Hethum went with him to Constantinople to see their
sister Ritha he left a third brother Smbat (Sempad) to rule Armenia
in his absence (1296–1297). This time he did not intend to abdicate,
but Smbat had himself crowned at Sis with the consent of Ghāzān Khān,
the Mongol ruler of Persia, and married a Tartar princess. On Hethum's
return, Smbat drove him and Thoros out of Cilicia. They appealed in
vain to the khan and to their kinsfolk in Cyprus and Constantinople.
Smbat seized them near Caesarea in Cappadocia and imprisoned them in
the High Fortress (Bardsrberd), where Thoros was put to death and
Hethum blinded and left in chains (1298). This coup d'état was reversed
by a fourth brother Constantine, who dethroned and imprisoned Smbat.
When, however, the Armenians wished to reinstate Hethum, who was
slowly recovering his sight, Constantine repented of his loyalty and tried
to release Smbat. But, with the help of Templars and Hospitallers,
Hethum in his turn seized his brothers and sent them to Constantinople
(1299). After this experience he did not abdicate again for six years.
Such unstable government did not help the Armenians to resist the
Mamlūks. But Hethum was a good soldier when the militant side of
his nature was uppermost, and until 1302, when the Tartar alliance was
lost, he defended Cilicia with moderate success. It was the threat of
invasion by Ashraf, the successor of Qalā'un, that finally decided him to
be crowned (1289). He sent troops to guard the frontiers and appealed
for help to Arghūn Khān and to Pope Nicholas III. Nothing but vague
promises from Philip the Fair came of these appeals, but indirectly
Cilicia was saved by the Christians, who at the Pope's instigation laid
siege to Alexandria. After taking Romkla, the seat of the Katholikos,
and massacring its inhabitants, the sultan hurried back to Egypt with
the Katholikos in his train, and Hethum gained peace and the release of
the Katholikos at the price of several fortresses (1289-1290).
Some years later, during the contention between Hethum and his
brothers, Susamish, viceroy of Damascus, prepared to invade Cilicia at
the head of a Mamlūk army. Hethum scattered his troops and handed
C. MED. H. VOL. IV. CH. VI.
12
## p. 178 (#220) ############################################
178
Loss of the Mongol alliance
him over to Ghāzān Khān. After this success, Hethum and the khan
took the offensive, and tried to seize Syria and Palestine from the
Mamlūks. But the khan suddenly returned to Persia to repress the
revolt of his kinsman Baidū, and left his troops under the command of
Quțlughshāh. Although Hethum and Qutlughshāh were at first successful,
they were finally, after losing many men in the Euphrates, compelled
to retreat.
Ghāzān Khān had promised on leaving Hethum that he would come
back to undertake the conquest of the Holy Land for the Christians, but
in 1302 he died. His successor, Uljāitū, far from fulfilling that promise,
turned Musulman and forswore the ancient alliance with Armenia. The
Mongols made war on the Armenians and spent a year reducing Cilicia
to a heap of ruins. Turks and Mamlūks then invaded the country three
times, and levelled the ruins left standing by the Mongols. Again
Hethum was roused to action. As the enemy were about to depart laden
with plunder, he attacked them and killed or captured nearly seven
thousand of their men. The Sultan of Egypt made peace; and for a
time the Turks disappeared from Cilicia.
All through Hethum's reign, the defence of Cilicia depended upon
the military qualities of himself and of his people alone. He made the
most of his diplomatic opportunities, but with no appreciable result. He
tried hard to keep the Mongol alliance, but even before 1302 the khan
could not help him against Ashraf and would not help him against his
brother Smbat. He made marriage alliances with Constantinople and
Cyprus, giving his sister Mariam in marriage to Michael IX, son of the
Emperor Andronicus, and marrying another sister Zabel to Amaury,
brother of the King of Cyprus. After the loss of the Mongol alliance, he
redoubled the efforts of his predecessor to earn Western help by religious
concession. The Katholikos Grigor VII Anavarzetsi prepared a profession
of faith in nine chapters, and proposed to introduce into the Armenian
Church various changes of ritual conforming to the Roman usage. Before
anything further was done, the Katholikos died and Hethum resigned
the crown to his nephew Leo IV (1305–1307). In 1307 Leo and his
uncle summoned the princes and the ecclesiasties to the First Council of
Sis. There, owing to the king's insistence, the profession of faith drafted
by the late Katholikos was read and adopted. But when the people knew
of it, their fury overleapt the bounds of loyalty and patriotism. In their
anger they roused Bilarghu the Mongol against Hethum and Leo. Al-
ready in Cilicia, Bilarghu treacherously invited the king and his uncle to
Anazarbus, where he put them to death with the princes of their persuasion
(13 August 1307).
All hope of gaining Western aid in return for religious concession was
once more deferred. The only tangible fruit of Hethum's advances to the
Latins had been the help given him by the Templars and Hospitallers
against his rebellious brothers. Tried and found wanting time after time,
## p. 179 (#221) ############################################
Overtures to the West. Nationalist reaction
179
the rulers of the West were nevertheless Armenia's only possible friends.
Like Hethum, his successor Oshin? (1307–1320) worked steadily for
their co-operation. Like Hethum, he made marriage alliances, sought
religious accommodation, sent despairing appeals for help. And like
Hethum he was left to defend Armenia himself.
Isabel of Lusignan, daughter of King Hugh III, was his first wife, and
her successor was Joan of Anjou, niece of King Robert of Naples and
daughter of Philip I of Anjou-Taranto, known as Philip II, Latin Emperor
of the East. Besides marrying into two Western families, Oshin tried
to solve the religious problem. In 1316 he summoned to Adana an as-
sembly which examined and adopted the ecclesiastical settlement made
at Sis nine years before. The king and the Katholikos Constantine II
had the dogma of the Procession of the Holy Ghost proclaimed in con-
formity with Catholic teaching. But once more the angry people frustrated
the will of their rulers, and only the overwhelming peril from the Mam-
lūks could dull the edge of religious discord. As appeals for help sent to
John XXII and to Philip of Valois were fruitless, the burden of defending
Cilicia fell upon Oshin. He had expelled Bilarghu and his Mongols
from the country at the beginning of his reign, avenging on them the
death of his kinsmen. After this he had found time to build strongholds
and churches, especially in Tarsus, where he restored and strengthened
the famous ramparts, and built the magnificent church now known as
Kilisa-jāmi' (=church-mosque). But in the middle of his religious troubles
the Mamlūks again threatened Cilicia, and he spent the last years of his
reign defending the country single-handed. For twenty years after his
death (1320–1340) Armenia struggled unavailingly against the rising
power of the Mainlūks.
The minority of Oshin's son Leo V (1320–1342) produced a nationalist
crisis. The long-continued friendship of Armenian rulers with the Latins,
their adoption of Latin institutions, and their intermarriage with Latin
families, had made their court more Latin than Armenian; while their
friendly discussions with the Papacy had strengthened the cause of the
Uniates, who worked for a complete union of the Armenian Church with
Rome. But Leo's minority gave the nationalists their chance. The
government was in the hands of a council of regency composed of four
barons, Leo himself being under the guardianship of Oshin of Gorigos.
Oshin married Leo's mother, exiled the king's Lusignan cousins, and
married him to his own daughter in order to counteract Latin in-
fluences. When Leo came to power, however, he undid Oshin's work.
He married a Spanish wife connected with the Lusignans (Constance of
Aragon, widow of Henry II of Lusignan), recalled his cousins, and finally
put Oshin to death. During his reign Cilicia was confined to its ancient
boundaries, but though the country's defences were in ruins and the
i Probably the brother of Leo IV, and not, as some writers say, of Hethum.
12-2
CH. v.
## p. 180 (#222) ############################################
180 The Mamlūks conquer Armenia. The Lusignans
princes were occupied with political and ecclesiastical disputes, Leo im-
mersed himself in religious discussions.
Meanwhile Nāşir, Sultan of the Mamlūks, on hearing that Europe
was preparing for a new crusade, made an alliance with the Tartars and
Turkomans for the conquest of Armenia. Devastated and plundered by
successive armies of Tartars, Turkomans, and Mamlūks, Cilicia was once
more saved from complete destruction by a few heroic Armenians. They
hid in passes through which the enemy had to march, and massacred
several thousand Mamlūks. The sultan agreed to a fifteen years' truce
on condition that the Armenians paid to the Egyptians an annual tribute
of 50,000 florins, half the customs and revenue from the maritime trade
of Ayas, and half the sea-salt. In return, the sultan undertook to
rebuild Ayas and the other fortresses at his own expense, and not to
occupy any stronghold or castle in Cilicia with his troops.
At last, about 1335, Philip VI of France decided to go to the help of
the Armenians, and Nāşir resolved to conquer them. The net result of
the two decisions might have been foreseen. On the one hand, Leo received
10,000 forins from Philip with a few sacks of corn from the Pope; on the
other, Armenia was invaded and conquered by the Mamlūks. Leo fled
to the mountains (1337); but after forcing him to swear on Bible and
Cross never again to enter into relations with Europe, Nāşir left him to
rule what was left of his country until his death in 1342. He was the
last of the Rubenian-Hethumian rulers, who thus left Armenia as they
had found it, a prey to the foreigner.
For a generation after Leo's death (1342–1373), Armenia was ruled
by Latin kings. Two of them were Lusignan princes connected by mar-
riage with the Hethumian dynasty, and the other two were usurpers not
of royal blood.
The Lusignans derived their claim to the Armenian crown from the
marriage of Zabel, sister of Hethum II, to Amaury of Tyre, brother of
Henry II of Cyprus (1295). John and Guy, two sons of this marriage, were
in the service of the Emperor at Constantinople when Leo V died. Some
months after Leo's death, John, the younger, was called upon to admini-
ster the Cilician kingdom, not as king, but as baïle or regent. At his
suggestion, the elder brother Guy left Constantinople and accepted the
crown of Armeno-Cilicia in 1342.
Crowned by the Katholikos according to Armenian rites, Guy acted
at first as an Armenian patriot, refusing to pay tribute to the Sultans of
Egypt and Turkey. But when Egyptian invasions followed, Guy not only
adopted the time-honoured custom of appealing for help to the Pope
(Clement VI) and of promising to effect if possible the union of the Ar-
menian Church with Rome, but surrounded himself with Latin princes
to whom he entrusted the defence of towns and fortresses. The Pope
actually sent a thousand horsemen and a thousand pieces of Byzantine
## p. 181 (#223) ############################################
Failure and exile of Leo VI
181
was at
silver, but the Armenians, resenting Guy's Latinising policy, assassinated
him with his brother Bohemond and the Western knights who had come
to his aid (1344). His other brother John had died a natural death a
few months earlier.
The next king, the usurper Constantine IV, son of Baldwin, marshal
of Armenia, was more successful (1344-1363). With the help of. Theo-
dates of Rhodes and Hugh of Cyprus he repulsed an Egyptian invasion
with great slaughter, leaving Ayas alone in the enemy's hands. He hoped
that the news of his success would move Europe to help him, but when
his embassy returned empty-handed from Venice, Paris, London, and
Rome, he marched without allies against the Mamlūks, drove them from
the country, and captured Alexandretta from them (1357). As a result
of his victory and of his efforts to subdue the religious discord, Armenia
peace
for the rest of his life.
Constantine IV was succeeded by a second usurper, Constantine V,
son of a Cypriot serf who had become an Armenian baron. Elected king
because of his wealth, he offered the crown to Peter I, King of Cyprus,
but when Peter was assassinated in 1369 Constantine kept the throne
himself. Four years later, the Armenians put him to death, and during
the anarchy which followed they entrusted the government to the widow
of Constantine IV, Mary of Gorigos, who had already played an active
part in Armenian politics before the king's assassination.
The last King of Armenia was Leo VI of Lusignan (1373, d. 1393).
His father was John, brother of King Guy, and his grandmother was
Zabel, sister of Hethum II. He himself had been imprisoned with his
mother Soldane of Georgia by Constantine IV, who had wished to destroy
the royal Armenian line. His reign was not a success. All his efforts to
avert the long-impending doom of Cilicia were powerless. He fought
energetically against the Mamlūks, but was led captive to Cairo (1375).
There he appointed as almoner and confessor John Dardel, whose recently-
published chronicle has thrown unexpected light upon the last years of
the Cilician kingdom. In 1382 the king was released and spent the rest
of his life in various countries of Europe. He died in 1393 at Paris,
making Richard II of England his testamentary executor, and his epitaph
is still preserved in the basilica of Saint-Denis. After his death, the Kings
of Cyprus were the nominal Kings of Armenia until 1489, when the title
passed to Venice. Almost at the same time (1485), by reason of the mar-
riage (1433) of Anne of Lusignan with Duke Louis I of Savoy, the rulers
of Piedmont assumed the empty claim to a kingdom of the past.
During the exile of Leo VI, Greater Armenia was enduring a prolonged
Tartar invasion. After conquering Baghdad (1386), Tamerlane entered
Vaspurakan. At Van he caused the people to be hurled from the rock
which towers above the city; at Ernjak he massacred all the inhabitants;
at Sīwās he had the Armenian garrison buried alive. In 1389 he devas-
tated Turuberan and Taron; in 1394 he finished his campaign at Kars,
-
-
CH. VI.
## p. 182 (#224) ############################################
182
Armenia under Muslim rule
where he took captive all the people whom he did not massacre, and
passed on into Asia Minor. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the
old Armenian territory had been divided among its Muslim conquerors-
Mamlūks, Turks, and Tartars. Yūsuf, Sultan of Egypt, ruled Sassun;
the Emir Erghin governed Vaspurakan from Ostan; and Tainerlane's
son, Mīrān Shāh, reigned at Tabriz. These Musulman emirs made war
upon one another at the expense of the Armenian families who had not
migrated to Asia Minor on the fall of the Bagratid kingdom. By the
close of the fifteenth century Cilicia, too, was finally absorbed into the
Ottoman Empire.
Kings and kingdom had passed, but the Armenians still possessed
their Church. In the midst of desolation, schools and convents maintained
Armenian art and culture, and handed on the torch of nationality. Some
of the Armenian manuscripts which exist to-day were written in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The long religious controversy, of
which the Uniates were the centre, survived the horrors of the period,
and continued to agitate the country. Among the protagonists were
John of Khrna, John of Orotn, Thomas of Medzoph, Gregory of Tathew,
and Gregory of Klath. In 1438 Armenian delegates attended the Council
of Florence with the Greeks and Latins in order to unify the rites and
ceremonies of the Churches.
The most important work of the Church was administrative. During
Tamerlane's invasion the Katholikos had established the pontifical seat
among the ruins of Sis. But towards the middle of the next century Sis
rapidly declined, and it was decided to move the seat to Echmiadzin
in the old Bagratid territory. As Grigor IX refused to leave Sis, a new
Katholikos, Kirakos Virapensis, was elected for Echmiadzin, and from 1441
the Armenian Church was divided for years between those who accepted
the primacy of Echmiadzin and those who were faithful to Sis. Finally,
the Katholikos of Echmiadzin became, in default of a king, the head of the
Armenian people. With his council and synod he made himself respon-
sible for the national interests of the Armenians, and administered such
possessions as remained to them. After the Turkish victory of 1453,
Mahomet II founded an Armenian colony in Constantinople and placed it
under the supervision of Joakim, the Armenian Bishop of Brūsa, to whom
he afterwards gave the title of “Patriarch” with jurisdiction over all the
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. From that time to this, the Arme-
nian Patriarch of Constantinople has carried on the work of the Katholikos
and has been the national representative of the Armenian people.
לל
## p. 183 (#225) ############################################
183
CHAPTER VII.
(A)
THE EMPIRE AND ITS NORTHERN NEIGHBOURS.
While the Germans impressed their characteristic stamp on both the
medieval and modern history of Western Europe, it was reserved for the
Eastern Slavs, the Russians, to build a great empire on the borderlands
of Europe and Asia. But the work of civilisation was far more difficult
for the Russians than for the German race. The barbaric Germans settled
in regions of an old civilisation among the conquered Romans and
Romanised peoples, whereas the geographical and ethnical surroundings
entered by the Eastern Slavs were unfavourable, in so far as no old in-
heritance existed there to further any endeavours in civilisation; this
had to be built up from the very foundations. Boundless forests, vast
lakes and swamps, were great obstacles to the colonisation of the immense
plain of eastern Europe, and the long stretch of steppes in southern
Russia was for many centuries the home of Asiatic nomads, who not only
made any intercourse with Greek civilisation impossible but even en-
dangered incessantly the results of the native progress of the Russian
Slavs.
The growth of the Russian empire implies not only the extension of
the area of its civilisation but also the absorption of many elements
belonging to foreign races and speaking foreign tongues, and their
coalescence with the dominant Russian nation.
It was only the southernmost parts of the later Russian empire that
had from time immemorial active connexions with the several centres of
ancient Greek civilisation. In the course of the seventh century B. c.
numerous Greek colonies were founded on the northern shore of the
Black Sea, such as Tyras, Olbia, Chersonesus, Theodosia, Panticapaeum
(now Kerch), and Tanais. These towns were the intermediaries of the
commerce between the barbaric peoples of what is now Russia and the
civilised towns of Greece. They were at the same time centres of Greek
civilisation, which they spread among their nearest neighbours who in-
habited the southern steppes of Russia and were known in history first
under the name of Scythians and then of Şarmatians. Of what race these
peoples were, is not clearly established.
CH. VII.
## p. 184 (#226) ############################################
184
Alans, Goths, and Huns
The ancient historians mention several tribes who lived to the north
and north-west of the Scythians and Sarmatians, and were in all proba-
bility Slavs or Finns.
The Scythian and Sarmatian nomads were a continuous danger
to the security of the Greek colonies; they extorted from them regular
yearly tributes. Still the chief towns to the north of the Black Sea
did succeed though with difficulty in maintaining their existence during
the whole period of the Scythian and Sarmatian dominion. These
towns in course of time exchanged Greek independence for a Roman
protectorate.
After the Sarmatians there appeared new enemies of the Greek colonies
along the northern littoral of the Black Sea. Already in the first cen-
tury of our era the name of the Sarmatians is superseded by that of
Alans, which new generic name, according to the explanation of ancient
historians, comprehends several nomadic races, mainly Iranian.
In the second and third centuries A. D. new immigrants poured in to the
northern shores of the Black Sea. The western part of the steppes was
occupied by German races, especially by the Goths, the eastern part by
Asiatic Huns. The Goths remained more than two centuries in the
steppes of southern Russia and the lands bordering the Black Sea,
whence they made incursions into the Roman Empire. By the inroad of
overwhelming masses of the Huns the Gothic state was subverted in
A. D. 375, and the Goths disappeared slowly from the borders of the Black
Sea. Only a small part of them remained, some in the Caucasus and
others till much later in the Crimea. The other Goths acquired new
homes in other lands of Europe. Of the Greek colonies on the north
of the Black Sea only those in the Crimea outlived the Gothic period.
With the expansion of the power of the Huns a new period begins
in the history of Eastern and Central Europe. Hitherto Asia sent its
nomads only as far as the steppes of southern Russia. The Huns are the
first nomads who by their conquests extend Asia to the lands on the
central Danube. Like a violent tempest their hordes not only swept
over the south Russian steppes but also penetrated to Roman Pannonia,
where Attila, their king, in the first half of the fifth century founded
the centre of his gigantic but short-lived empire. After Attila's death
his empire fell to pieces, and the Huns disappeared almost entirely
among the neighbouring nations. Only a small part fled to the Black
Sea, where they encountered the hordes of the nomadic Bulgars, a people
in all probability of Finnish (Ugrian) origin, but mixed with Turkish
elements. The Bulgars were originally settled in the lands between
the rivers Kama and Volga, where even later the so-called Kama and
Volga Bulgars are found, but part of them moved at an unknown time
to the south-west, and when the Huns had migrated to Pannonia came
to the Black Sea, where they appear already in the second half of the fifth
## p. 185 (#227) ############################################
Bulgars, Avars, and Turks
185
century. Before they arrived there they had lived under so strong a
Turkish influence that they could easily blend with the remnants of the
Huns. The Greek authors of the sixth century especially mention in
these regions two Bulgarian tribes, the Kutrigurs or Kuturgurs and the
Utigurs or Utrigurs. The Kutrigurs roamed as nomads on the right
bank of the Don to the west, the Utigurs from the Don to the south,
eastwards of the Sea of Azov. After the departure of the other Bul-
garian hordes in the second half of the seventh century only the Utigurs
remained in the lands near the Black Sea; they are later known as the
Black Bulgars.
Like other barbarians the hordes of the Bulgars were an unceasing
source of trouble to the Eastern Roman Empire. Justinian was forced
to pay a yearly tribute to the Kutrigurs. But, as even this subsidy did
not restrain them from frequent invasions, he made use of the common
Byzantine policy, bribing the Utigurs to be their enemies.
The Utigurs violently attacked the Greek colonies situated on both
shores of the Cimmerian Bosphorus. Panticapaeum, better known to the
Byzantine authors as Bosphorus, resisted only a short time, and finally had
to acknowledge the Utigurs' supremacy in order to save some sort of
autonomy. In 522, during Justinian I's reign, Bosphorus had a Greek
garrison.
Immediately after the Huns other nomads from Asia thronged to
Europe. They were part of a people named by the Chinese Yuan-Yuan
but calling themselves Yü-kue-lü, who in Europe became known by the
name of Avars. This nation appeared in the territory of the empire of
the T'o-pa, founded by a secession from the Chinese Empire.
The empire of the T'o-pa was short-lived. The Yuan-Yuan revolted
against their masters and founded on a part of their territory a separate
state, for a time under the supremacy of the T'o-pa, but in the second
half of the fourth century they rose to such power that they tried to
gain their independence. They succeeded in this endeavour under their
chief Shelun (402–410), who assumed the title of Khagan. From that
time down to the sixth century the Yuan-Yuan became the foremost
people in Central Asia. They ruled over Eastern Turkestan, and over
the present territories of Mongolia and Manchuria as far as Korea. But
from the end of the fifth century the empire of the Yuan-Yuan was
already in decline.
The subdued races took advantage of this weakness and endeavoured
to shake off their yoke. The Chinese call these hordes T'u-küe, the
nearest they could get to Turks. The Chinese knew of a long series
of Turkish hordes and counted them among their tributary tribes.
Some of these hordes were also under the dominion of the Huns. In the
middle of the sixth century the half mythical chieftain Tu-mên united
the numerous Turkish tribes and rose to the leadership of the whole
CH. VII.
## p. 186 (#228) ############################################
186
The Avars in Europe
Turkish nation in northern and central Asia, whereupon the Turks
allied themselves with the T'o-pa against the Yuan-Yuan. These suc-
cumbed, their Khagan A-na-kuei (Anagay) in 552 committed suicide,
and their empire came to an end.
That part of the Turks which formerly was under the dominion of
the Yuan-Yuan remained in their homes and acknowledged the supremacy
of T'u-mên, but the other part migrated to the west into the steppes of
southern Russia and further into Pannonia. These new nomadic hordes
appear in Europe under the name of Avars. But according to Theo-
phylact Simocatta the European Avars were not the genuine Avars but
Pseudo-avars. In any case they, like the other Asiatic nomads, were not
an ethnically pure race but a mixed people.
During the migration the number of the Avars increased considerably,
since other tribes, kindred as well as foreign, joined them, and among
these was also a part of the Bulgars. Soon after their arrival in Europe
in 558 the Avars encountered the Eastern Slavs, called Antae in the
ancient histories, the ancestors of the later South Russian Slavonic races.
The Avars repeatedly invaded the lands of the Antae, devastating the
country, dragging away the inhabitants as prisoners, and carrying with
them great spoils.
A few years later, in 568, they appear in Pannonia, which they selected
as the centre of their extensive dominion, and where they roamed for two
centuries and a half. From there they made their predatory incursions
into the neighbouring lands, especially into the Balkan peninsula, often in
company with the Slavs. The worst period of these devastations by the
Avars lasted no longer than about sixty years, for they soon experienced
several disasters. From the western Slavonic lands they had been driven
by Samo, the founder of the first great Slavonic empire (623–658), and
in the East the Bulgarian ruler Kovrat, who was in friendly relations
with the Greeks, shook off their yoke. After 626, when the Avars
beleaguered Constantinople in vain, the Balkan peninsula remained un-
molested by their inroads, their last hostile incursion being the aid they
gave to the Slavs in their attack on Thessalonica. Moreover there began
in their dominion internal disorders which were in all probability the
principal cause of the downfall of their power. In 631 there arose a
severe conflict between the genuine Avars and their allied Bulgarian
horde, because the chieftain of the Bulgarians had the courage to com-
pete with an Avar for the throne. A fight arose between the two
contending parties, which resulted in the victory of the Avars. The
vanquished Bulgarian and 9000 of his followers with their families were
driven from Pannonia.
During the period in which the dominion of the Avars reached from
the middle course of the Danube almost to the Dnieper, there flourished
between the Sea of Azov and the Caspian the dominion of the Chazars,
## p. 187 (#229) ############################################
Chazars and Turks
187
nomads of another Turkish race, which in course of time became a half-
settled nation. The Chazars formed one of the best-organised Turkish
states and their dominion lasted several centuries. Their origin is entirely
unknown.
The history of the Chazars becomes clearer with the beginning of the
sixth century, when they made repeated inroads into Armenia, crossed
the Caucasus, and extended their dominion to the river Araxes. The
Chazar warriors not only devastated Armenia, but pushed their inroads
even into Asia Minor. Kawad (Kobad), King of Persia, sent an army of
12,000 men to expel them, and conquered the land between the rivers
Cyrus and Araxes. Having moreover occupied Albania (Shirvan), Kawad
secured the northern frontier of the land by a long wall stretching from
the sea to the Gate of the Alans (the fortress of Dariel) and con-
taining three hundred fortified posts. The Persians ceased to keep
this wall in good repair, but Kawad's son Chosroes I Nūshirwān
(531-578), with the consent of the ruler of the Chazars, had erected the
Iron Caspian Gate, from which the neighbouring town near the Caspian
Sea was called in Arabic Bāb-al-abwāb, Gate of Gates, and in Persian
Darband (gate). The ramparts, however, erected by Chosroes near Dar-
band and running along the Caucasian mountains for a distance of 40
parasangs (about 180 miles) were of no great use, as the Chazars forced
their way by the Darband gate into Persia and devastated the land.
In the last quarter of the sixth century the Chazars were a part of
the great Turkish empire, founded by T'u-mên. His son, whose name is
given in the Chinese annals as Sse-kin and by the Greek authors as Askin
or Askil (553-569), ruled over an immense territory stretching from the
desert of Shamo as far as the western sea, and from the basin of the river
Tarim to the tundras near the river Kien (Kem or Yenisey). The
Turkish empire was further extended by his successor Khagan Dizabul,
named also Silzibul, in Turkish Sinjibu. During his reign also the
Chazars belonged to the Turkish empire.
The Persian empire was a great obstacle to the tendency of the
Turks to expand, and as the Byzantines were also the enemies of the
Persians, the Turks sought to conclude alliances with them against the
common foe. Khagan Sse-kin in 563 was the first to send an embassy
to the Byzantines to negotiate a treaty of alliance, and under Justin II
in 568 another mission was sent by the Turks to Constantinople. In
return the Greeks also sent their ambassadors to the Turks; and in
569 Zemarchus journeyed from Cilicia to Central Asia as Justin II's
envoy.
Among other embassies of the Greeks to the Turks should be men-
tioned that of Valentinus in 579, which was to notify the accession of the
new Emperor Tiberius II to the throne. On Valentinus' second journey
he had 106 Turks among his retinue. At that time there lived a
CH. VII.
## p. 188 (#230) ############################################
188
Growing power of the Chazars
considerable number of Turks in Constantinople, principally those who
had come there as attendants of Byzantine envoys on their return journey.
After a long and arduous journey, Valentinus arrived at the seat of
Khagan Turxanth in the steppes between the Volga and the Caucasus,
evidently one of the khagans subordinate to the supreme khagan who
ruled over the Chazars, and from here the Byzantine embassy continued
its way into the interior of the Turkish empire to reach the supreme
khagan. During their stay there Turxanth acted in open enmity against
the Byzantines, assaulting their towns in the Crimea, assisted by Anagay,
prince of the Utigurs and vassal of the Turks.
The power of the Turks declined during the reign of Sinjibu's suc-
cessors. At the end of the sixth century there began contests for the
khagan's throne. Although the supreme khagan was able in 597 to sub-
due the revolt with the aid of the three other khagans, the disturbances
were soon renewed, and the horde of Turks dwelling between the Volga
and the Caspian Sea, the Chazars, freed themselves from the power of
the supreme Turkish khagan in the early years of the seventh century.
During the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries the empire of the
Chazars was very powerful. As soon as the Chazars became independent
of the supremacy of the Turkestan Turks, they expanded their dominion
in all directions to the injury of the Black Sea Bulgars (Utigurs), the
Crimean Greeks, and other peoples. The Bulgarians were for a long
period in the seventh century the allies of the Byzantines. In 619
Organas, lord of the “Huns” (obviously the Utigurs), came with his
magnates and their wives to Constantinople and embraced with them
the Christian faith. In like manner Kovrat, Khan of the Bulgars, having
freed himself from the power of the Avars (635), became an ally of the
Byzantines. But when Kovrat died and his sons had divided his realm
between them, Batbayan, the youngest of them, who remained near the
Sea of Azov, was compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of the Chazars
and to pay them a tribute.
When in the second half of the seventh century the Arabian Caliphate
succeeded the Persian empire, the Chazars waged wars with the Arabs.
Their relations with the Byzantines did not change. ) They had been the
steady allies of the Greeks against the Persians, 'and remained their
allies also against the Arabs, in spite of frequent conflicts due to their
opposing interests in the Crimean peninsula.
During the reign of the third Caliph, Othman, the Arabs consolidated
their power in Armenia and even took a part of their lands from the
Chazars. After 683 Armenia was again menaced by the Chazars, but
in 690 they were severely defeated and many were burned in churches
where they had sought shelter. According to Makin, the Arabs passed
the Caspian gate and killed many Chazars; those who survived were
compelled to embrace Islām.
## p. 189 (#231) ############################################
Relations with the Empire
189
At the beginning of the eighth century the Chazars already ruled
over a part of the Crimea, and conquered almost the whole of the peninsula
before the end of the century; only the town of Cherson kept its in-
dependence, although for a short time it fell under their rule. Towards
the end of the seventh century Justinian II, the dethroned Emperor
(685-695), was sent there into exile. Some time later he tried to regain
his throne, but when the inhabitants of the city attempted to hinder his
design, he fled to the Gothic town of Doras in the Crimea, whence he
sent to the Khagan of the Chazars, Vusir (Wazir) Gliavar, asking for a
hospitable reception. This the khagan accorded him with much kindness,
and gave him his sister Theodora in marriage. Justinian then lived some
time in Phanagoria or Tamatarcha (on the peninsula now called Taman),
which at that time belonged to the Chazars. But the Emperor Tiberius
Apsimar induced the khagan by incessant bribes to turn traitor and to
send him Justinian either dead or alive. The khagan ordered his tuduns
(lieutenants) in Phanagoria and Bosphorus to slay Justinian. The plans
for the execution of the treachery were ready, but Theodora warned her
husband in time, and he fled to the Bulgarian prince Tervel, who even
aided him to regain his throne in 705.
Justinian now turned all his thoughts to wreaking his revenge on
the inhabitants of Cherson. Three times he sent fleets and troops to
the Crimea, but no sooner did the third army begin to beleaguer Cherson
with some success than the forces of the Chazars arrived and relieved the
town. Cherson retained thereafter its autonomy under an elected ad-
ministrator (proteuon) until the time of the Emperor Theophilus, that is
for more than a century.
From Byzantine sources we learn that the Emperor Leo the Isaurian
sent an ambassador to the Khagan of the Chazars to ask the khagan's
daughter as a bride for his son Constantine, who was then in his fifteenth
year. The Chazar princess was christened and named Irene (732). In
750 she became the mother of Leo, surnamed the Chazar. She introduced
into Constantinople the Chazar garment called toitzakia, which the
Emperors donned for festivities.
In the eighth century the Chazars had wars with the Arabs with
alternating success. Georgia and Armenia were devastated by these wars
during a period of eighty years. In 764 the Chazars again invaded these
territories, but after that they are not mentioned by the Arabian authors
before the end of the eighth century. The Khagan of the Chazars then
made an inroad into Armenia in 799 with a great army and ravaged it
cruelly, but finally he was expelled by the Caliph Hārūn ar-Rashid.
This was, as far as we know, the last predatory expedition of the Chazars
into a land south of the Caucasus.
The organisation of the imperial power of the Chazars is very inter-
esting. At the head of the State was the supreme khagan (ilek), but his
power was only nominal. The real government was in the hands of his
-
CA. VIL
## p. 190 (#232) ############################################
190
Chazar institutions
deputy, called khugan bey or even simply khagan and isha. He was the
chief commander of the forces and chief administrator. The supreme
khagan was never in touch with his people; he lived in his harem and
appeared in public only once every four months, when he took a ride
accompanied by a bodyguard which followed him at a distance of a mile.
His court numbered four thousand courtiers and his bodyguard twelve
thousand men, a number which was always kept undiminished.
The supreme Khagan of the Chazars practised polygamy, having
twenty-five legal wives, who were every one of them daughters of neigh-
bouring princes. Moreover he kept sixty concubines. The main force of
the Chazar army was formed by the bodyguard of 12,000. These troops
are called by the Arabian writers al-arsīya or al-lārisīya, which Westberg
says should be karisiya, because the overwhelming majority of them were
Muslim mercenaries from Khwārazm, the Khiva of our days. In addition
to these, men belonging to other nations (Mas“ūdi mentions “Russians”
and Slavs) were also taken into the bodyguard or other service of the
khagan. This Musulman bodyguard stipulated that it should not be
obliged to take part in a war against co-religionists, and that the vizier
must be chosen from its ranks.
בל
An ideal tolerance in religion was exercised in the dominions of the
Chazars. The Chazars proper (Turks) were originally all heathen and
Shamanists.
