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Contrary to the conventional view the ensuing conflict, the Battle of Avarayr, was in fact a combination of a civil war and Sasanian military intervention rather than an exclusively Persian-Armenian war, as immortalized in Armenian memory. The pro-Persian nakharars criticized the pro-Byzantine groups for their naive reliance on Constantinople and opposed further seditious activities against Yazdgird. The pro-Byzantine nakharars insisted that the failure to act would render them infinitely more vulnerable to a Sasanian military campaign. The situation degenerated into chaos and mob action as anti-Sasanian groups, led by the virulently anti-Sasanian Vardan Mamikonian and the priest Ghevond Erets, sanctioned by the higher clergy, began to attack the Persian temples, in the process killing several of the temple officials. Vasak Siuni ordered cessation of all such anti-Sasanian activities and a speedy return to law and order. He and the pro-Persian nakharars insisted that rebellion against Persia at this point, when Yazdgird’s army enjoyed peace at other fronts, would certainly invite the full brunt of his military retaliation, against which the Armenian military could defend neither itself nor Armenia. Not inclined to permit the pro-Christian, anti-Sasanian elite to monopolize policy through radicalization of politics, Vasak Siuni attacked the clergy and their supporters.59
The nakharar families themselves were divided between members who supported the rebellion and those who opposed it. Thus, for example, the head of the Khorkhoruni house allied with Vasak, but a minor Khorkhoruni prince sided with Vardan Mamikonian. In the Paluni house, the military general Varazshapuh allied with Vasak Siuni; Artak Paluni sided with Vardan. Vahan Amatuni supported Vasak, but Manen Amatuni, Vardan. Nor were the great houses of the Mamikonians and Siunis immune from such divisions. Babken and Bakur Siuni allied with Vardan, while Vahan Mamikonian, the sparapet of Lesser Armenia, sided with Vasak Siuni. Only members of the Bagratuni house did not exhibit such a division; all allied with Vasak Siuni.60
Critics of Vasak Siuni maintained that the marzpan, fearing for his own and family’s safety, refused to support the rebellions and that his inability to manage the crisis led to the escalation of the conflict. Vasak Siuni was certainly concerned that a rebellion would leave him in the unenviable position of either mobilizing his forces to restore internal stability, and therefore to continue to serve Yadzgird, or else to accept failure, in which case the king would hold him directly accountable. Vasak Siuni chose the first option. As the reigning marzpan, his forces were far superior to those serving under Vardan, who, while officially still the commander, had become the subject of intense vilification. Without losing much time, Vasak resorted to dictatorial means to quell the opposition. He arrested several members of those nakharar houses that supported Catholicos
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Hovsep and Vardan and took nearly all of their children hostage. He then moved to arrest the clergy, seized the military garrisons under Vardan’s command, and forced the military personnel to leave the barracks. Vasak Siuni reported the situation to the Sasanian shah and warned that failure to intervene would lead to further instability, which in turn would disrupt commercial relations throughout the region and jeopardize the sources of revenues for the Sasanian royal treasury.61
By the closing days of the winter of 451, tensions between the parties had polarized Armenian society. As spring approached, the two camps prepared to commence their fratricidal military campaigns. In May Yazdgird II, informed of the impending conflict, ordered his troops to Her (Khoy) and Zarevand. News of the Persian advance hardened the divisions. The pro-Persian parties predictably sided with the Persian army, while the proChristian, pro-Byzantine parties moved to confront the enemy. In the middle of May, all forces converged at the town of Avarayr in Artaz province, and in early June, Persian and Armenian armies clashed. The troops under Vasak nearly decimated Vardan’s army, estimated at about 9,000, although Eghishe, who is believed to be a contemporary Armenian priest and historian, gives the highly exaggerated figure of 66,000. As casualties mounted, soldiers on both sides fled the battlefield. The casualties included Sparapet Vardan Mamikonian, while several of the other military leaders were taken prisoner.62 Although Iranian historiography on the Sasanian empire hardly mentions the Armenian-Sasanian conflicts, to this day the Battle of Avarayr represents a landmark in Armenian history, memorialized by Armenians worldwide as a moral victory in defending their faith.63
Armenian rebellions continued during the 460s to the 480s, spearheaded by Sparapet Vahan Mamikonian, a nephew of Vardan. In 481, an Armenian army unit seized Dvin and installed as governor Sahak Bagratuni, a brilliant military commander who, in contrast to members of the Bagratuni house in the 450s, had emerged as a leading figure in the anti-Sasanian rebellions. After the death of Yazdgird II in 484, the new Sasanian leader, Peroz, in an effort to avoid further bloodshed, appointed Vahan as the marzpan of Armenia in 485.64
The return to political and economic normalcy enabled (albeit briefly) the Armenian state and ecclesiastical leaders to rebuild the destroyed cities of Artashat and Vagharshapat and to address the consequences of decades of international and domestic conflicts. In 485, Catholicos Hovhannes I Mandakuni transferred the Mother See from Vagharshapat to the more secure environs of Dvin, that city regained its earlier religious and commercial significance.65 Artashat again became a major center for international commerce. Encouraged by the peaceful relations with the new Sasanian leadership and Byzantium, Catholicos Babgen I Otmsetsi in 506 summoned the clergy to Dvin for a conference to examine
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various theological, social, and economic issues, including corruption within the church hierarchy and society at large. Members of elite families, some conferees complained, habitually used the local monasteries for private pleasures and festivities. Moreover, the church had yet to eradicate pagan traditions and customs, particularly polygamy and marriage within the family. In the meantime, the Sasanian king Kavat (r. 488–531), having subdued the domestic and foreign enemies on the eastern borders, redirected his military ambitions to Armenia, but upon his death in 531, his successor, Khosrov I Anushirvan (r. 531–579), signed a treaty of “perpetual peace” with the emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565).66
THE JUSTINIANIC REFORMS
Since the partition of 387 the civilian Comes Armeniae (Count of Armenia, the Roman equivalent of the Persian marzpans) had ruled Byzantine Armenia. Loosely administered by the Roman/Byzantine empire, Byzantine Armenia was divided into Armenia I in the north and Armenia II in the south, each administered by a governor (praeses) responsible to the imperial diocese (vicarii praefectorum) of Pontus, who in turn was responsible to the Praetorian Prefect of the East (Praefectus praetorio Orientis).Armenians retained some local autonomy as loyal subjects (they paid taxes and served in the military), and members of the nakharar families held offices in the Byzantine bureaucracies.67 The next major threat to the Armenian social order, however, came not as a result of military engagements but under the guise of administrative and legal reforms.
The reforms initiated by the emperor Justinian in 527 introduced major changes into Byzantine-Armenian relations and Armenian society, changes that served to incorporate Armenia into the Byzantine empire. The first set of reforms involved the jurisdictional reorganization of the dux (provincial military commander) and Comes Armeniae, which were replaced by the more centralized military office of magistri militum (Masters of the Troops) in Armenia, headquartered at Theodosiopolis (Karin; Erzerum). This was followed by the Novella XXXI (March 18, 536), which created four separate administrative units as provinces. The Justinianic reforms were not limited to administrative and jurisdictional issues, however. A far more fundamental transformation occurred with the introduction of Roman inheritance laws into Armenian society. Under the traditional nakharar law, the land passed from father to son or to brother, and the line of succession excluded women. Feudal land ownership, as patronage, depended on military service, which excluded women
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and as a result prevented women from holding land.68 Justinian viewed the eastern custom of ozhit (dowry) as payment for the purchase of the bride. In condemning the practice, he imposed the new inheritance law requiring that daughters be considered as equals to sons.
The Justinianic reforms in this area, though couched in humanitarian terms, were in fact intended to undermine the nakharar estates. Justinianic law enabled daughters to transfer their inheritance to foreign husbands, thereby leading to the fragmentation of Armenian clan ties and weakening the nakharar structure.69 The renowned historian Nikoghayos Adonts comments:
Like any native system, historically developed, and forming the bulwark against foreign aggressors, the naxarar [nakharar] system stood in the way of centralizing aims of the great imperialist. The demands of Justinian, like any other measures directed against the unity of the naxarar lands, would necessarily undercut the power of the princes which was based on their lands. In spite of his repeated affirmations, it is evident that a concern for the welfare of the country was the last motive which urged the Emperor toward reform . . . . What matters is not the fact that the reformer looks down on local culture; a contemptuous attitude toward the Orient and its culture was as characteristic of the ancient West as of the present one. We might think that the Armenian nation had, indeed, stagnated in some sort of disorderly and chaotic conditions and that Justinian had decided to lead it out of this confusion for the sake of the development and welfare of the Armenians. The true purpose of the bombastic style of the Novellae is to obscure the truth.70
Some nakharar families, including the Arshakuni house, at first rejected but were politically and economically too weak to resist the imposition of this law.71
As the traditional powers of the nakharar houses disintegrated, the unfolding international crises during the course of the next several decades only exacerbated the conditions in Byzantine and Persian Armenia. Preoccupied with inordinately expensive military operations in Mesopotamia and the Balkans, he soon withdrew. After falling ill, he consented to an armistice, which after his death was signed by Tiberius II Constantine with the Sasanian king Khosrov I in 578, reestablishing Sasanian rule over Persian Armenia. The overtures for peace notwithstanding, in 578 the Byzantine general Maurice (later emperor, 582–602) attacked the southern frontiers of Armenia and forced the deportation of nearly 10,000 Armenians to Cyprus. In 591 Armenia was again partitioned, when the Persian shah Khosrov II Parviz (r. 590–628), politically too weak at home, granted a considerable portion of Persian Armenia to Maurice, thus moving the Byzantine-Persian border farther east of the dividing line of 387. New rebellions against Byzantine rule divided the Armenian nakharars, as between Mushegh Mamikonian, who favored Byzantium, and Smbat Bagratuni, who led the opposition against its
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military presence on Armenian land.72 In 637 the Sasanian empire collapsed when the capital, Ctesiphon, fell into the hands of the newly emerging Islamic empire.
THE ARAB INVASIONS AND OSTIKAN RULE
Arabs first invaded Armenia in 640, and by the late eighth century they had conquered most of the land. Arab domination in Armenia began first under the Umayyad caliphate centered at Damascus from about 650 to 750, followed by the Abbasids in Baghdad from 750 to 888. In 639 Theodore Rshtuni, appointed ishkhan (prince) and curopalate (governor) by the emperor Heraclius, had reunited Byzantine and Persian Armenias as both empires had been weakened after years of warfare.73 The Arab armies of the governor of Syria and later Umayyad caliph Mu‘awiyah (r. 661–680) captured Dvin in 640, and although Rshtuni successfully defended Vaspurakan, with no Byzantine or Persian military assistance forthcoming, he and the supporting nakharars were compelled to sign a peace agreement with him in 652 to prevent further destruction while preserving some degree of autonomy. According to the agreement, Armenia was exempted from taxes for the next three years, and thereafter it would pay according to its ability. In return for Mu‘awiyah’s concessions, Armenia was required to provide military forces to defend his dominion against Byzantium. This agreement, which appeared to have secured peace between Armenians and Arabs, yet again divided the Armenian leadership. Catholicos Nerses Tayetsi and some of the leading nakharars, including Mushegh Mamikonian, representing the pro-Byzantium faction, opposed the Rshtuni-Mu‘awiyah accord and characterized it as “a covenant with death and an alliance with Hell.”74 In a sign of appreciation, Byzantium extended military support to Mushegh Mamikonian to defeat Rshtuni, now clearly seen as leading a pro-Caliphate faction.
The discord among the leadership was symptomatic of the power struggles between the most powerful noble houses: Bagratuni, Mamikonian, Gnuni, Kamsarakan, Artsruni, Amatuni, Siunik, and Rshtuni. Theodore Rshtuni, the ishkhan, failed to stabilize the situation, which was exacerbated by efforts of the Mamikonian house to reverse its own decline as a nakharar house of sparapets. Taking advantage of the succession crisis in the caliphate, the pro-Byzantine Mamikonians, Kamsarakans, and Gnunis cooperated with Byzantium to overthrow Rshtuni, who, after a brief withdrawal from power, returned with Mu‘awiyah’s military support and continued his rule until his death in 654. The Umayyads formally annexed Armenia in 701.75
The Umayyads reorganized Armenia as the province of al-Arminiya, comprised of a large part of Greater Armenia as well as Caucasian Albania