Материал: Payaslian S., The History of Armenia From the Origins to the Present

was succeeded by his cousin Constantine III (r. 1344–1362), during whose reign Mamluk-Turkoman invasions escalated, particularly in response to his military alliance with the European powers and promise to Pope Clement VI to secure the conversion of Cilicia to Catholicism. Constantine III’s reign also had the added misfortune of confronting the Black Death (1347–1349).90 The plague also decimated the Mamluk army. One third of the population in Egypt and Syria died from the plague. The Mamluk economy was devastated, and the military never recovered from its losses in manpower and wealth, especially since agricultural wealth was concentrated in the hands of the military elite.91

Successors to Constantine III followed in rapid order: Levon V (Lusignan) ruled from 1362 to 1364, followed by Peter I of Cyprus (r. 1367/8–1369), and Constantine IV (r. 1367–1373). Throughout this period the Lusignans had relied on the European powers, who, as before, on numerous occasions promised military support that never materialized. Also, despite their pro-western predilections, the Lusignans sought a peaceful modus vivendi with the Mamluks but failed. In compromises with the Mamluks, they surrendered parts of their domain, including Tarsus, and even agreed to surrender the kingdom in its entirety, on condition that the Mamluk government would guarantee their physical safety. These compromises antagonized the Armenian nobility, who held little respect for the “European” family in the first place. In 1373 Constantine IV was murdered and succeeded by Levon V, who returned to the throne to salvage the kingdom, a task that proved impossible.92 He was the last monarch of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia.

In 1375 the Mamluks invaded Cilicia and forced members of the Lusignan family to Cairo as prisoner, thus putting an end to the Cilician kingdom. The Turkoman Ramazanids gained control over Cilicia under Mamluk tutelage. After his release, Levon V traveled to Europe soliciting aid to rescue his kingdom from the Mamluks but to no avail. The Mamluks appointed Yakub Shah as governor at Sis, and Armenians migrated en masse to other regions for safe haven. Levon V died in Paris in November 1393 and was buried in St-Denis, but the title of Cilician kingdom survived through one of his relatives, King John I of Cyprus, and through him passed to the House of Savoy, which survived until the nineteenth century.93

Part III

Sultans, Tsars, and Tyrants

Kara Yusuf’s successors, proclaiming themselves Shah-i Armen (King of Armenia), enlisted Armenians (e.g., Rustum, son of the Beshken Orbelian nakharar house of Siunik) among their advisers. One of Kara Yusuf’s sons, Jihanshah, governor of Armenia and Tabriz (1437–1467),4 after his initial brutalities subsided, appointed a number of Armenian nakharars (nobles) as “princes” of Siunik, Vayots Dzor, Artsakh (Karabagh), and Gugark. Jihanshah also granted permission to rebuild some of the churches and to reinstitute the catholicosate at Echmiadzin in 1441. The catholicosate of Sis had declined since the collapse of the Armenian kingdom in Cilicia, and the ecclesiastical assembly in 1441, which was attended by about 300 clergy and prominent Armenians, decided to return the catholicosate to Echmiadzin, its original location, away from the influences of the Roman Catholic Church. The assembly also elected Kirakos Virapetsi as catholicos, whose short tenure (1441–1443) was followed by the more able Grigor Jalalbekiants (1443–1465). The catholicosate of Sis retained its status as an independent see, the Great House of Cilicia (Metsi Tann Kilikio), as did the catholicosate of Aghtamar, which had been established in the twelfth century in opposition to the catholicosate of Echmiadzin; however, the Armenian ecclesiastical center had decidedly gravitated to Echmiadzin.5

THE ARMENIAN CHURCH REVIVED

In the absence of an Armenian government amid the political turbulence, no Armenian ecclesiastical center felt confident in its status and jurisdiction, and leadership and institutional insecurities bred jealousies and hostilities between the catholicosal seats. Historian Dickran Kouymjian writes: “Corruption and laxity were evident among some clergy in all the ecclesiastical centers of the Armenian Church during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Considering the terror and destruction of the period, church leaders found it necessary once and for all to adjust themselves to dependency on non-Christian rulers.”6 Yet despite the difficulties, the church remained the only viable institution in Armenian communities. To prevent expropriation by Muslims, the nobility often found it prudent to donate properties to the church, which in turn strengthened the church. Its monasteries managed various educational complexes (e.g., the Tatev monastery in Siunik) and produced manuscripts and miniature paintings. Among the leading artists were Khachatur of Khizan in the fifteenth century and Hakob Jughayetsi (of Julfa) of the seventeenth century.7

The last two decades of the fourteenth century had witnessed rapid Ottoman territorial expansion from the reigns of Murad I (r. 1360–1389) and Bayazid I (r. 1389–1402) to the reign of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481). The Ottomans gained control over the port cities on the Black and the Mediterranean seas, and in 1453 they defeated the

Byzantine military and captured the much coveted city of Constantinople, the Byzantine capital. The Ottoman Sultans established a Muslim state in what had been the eastern frontiers of the old Roman Empire.8

Sultan Mehmed II resettled Armenian merchants and craftsmen from different parts of his expanding empire to Constantinople to revive the city’s economy. By the end of the fifteenth century, there were an estimated 1,000 Armenian households in Constantinople, and political upheavals in the East led to the migration of thousands more to the city and its vicinity. In the meantime, according to traditional accounts, Mehmed is said to have set the foundation for what emerged as the millet system of religious communities, appointing in 1461 Bishop Hovakim of Bursa as patriarch for all Armenian subjects. The patriarchate of Constantinople represented the Armenian millet before the Ottoman government and assumed various administrative responsibilities in the Armenian communities, while the authority of the catholicosate of Cilicia diminished.9

Meanwhile, Armenia became a battleground between the Ottomans and the emerging Safavid empire (1502–1783) in Iran, as they struggled for regional supremacy, and their constant campaigns and countercampaigns led to westward migration by Armenians. The Ottoman Sultans Selim I (r. 1512–1520) and Suleyman I the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566) expanded the empire by land and sea. Selim defeated the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and annexed parts of the Middle East (e.g., Cilicia, Syria, Jerusalem, Egypt). In addition to his conquests in Europe, Suleyman seized the entire area from Bitlis to Baghdad and Tabriz from the Safavids. The Ottoman army consolidated power across historic Armenian lands and beyond––from Sivas to Erzerum to Alashkert, Diarbekir, Van, Mosul, and Marash. The need for wider commercial relations with the West led, in 1563, to a treaty between Francis I of France and Suleyman I, which introduced the capitulations as a concession granting all Christian powers the right to conduct their commercial affairs in the Ottoman empire according to the laws of their home countries. This represented the earliest major concession by the Ottomans to the European powers. More than a century later, the Peace of Karlowitz (January 26, 1699), which concluded the war between the “Holy Alliance” led by the Pope against Turkey, also abolished tributes Europeans paid to the Ottoman Sultan.10

The Safavids had expanded their domain across the Caucasus and established their rule over the historic lands of Persian Armenia during the marzpanata period. Mired in internal strife, however, they failed to defend the territories under their control beyond Tabriz. Upon securing the throne, Sultan Murad III (r. 1574–1595) launched a series of military campaigns that lasted until 1590. The Ottoman army, about 200,000 strong, advanced to capture Tabriz in 1585. The new Safavid leader, Shah Abbas (r. 1588–1629), felt compelled to sign a peace treaty with Murad in 1590, surrendering Tabriz, Shirvan, and parts of eastern Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.