The chapter is accompanied by footnotes on the bottom of each page, an extensive
Bibliography (pp. 983-1009), and three maps:
Caucasia in the 5-8th Centuries, facing page 598;
Caucasia in the 8-11th Centuries, facing page 608;
and Caucasia in the 12-15th Centuries, facing page 624.
[603] The Persian war inherited from Justin II by his successors entered a new phase in 582 with the counter-offensive of Maurice. Meanwhile, Hormizd IV's burdensome fiscal measures and, it seems, oppressive religous policy made the Iberian high nobility less pro-Iranian and, without a Romanophile Crown to oppose, more pro-Roman. Maurice's victories and the Turkish attack on Iran released Iberia from Sassanid control; in 588 the Iberian princes passed to imperial allegiance and requested the Emperor to give them a Chrosroid as king. The former royal house was then composed of two branches: the elder, royal, branch having Kakhetia as its appanage, and the younger, the Guaramid, branch, ruling the south-western provinces of Cholarzene (Klarjet'i) ad Javakhet'i. The Emperor's choice fell on Guaram of Cholarzene-Javakhet'i, who appears to have led the revolt of 572 in Iberia (1). But instead of becoming a king, Guaram, who received the high dignity of Curopalate, was appointed to be a presiding prince of Iberia, combining the fuctions of High Constable with those of imperial viceroy. Thus the system of the principate, already adumbrated in Armenia in 485, was introduced into Caucasia. In the peac of 591 (2), which terminated the war, Chosroes II, son of Hormizd, recognized the fait accompli in Iberia, but retained the eastern part of the country.
In Armenia the peace of 591 pushed the Roman frontier roughly to the line between lakes Van and Sevan, with Dvin in the reduced Iranian part. But the Roman victory was not to the advantage of the Armenians who now had to endure all the rigours of centralisation and officialdom, foreign to their dynastic-feudal ideas. Like Justinian, Maurice resorted to mass deportation of Armenians to Europe. Iranian suzerainty apppeared light in comparison, and the court of Ctesiphon was not slow in assuming the role of protector of the Armenian princes. These, however, dreamt of independence; there were revolts against both the Emperor and the Great King, which the two joined forces to quell. In this turmoil, the heroic Mamikonids lost their ascendancy over the other princes, while the star of the [604] cautious Bagratids began to rise: at the end of the sixth century, Smbat IV Bagratuni persona gratissima at the courts of Ctesiphon and of Constantinople, was the most important dynast in Armenia.
During this period the solidarity of Caucasia was rent by the religious rupture between Armenia and Iberia. Zeno's Henoticon, which attempted to bridge the gap between Catholicism and Monophysitism, had been accpeted by both countries, and also by Albania, at the Council of Dvin of 506. Fear of Nestorianism and of Syro-Iranian influence, once forced upon them by the Sassanids, made the Armenians, especially of the Iranian zone, together with the Monophysites, imagine that they saw a Nestorian tinge in Chalcedon. Added fear of absorption by the Empire, coupled with strong Monophysite influence, finally determined the Armenian reaction to Justin I's reunion with Rome in 519 and the Empire's return to the faith of Chalcedon. The Armenian bishops, at another Council of Dvin, in 555 officially adopted Monophysitism. With this, the national Armenian Church was born. In Roman Armenia, however, though Justin II's attempt at reunion in 572 had failed, Catholicism was maintained for a while by Maurice. Between 591 and 610/11 there were two Armenian Katholikoi: the Catholic in the Roman zone and the Monophysite in the Iranian. Lazica and Iberia followed the Emperor's religion; and Albania was long to waver between Catholic and national Armenian Christianity. It is against this background, complicated by the Armenian Church's desire to assert its ascendancy over the Iberian, that Cyrion I, Katholikos of Iberia, and the Monophysite Armenian Katholikos Abraham clashed in 607. At still another Council of Dvin in 608/9, the latter excommunicated Cyrion and the Iberians, and the seeds of discord were sown between the two nations (1).
The overthrow of Maurice by Phocas gave rise to another, and final, Persian war, of 604-29. The initial success was Chosroes II's, who betwen 607 and 612 united the whole of Armenia under his aegis; in the late 590's Stephen I of Iberia, Guaram's son, had already accepted Iranian overlordship (2). But the accession of Heraclius and the [605] opening of his counter-offensive in 622 turned the tide. The following year saw the Byzantines return to Armenia and Albania. When Heraclius came to Iberia in 626, Stephen I refused to abandon the Iranian alliance; but he was killed during the siege of Tiflis in 627, and the Emperor, departing for Iran, conferred the principate upon Adarnase of Kakhetia, son of the last king. With the aid of the Emperor's Khazar allies, Adarnase finally took Tiflis. Another Iberian ally of Iran, Vahram-Arshusha V of Gogarene, was captured in December 627, when the Iranians were defeated by Heraclius. Chosroes was overthrown and in June 629 his successor accepted the Byzantine terms of peace. In Armenia, accordingly, the frontier of 591 was re-established. Each moiety was placed under a local prince: Varaz-Tirots' II Bagratuni as viceroy for the Great King and Mezezius Gnuni as commander-in-chief for the Emperor. In 635 the latter was overthrown by David Sahar'uni upon whom, in view of the princely support he had received, the Emperor had to confer the principate of Armenia and the dignity of Curopalate: the Iberian pattern was followed in Armenia. In Albania, too, the principate was introduced, during Heraclius' campaigns, in favour of Varaz-Gregory, the Mihranid Prince of Gardman. As trans-Cyran Albania was occupied about this time by the Khazars, the new arrangement chiefly concerned the cis-Cyran regions. The appearance, in that century, of two successive 'Patricians of Lazica' may indicate the setting up of a similar institution in West Georgia. Nearly the whole of Caucasia was now controlled by the Empire; and in 632/3 Heraclius secured Armenian adherence to Chalcedon.
The destruction of Sassanid power paved the way for a new foe. Within two decades, Roman overlordship in Caucasia was replaced by that of the Caliphate. The Saracens began raiding Armenia in 640-6. In spite of Constans II's attempts to regain Armenia in 647, the princes, aware of the uncertainty of the Byzantine position, of Byzantine bureaucratic high-handedness, and of their own religious separateness, turned, under the leadership of Theodore R'shtuni, to the invaders. A peace concluded by Theodore and the future Caliph Mu'awiya I in 653/4 recognised Armenia as an autonomous tributary state. At the same time, Stephen II of Iberia accepted Saracen suzerainty, Tiflis becoming an Arab enclave, and so also Juansher of Albania. The three Caucasian states now formed one viceroyalty of the Caliphate (designated as Arminiya), Dvin being the seat of the viceroys. The following two centuries were marked, especially for Armenia, by a fierce tug-of-war between Byzantine interference and Saracen reprisal, with the presiding princes wavering between the two allegiances and national consolidation thwarted by ceaseless strife.
[606] All imperial attempts to regain Caucasia proved abortive. In 654 Constans II launched his second offensive. Supported by the Mamikonids and the Bagratids, he overran a great part of Armenia, while the Princes of Iberia, Albania and Siunia sided with Theodore R'shtuni. The Emperor proceeded, somewhat forcibly, to re-establish religious unity; and appointed Mushegh Mamikonian his viceroy, who as soon as Constans departed, went over to the Arabs. Yet the latter were not compliant overlords. R'shtuni was deposed and replaced by his son-in-law, the Mamikonid Hamazasp II, who lost no time in bringing the country into Byzantine obedience and was made a Curopalate in recompense. His brother Gregory, to whom the Caliph, having again subdued Armenia, next gave the principate, revolted against his suzerain in 681/2, joined by Adarnase II of Iberia; and, in 684, together with him, perished in the Khazar raid on Caucasia.
The Caliph then transferred his favour from the Mamikonids to the Bagratids in Armenia and, in Iberia, from the Chosroids to the Guaramids. The principate of the Bagratid Ashot II coincided with another Byzantine offensive, undertaken by Justinian II. At first successful, the Emperor restored Byzantine suzerainty over the three Caucasian states (685). In Armenia, the Curopalate Nerseh Kamsarakan replaced Ashot II, and religious union with the Empire was momentarily re-established. This was ephemeral. The three countries had reverted to the Caliphate by 693; and in 696/7, even Lazica, under the Patrician Sergius, passed from Byzantine to Saracen control. The Arab successes and the devastation wrought in Caucasia in 693 by the Emperor's Khazar allies caused Smbat VI Bagratuni, whom Justinian had named to the principate of Armenia, to go over to the enemy and wage something of a family feud with the Emperor Tiberius III (II).
The independent spirit of the dynasts twice inspired the Saracens to attempt to suppress them. The first effort by the viceroy 'Abd Allah ibn-Hatim, it is true, was limited to arrests and confiscations (c. 695); and the good offices of the Armenian Church brought about an improvement of Armeno-Arab relatoins. So good, in fact, had these relations become that, when, in 702/704, Albania attempted to espouse Catholic, instead of Armenian, Christianity, the Kattholikos, who regarded it as a dependency, did not hesitate to invoke the Caliph's aid in forcibly restoring that country to Armenian obedience. Meantime, outraged by 'Abd Allah's actions, Smbat VI passed back to the Empire, was made a Curopalate, and warred successfully on the Arabs, though in the end he could maintain himself only on the north-western confines of Armenia.
[607] In 705, upon his defeat by the joint forces of Smbat VI and the Emperor, the viceroy Muhammad ibn-Marwan decided to carry out the idea, reborn under the new Caliph, al-Walid, of exterminating the Armenian high nobility. Several hundred Armenian lords with their families and retainers were inveigled into Nakhchevan and there were locked up in churches and burnt, or crucified after torture. This terrible holocaust sent many princes fleeing the country, and Smbat VI removed to Lazica, which had meantime reverted to the Empire. Armenia lay at the Caliph's mercy; yet he changed his policy. The constant menace of the Khazars, allies of Byzantium, made Armenia more desirable as a buffer state than as a province. The exiled princes were invited to return, their property and privileges guaranteed. It was then that the fickle Smbat VI, having quarrelled with the Byzantines, pillaged the city of Phasis, where he was residing, and returned to Saracen Armenia (711). At this time too, apparently, the Prince of Abkhazia became the Caliph's vassal.
The Khazar invasion of Caucasia in the 730's seems to have aided the Empire in recovering Abkhazia and retaining Lazica, but it also helped to bring about a collaboration of the rest of Caucasia with the Caliphate. In the principate of Smbat VI's cousin Ashot III, Armenians took part in Marwan ibn-Muhammad's war on the Khazars, in the course of which West Georgia was attacked and trans-Cyran Albania wrested from the Khazars by the Arabs (736-7). Ashot was supported by the Caliph against insubordination at home; he in turn strove to aid the Umayyads against the Abbasids.
The civil war of 744-50 in the Caliphate coincided with a new Byzantine offensive of Constantine V. The anti-Arab elements in Caucasia stirred; and in 748 Ashot III was deposed and blinded by the Mamikonid princes, Gregory and David, the political differences between the two houses having become a family feud. Gregory seized the principate and turned to the Empire; after his death, the third brother Mushegh continued to head the anti-Arab lords. At that time the Guaramids of Iberia were replaced in the principate by a new dynasty, represented by Adarnase III, whose title of Curopalate indicated a return to imperial allegiance. But the Empire proved once again to be a broken reed; its thrust into north-western Armenia failed; and the Abbasids, once in power, held Caucasia as firmly as the Umayyads. Though disliking the Bagratids for Ashot III's Umayyad loyalty, they disliked the Byzantinophile Mamikonids more. So Isaac III Bagratuni, Ashot's cousin, was named ruling High Constable of Armenia c. 755. By this time the Bagratids, no less than the Mamikonids, had been weakened; and a new power was rising in Armenia, the Artsrunids, who, having spread their rule to the [608] south-eastern province of Vaspurakan (including Bagratid Kogovit and Tamoritis), were building up a strongly fortified princely state.
Abbasid rule proved heavier than Umayyad, especially fiscally. Caucasia was annually drained of ten million dirhams in taxes. The oppression of a series of viceroys made matters worse. New revolts flared up in Armenia. In 771 Artavazd Mamikonian led a popular uprising, but was defeated by the loyalist Smbat VII Bagratuni, Ashot III's son and Isaac III's successor as High Constable. Then another Mamikonid, Mushegh, returned to the scene as leader of another insurrection. Soon other princes joined it, Samuel, head of the Mamikonid dynasty, and his son-in-law, Smbat VII himself, among them. The Artsrunis, however, tended to keep aloof. Like all other revolts, that of 771-2 was doomed. Constantine V did not heed the appeals of the princes, while al-Mansur poured troops into Armenia. In two great battles, of Archesh on 15 April 772, and of Bagravandene on 25 April, the insurgents were utterly crushed. The flower of the nobility, including Smbat, Samuel and Mushegh, fell in this war. For a time the principate was left vacant.
The immediate repercussion of this defeat was also felt in Iberia. Adarnase III's son Nerse (1) was carried off to Baghdad and Saracen suzerainty was reasserted. But, with the accession of al-Mahdi to the Caliphate (775), Nerse was allowed to return to Iberia. Armenia, too, was soon given a presiding prince. Tachat Andzevats'i, one of the lesser princes, having been strategus of the Bucellarians in imperial service and then fallen into disgrace under Irene, fled to the Arabs. Seizing this opportunity of counterbalancing both the Bagratids and the Artsrunis, the Caliph appointed him to be High Constable in 780. But he fell in a joint Armeno-Arab campaign against the Khazars c. 785.
Armenia groaned under Abbasid oppression; but it was chiefly the Georgians, backed by the Khazars, who now offered resistance. The centres of discontent were Iberia proper and the Chosroid princedom of Kakhetia. In reprisal, the viceroy Khuzaima ibn-Khazim resorted to the same policy of extermination as had been seen in Armenia in 705. In 786 he caused the decapitation of many Caucasian dynasts, including Stephen III of Iberia, Nerse's nephew, and the Chosroid St. Arch'il of Kakhetia. The Guaramids became extinct and the Chosroids neared extinction. After this, the Caliph appointed no presiding princes in either Armenia or Iberia; and these countries were administered directly by his representatives.
[609] Caucasia was devastated, its aristocracy reduced and decimated by wars and repression. Nobles and peasants began removing in large numbers to the Empire. And yet these disasters contained the seeds of future recovery. The Saracen insistence on collecting taxes and tribute in money, not in kind, led to an economic revival. The nobility and peasantry found themselves obliged to abandon their autarkic rural economy and to produce a surplus of raw and manufactured products for sale. Thus commerce and urban economy, stifled during the upheavals of the Sassanid and Saracen domination, recovered; the middle class revived; new cities, like Ani, Kars, Baghesh (Bitlis), Artanuji, rose beside the old, such as Artaxata, Dvin, Theodosiopolis, Tiflis, Partav (Bardha'a). Caucasia once again became the nexus of trade-routes connecting Europe and Asia, and the prosperity of the medieval period was founded.
Then, too, the ruin and extinction of many dynastic houses profited the few that remained intact. Instead of numerous principalities, a few larger ones arose, composed of a number of former princedoms; and a few great princes, suzerains of their once co-equal and now weakened confrères, held sway in Caucasia. The Bagratids at first (after 772) lost all their domains, save Syspiritis, whither Smbat VII's son Ashot IV fled after the disaster. But the silver mines he possessed there enabled him to purchase from the tottering Kamsarakans the principalities of Arsharunik' and Siracene. He wrested some Mamikonid territory from the Arab amir Jahhaf the 'Qaysid' and, directly from the Mamikonids, Taraun and southern Tayk'. Other successes awaited his dynasty. His cousin Adarnase, son of Smbat VII's younger brother Vasak, removed to Iberia after 772. There he acquired the lands of Erushet'i and Artani (Ardahan), and, at the turn of the century, inherited the state of the Guaramids, comprising Cholarzene, Javakhet'i, and northern Tayk', or Tao, taken earlier from the Mamikonids. With the extermination of many Iberian princes in 786, this younger Bagratid branch became the leading house of Iberia.
Finally, the growth of local separatism in the Caliph's empire further contributed to Bagratid hegemony in Caucasia. The Arab Qaysids were entrenched in the fortress-town of Manazkert (Manzikert), north of Van, and defied the Caliph. In 792-3 there was a Muslim revolt in south-eastern Albania. In 809 the amir of Tiflis, Isma'il ibn-Shu'aib, proclaimed his independence. In 813-37 eastern Armenia was involved in the revolt of Babak. In the 820's the Qaysids of Manazkert attacked Dvin, the seat of the viceroys having been transferred to Bardha'a. Another amirate was established, about this time, at Arzen. The Caliph's government was compelled [610] to seek the support of a Caucasian dynasty. Distrustful of the growing Artsrunis and anxious to forestall an entente of the Empire and the Bagratids, whose state lay on the Byzantine frontier, it chose the latter. The Bagratids had the added advantage of being at once in Armenia and in Iberia. Accordingly, in 806 the principate was revived in the former country for Ashot IV the Brave and in 813 in the latter for Adarnase's son Ashot I the Great. Thenceforth the two principates became a Bagratid monopoly. In 813, too, the Emperor Leo V, himself an Armenian, possibly a Gnunid prince (1), conferred the title of Curopalate upon Ashot of Iberia. The latter was happy to counterbalance Baghdad by Constantinople, while Leo V was eager to restore imperial influence in Caucasia. By then the Empire had lost its Lazic dependency: in the 790's, Leo II of Abkhazia subdued all of West Georgia, founding the kingdom of Abasgia virtually independent of Constantinople (2).
Kakhetia had in the meantime, after the extinction of the Chosroids, seceded from Iberia under its own presiding princes. Southeast of it, cis-Cyran Albania (Arran) was inherited in 821/2 from the House of Gardman by Atrnerseh, of Siunid lineage. So now Caucasia was divided into the following large states: the kingdom of Abasgia; Armenia with the Bagratid principalities of Bagaran (Arsharunik'-Siracene) and Taraun, Artsrunid Vaspurakan, Siunia, and the Muslim amirates; Iberia with the Bagratid principalities of Tao, Cholarzene, and Javakhet'i, the amirate of Tiflis, and Kakhetia; and Albania with lesser princedoms dependent on it (3).
In the ninth century some of the larger states also weakened owing to a new development in the dynastic law. The system of patrilineal seniority had become modified through the granting of appanages and the occasional partition of states among brothers. When Ashot IV [611] died in 826 Taraun passed to his eldest son Bagarat II, and Bagaran to another, Smbat VIII. The sons of Ashot of Iberia likewise divided his state: Adarnase II took Tao and Cholarzene, Bagrat I had the principate, with the dignity of Curopalate which had become attached to it, and Guaram Javakhet'i. Siunia and Vaspurakan became similarly divided.
Seeing in division the only guarantee of its hold on Caucasia, in 826 the Caliphate appointed Smbat VIII to be his father's successor as High Constable, while the title of 'Prince of Princes of Armenia' was given to Bagarat II, but not until 830. A quarrel between the brothers inevitably followed. Nevertheless, the Bagratids now enjoyed indisputable hegemony in Armenia and Iberia, and converting this into kingship was merely a matter of time. Meantime, Caucasia was to sustain another Byzantine offensive and another Saracen oppression.
As part of his Arab war, in 837 the Emperor Theophilus led two campaigns in Armenia: in the north-west and in the south-west. Faced with Byzantine devastations, the Princes of Taraun and of Vaspurakan sided with the Saracens, even participating, after the Emperor's defeat, in the Arab reprisal of 838. Theophilus' only success was to install an Armenian Bagratid in Syspiritis as a vassal of the Empire.
The Saracen oppression was far worse. The last energetic Abbasid, al-Mutawakkil, resolved to suppress the growing Christian and Muslim independencies of Caucasia. Three punitive expeditions were sent thither, of which the last, led by Bugha, was marked by a particular ferocity. By 855 Taraun had been reduced to ruins, Vaspurakan, Siunia, Albania, Tiflis subdued, the heads of all the princely states taken prisoner to Samarra, including Smbat VIII, who had loyally co-operated with the Caliph's Turkish general. It was then that he earned his appellation of Confessor by rejecting liberation at the price of a feigned apostasy and dying in captivity between 862 and 867. Only Bagrat of Iberia, who, too, was loyal to the Caliph, remained on his throne, happy to see Bugha's reduction of the amirate of Tiflis. Once again Armenia was at the Caliph's mercy, and once again he changed his policy. The Paulician and the Arab war of Michael III in 856-9 and the growing impotence of the Caliphate itself after al-Mutawakkil's death in 861 made it imperative to cultivate the Caucasian princes. So most of the captives were allowed to return. In 856 Smbat VIII's son, Ashot V, had already been made High Constable; in 862 he was recognised as Prince of Princes: even the divide et impera policy was abandoned by the Caliphate, whose tutelage over Caucasia was visibly coming to an end.
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