ARMENIAN - Erevangala500

Following the struggle between Persians and Romans to
gain the upper hand in Armenia, the Arabs and Byzantium
shared power until Byzantium wiped out what little was
left of Armenian autonomy in 1040. As late as 630 A.D.,
the emperor Heraclios had been hammering out plans for
a Church union with the Monophysitic Armenians, but
just ten years later, the Arabs relieved him of this concern
by invading eastern Anatolia and breaking the
Byzantines' hold on power. The occasional victories of
the Byzantines (such as those under Emperor Justinian
II., 685-695) only led to more brutal attempts to bring the
Armenians into line with the official Greek Orthodox
Church. In the end, the Byzantines and the Arabs divided
up control of Armenia in much the same way as the Romans
and Persians had done for eastern Anatolia and the
adjoining Caucasus.
At his coronation as King o f Armenia, Prince Ashkot received
his insignia from both Arabs and Byzantines.
Armenia blossomed as a semi-independent buffer state
between Arabs and Byzantines and did not do too badly.
The cleverness of the Armenian princes, who recognized
the limits of their power and knew what was attainable,
was always the best guarantee for the well-being of the
Haik.
It was during this period that the magnificent buildings of
Ani and the church on the island of Aghtamar in Lake Van
were constructed. The supremacy of the Caliphs of
Damascus and Baghdad was entirely bearable. No Arab
would ever have dreamed of harrassing the Armenians
because of their Monophysitic beliefs. On the contrary,
they gave the Armenians the job o f supervising the holy
sites of Jerusalem. Under the Bagratids, who were in turn
under Byzantine and Arab rule, the Armenians achieved a
blossoming of their culture. Ani was completed, and the
church of Aghtamar became the thriving see o f the Armenian
Catholicoses.
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Castle and mosque o f the Semiramis near Van. From the art
collection of the bibliographical institute in Hildshausen, West
Germany. A. D. M D C C C XXXXIX (1849).
Nevertheless, the Byzantines could not resist shortening
the Armenians' leash more and more. New, unsettling
reports kept coming in about new tribes out of the East
who were advancing across Persia to the West. But instead
of promoting and reinforcing the Armenian buffer state,
the Byzantines forced the prince of Ani, Hovanes Smbat,
to relinquish Ani fully and unconditionally. After his triumph
in the Balkans, Emperor Basil II., the "Bulgar-slay-
er", turned to the Caucasus and Armenia, where he met
with equally great success. His expansionist policies had
their crowning glory in Armenia under his successor, the
emperor Constantine IX. Constantine IX. Monoma-chus
was a ruthless Orthodox zealot. He annexed "heretical"
Ani and made it part of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire.
The Armenian version reads, "King Gagik II. is forced to
surrender the Kingdom in Constantinople." That was in
1045, another fateful year for the Armenians. Since 1045,
there has never been an independent or semi-independent
principality or kingdom in eastern Anatolia,
Happy children, fresh, clean water, shepherds with their flocks,
freedom . . . that has been the Turkish-Anatolian way of life
since time immemorial.