The Turco-Mongol Invasions and the Lords of Armenia in the 13 ...

al-Athir bad little to say about Armenia's lords, hie
information on the resurgence of Georgia and the coming of
the Mongols, Qlpchaqs and Khwarazmians in the early 1220's
confirms and occasionally amplifies what is known from
native sources.. For the purposes of this study, the most
important of the numerous works bequeathed to posterity
by Bar Hebraeus is his encyclopedic Chronoeraphy. a history
of the world from Creation until 1286, the year of his
death . The history of his own time he wrote with the
bearing_on Armenia and Cilicia were translated into Armenian
by ?, Ter-Polosean and appeared in HA (I960).
Ibn al-Athir, one of the world's greatest chroniclers,
was born in 1160 and educated in Mosul. After completing
his education, he travelled on missions for the prince of
Mosul, to Syria and the Levant. Eventually he retired to
devote himself to study. His Complete Chronology begins
with Creation and ends in the year 1231 [C. Kuart, A History
of Arabic Literature (New York, 1903) p. 206], The Complete
CHrqnology was published in its entirety by Tornberg at
Leyden in 1851-76 in fourteen volumes. Unfortunately, no
complete translation exists, although some extracts in
French translation were published in Reeueil des historiens
des Croiaades; Hiet. Orient. II, 1887, and M.Tefremery
has translated those passages concerning the Caucasus
["Fragments de Geographes et d'Historiens arabes et persans
inedit", JA, 4th ser. #13 (1848), #14(1849)J
2 Bar Hebraeus (also known as Ibn al- Ibri and Gregory
Abu'l FaraJ) was born into a Jewish family in the city of
Melitene/Malatya on the Euphrates in 1225/26. As a child
he studied Syriac, Arabic and probably Hebrew, and subsequently
philosophy, theology, and medicine [The Chronographs
of Gregory Abu'l-Farai (Bar Hebraeus),""E7A.Wallis
Budge, trans. (London, 1932; repr. 1976) pp. xv-xvi].
In 1244 the Mongol general Shawer who had ravaged the
Melitene/Kalatya area employed the services of Bar Hebraeus'
father, a physician. The family travelled with the Mongols
to Xarberd and thence to Antioch where Gregory at age
17 became a Syrian Monophysite Christian(Jacobite). After
15