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

At the beginning of this chapter it was mentioned
that Adontz, Manandyan, and Toumanoff disagreed on the
duration of the naxarar "system". Toumanoff placed its
destruction in the llth century, Adontz in the early 13th
century and Manandyan, after the mid-14th century, though
each of the scholars acknowledged that vestiges of the
•system" survived into later times. From the quantitative
standpoint, Toumanoff was quite right in placing the
Beginning of the end in the llth century. After the Sal jug,
invasions, the number of remaining naxarar Houses (which
had steadily declined from about 50 in the 5th century
to 20 ca. 800 A.D.) numbered about five: the Arcrunlds,
Bagratids, Mamikonids, Orbeleans, and Fahlawunids. From
the standpoint of *naxarar ways" which Manandyan spoke of
without defining, at the end of the 14th century there
were still some "naxarars" alive in Armenia, as this
chapter has attempted to demonstrate. Adontz, however, who
wrote of a "system" destroyed in the early 13th century was
incorrect in his hypothesis. To Adontz, hereditary tenure
and seniority were fundamental features of this "system",
yet he himself admitted that beginning already in the 5th
century, the rule of seniority was being undermined. By the
10th century a fundamental change had occurred in the essence
2
of the "system" . What the Mongol invasions swept away
1 Toumanoff, Studies, p. 227.
2 Adontz, Armenia, p. 221.
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