107B Midterm Exam Hermes Dezautiere
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Question 1: “After the fall of the Bagratid kingdom, the Byzantine Empire (…) assigned many imperial military officials of Greater Armenia to lands (…) around the Cilician plain”, joined later by other Armenians on their own initiative (Atamian, 274). These emigrations mark the beginning of the history of what would become the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia between, rising and falling between the twelfth and fourteenth century. Analyzing this kingdom in the south of Anatolia, a region multiple invaders from all directions fought over at the time, we need to understand how Cilician Armenia’s destiny was predicated upon the regional balance of power. In a close reading of the works of Angus Donal Stewart, Ani Atamian Bournoutian, Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog and Sirarpie Der Nersessian, this essay will show how the independence of the Cilician kingdom of Armenia depended upon the existence of a balance of powers preventing the total control of one over Anatolia. As indicated by Stewart, “the origins of the Armenian kingdom in northern Syria and Cilicia lie in the confused politics of tenth and eleventh century eastern Anatolia” (Stewart, 33). Indeed, after the defeat of the Byzantine and its Armenian vassal armies at the battle of Manzikert in 1071, this period saw the migration of tens of thousands of Turks in Anatolia and the rise of first the Seljuk Sultanate in the Middle East and second that of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rūm, which would threaten the existence of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia until being invaded by the Mongol Ilkhanate in the thirteenth century. Facing the threatening presence of the Seljuks, Armenia Cilicia had to support the military expeditions of the Crusades, giving information and guiding crusaders through Syria. Therefore, development was directly linked to the rise and support of the neighboring Frankish states (Stewart, 2). Indeed, the arrival of the Franks in the Middle East, changing deeply the balance of power in the region with the weakening of the Byzantine and Muslim powers, allowed one family, the Rubenids, to progressively gain control over Cilicia by relying several times on alliances with the Latins against the Byzantines and Muslims. Clearly, the progressive decline of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rūm and the Crusades allowed for the rise of the Cilician Armenian Kingdom in the region, which would otherwise
have been a territory under Seljuk overlordship. Focusing more directly on the Crusades, the fate of the Frankish states had several major effects for Cilician Armenia. After the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin, Europeans were confined to coastal states. This development led Cilicia to “assume a new strategicimportance as a major Christian enclave (…) which eventually created circumstances favorable enough for Lewon (leading between 1187-1217) to obtain a royal crown in 1198” (Atamian, 279). Therefore, the status of kingdom, a long-term goal of the Rubenids, was achieved due to external changing factors in the region. Additionally, a major income came from the trade passing through Ayas, the “new terminus after the fall of these coastal cities of the trade routes to the East” (Stewart, 29). Because of the fall of the Frankish coastal cities, Armenia was for a time integrated into a network of exchanges crossing continents from the East, relying apparently heavily on this interconnexion, with the presence of merchants from “Sicily, Catalonia, Montpellier, and Pisa” (Stewart, 30). Thus, economically and military, the changes in the geopolitics of the region, and the strategic importance of this Christian enclave for the Frankish states created the possibility for Cilician Armenia to develop while being surrounded by Muslim forces. Lastly, the fall of the last Frankish states, destroyed by the Mamluk Sultanate which we will discuss next, left Cilicia almost isolated and partly leading to its fateful submission of the Mongol Empire. This change of situation highlights how dependent the Cilician Armenian kingdom was upon the varying geopolitics of the Middle East. Around the second part of the thirteenth century, two new powers entered the Near and Middle East and completely changed the geopolitical situation for Cilicia. The rise of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt in the 1240s, coming to dominate Egypt and the Near and Middle East appeared as a new threat for the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia. Finding its origins in the fight against the Franks and the Mongols, Mamluks saw themselves as the defenders of Islam, making the Christian states including Armenia a target for expansionism (Stewart, 38). In the North East, the other rising power was the Mongol Ilkhanate which submitted at the battle of Köse Dagh in 1243 the Seljuk Sultans of Rūm,
until then the main threat for the newly recognized Armenian Kingdom. This defeat of the Seljuks by the Mongols, and the rise of the Mamluks in the East, would eventually determine the fate of Cilician Armenia. Indeed, with the approach of these two forces, the kingdom had to find an overlord and submit to the greatest power in order to survive as it was clearly unable to resist the might of either. After the vassalage of the Seljuk had become clear, Het’um I opened negotiations with the Mongols and even decided to break the ethics code by giving to Mongol forces the wife and daughter of the Seljuk Sultan. “Turning the Seljuk Sultanate into his irreconcilable enemy, he gained Mongol confidence” (Dashdondog, 80), an action quite immoral and extreme which highlights the dire need of Mongol protection for Cilicia. This submission was eventually made to the Mongols in 1254 during Het’um I’s reign.This submission to the Mongols allowed Cilician Armenia to be protected from Muslim attacks but forced Armenia to furnish troops and money (Dashdondog, 80) for the Mongol subsequent invasion of the Middle East. Importantly, the Mongol ‘alliance’ brought territory to the kingdom which expanded in the East as far the Euphrates (Stewart, 188). According to Angus Donal Stewart, “it is inevitable that the Mamluk-Armenian conflict should be seen in the context of the Mongol invasions (…): It was the Armenian’s involvement with the Mongols that first brought them into direct contact with the forces of the Mamluk Sultanate” (Stewart, 43). Thus, the presence of Armenians troops and their anti-Islam actions during the sack of Baghdad in 1258 and the Mongol invasion of Syria in 1260 was instrumental in their relations with the Mamluks. Having allied themselves with the Mongols and invaded Islamic territory, the Mamluk leader Baybars aimed at punishing Cilicia (Atamian, 287). After the defeat of Ain Jālut in 1260 of the Mongol and Armenian forces, the Mongols retreated back to Iran and left Cilicia isolated against Mamluk and Seljuk attacks (Atamian, 286). The defeat of the Mongols by the Mamluks was a crucial turning point for the history of the kingdom. The decline of the Mongol Ilkhanate led to the destruction of all the remaining Frankish states by the Mamluk armies and Cilicia eventually had to sign a humiliating truce with the Mamluks in 1285 after a successful
Mamluk invasion. In 1375, Mamluks invaded the rests of the kingdom which was given to a Türkman dynasty (Stewart, 186), marking the end of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia. Therefore, the submission to the Mongols, only beneficial as long as the Mongols dominated the region, appears to have left the kingdom at the mercy of a hostile superior power which could not have been defeated. To conclude, a close reading of Cilician Armenian history reveals that the rise, decline and eventual fall of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia should be put in the context of the unstable geopolitical situation of the Near and Middle East in the thirteenth century. The Seljuks, the Crusaders and Frankish states, the Mamluks and the Mongols were all forces that invaded the region and deeply changed its history, which allowed for the rise and development of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia in the first place. Once a power gained quasi total control over the region, the Mamluks, Cilicia was eventually taken over by this hostile power and its Armenian kingdom put to an end. If the kingdom survived until 1375, it was merely because of its tribute payments to the Mamluks, and the unwillingness of the latters to destroy it. Bibliography: Atamian Ani Bournoutian. "Cilician Armenia" in The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times(New York: St. Martin's Press), 273-291. Dashdondog Bayarsaikhan. "Strategic Submissions by the Armenians" in The Mongols and the Armenians (1220-1335)(Leiden, Boston: Brill), 78-89. Der Nersessian Sirarpie. “Armenia in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries”, “The Kingdom of Cilician Armenia” in Byzantine and Armenian Studies(Louvain: Imprimerie Orientaliste, 1973), 323-352. Stewart Angus Donal. "Introduction", "Armenians, Mamluks, Mongols and Franks", "Conclu-sions" in The Armenian Kingdom and the Mamluks, War and Diplomacy during the Reigns of Het'um II (1289-1307) (Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2001), 1-30, 33-43, 185-193.
Question 2: “The end of the seventh/thirteenth century was a period of momentous change in the Near and Middle East.” (Stewart, 1) In the middle of all these changes, the small principality of Cilician Armenia, recognized as a kingdom in 1198, was affected deeply. If its history cannot be told in isolation, nor can all the cultural interactions and exchanges happening in the kingdom be ignored. Analyzing how this geographic location and influences coming from both East and West formed the culturally hybrid Cilician elites, this essay will rely on readings from Angus Donal Stewart, Thomas T. Allsen, Ani Atamian Bournoutian and Dickran Kouymijan. This essay will argue that Cilician Armenia became a carrefour for European and Mongol trade routes, creating a culturally mixed and unique Armenian kingdom in the thirteenth century. First, this essay will consider the earlier importance of trade and political exchanges from the West, brought in Cilician Armenia by the Crusaders and Frankish states and its integration in the European West’s trade network. Because of its location on the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, Cilicia was a “strategic point in several trade routes linking Central Asia to the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean”(Bournoutian Atamian, 284). Part of the network of Western European merchants from “Sicily, Catalonia, Montpellier, and Pisa”(Stewart, 30), Cilicia relied heavily on the port of Ayas, an important stop for European and Oriental merchants as center for East-West commerce in Asia minor (Bournoutian Atamian, 284). This created a continuous source of income for the kingdom, making it a prosperous region. Apart from this trade, connections made with the West during the crusaders also had crucial implications for the political culture of the kingdom. As pointed out by Atamian Bournoutian, “the relationship to the nobility was essentially a Western feudal one of the sovereign to vassal, rather than the earlier nakharar system of “first among equals””(Bournoutian Atamian, 283) which was common in Greater Armenia and the earlier Sepurakan Kingdom. Importantly, this relationship was not developed immediately nor fully between the king and the nobility (Bournoutian Atamian, 283). This change is important particularly as it marks the
development of a hybrid system with elements of both the Western feudal and nakhararsystem, the latter much more decentralized than the first. Additionally, the political structure was affected in another way: Western feudal law was used to resolve cases involving the royal court and the nobility (Atamian Bournoutian, 283), representing a deep change in the cultural practices and norms of legality. To the extent that the law is by definition a cultural development used to organize society in a particular context, the imposition of a foreign-created and responding to a different social context system can be interpreted as at least as culturally significant as the Western feudal system’s implantation, if not more. Therefore, in its political and legal culture and practices, the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia’s elite was a form of hybrid between Greater Armenian political culture and Western feudal practices in the European royals courts. Another important aspect of this hybridization goes deeper into cultural changes. Through exchanges between the courts and the adoption of the Western feudal system, the court of Armenia also adopted new practices. A significant one was the knighting of the Armenian nobles according to the European tradition (Bournoutian Atamian, 283). Additionally, the ‘entertainment’and games included foreign forms, including the organization of “jousts and tournaments unknown in Greater Armenia”, feudal dress from Europe and the adoption of French names among the royal court (Bournoutian Atamian, 283). To accommodate the arrival of new names and new words such as the French term of baron, new letters were added to the Armenian alphabet, o and f, and the pronunciation of Cilician Armenian started to differ slightly from the language spoken in Greater Armenia (Atamian Bournoutian, 283). These changes are relevant because represent a multitude of broader changes among the Cilician nobility, not simply the adoption of a new political system but a more all-encompassing shift in practices which reflects the development of a hybrid and unique culture in Cilicia because of its geographical location during the Crusades and the existence of the Frankish states. The first part of this essay concludes that the Western influence deeply hybridized Cilician nobility’s culture and practices in legal, political, day-to-day, and linguistic practices.
If the West’s influence on Cilician Armenia is relevant, latter influences in the second part of the thirteenth century from the East are also crucial in the analysis of the nobility’s hybrid development. During the Pax Mongolica (1250-1350), the Mongol Empire established an intensifying “transcontinental cultural traffic”(Allsen, 135) made through “transport of people”(135); “transmission of texts”(137); “circulation of goods”(140); “distribution of cultural resources”(141); expansion throughout the continent of a network of “communication”(144). This network of trade routes and cross-cultural exchanges went from the Chinese coast of the Pacific Ocean to Russian European lands and as far as Iran to its south. With the arrival of the Mongols in the Middle East after the battle of Köse Dagh in 1243 and the defeat of the Seljuk Turks, the Armenian King Het’um I submitted to the Mongol Khanate in 1247 and 1254. Travelling to the capital of Karakorum, the Armenian king was given a Mongol robe signifying his submission and the protection of the Empire. The submission meant the integration of Cilician Armenia in this transcontinental cultural traffic that made it the terminus of trade routes to the East (Stewart, 29). This robe is significant in that it had several Chinese motifs that may have led to the apparition of Chinese dragons, phoenixes, and lions in Cilician illuminated manuscripts commissioned in 1286 by Prince Het’um (Kouymjian, 121-122). If the source of these Chinese motifs is still debated, their presence is significant in a number of ways. First of all, these motifs would mean traditionally harmony in the imperial Chinese household, a meaning that was integrated consciously and applied to the Cilician royal household by the painters (Kouymjian, 128). Not only Armenian artists were able to integrate the symbolic value of these motifs, but the importance of Chinese art in Armenia went beyond by inducing a “new treatment of space in painting”(Kouymjian, 128), marking a deeper change in the techniques of painters. Additionally, this period is also marked by the change in perception of China by the Christian powers, caused by the connection and cross-cultural exchange of Chinese cultural elements in Armenia. Indeed, the European audiences began repeating the Muslim formula praising the superiority of Chinese arts and crafts (Allsen, 153). If this influence was short-lived and ended after the progressive decline of the Persian-based Mongol Ilkhanate in the fourteenth century and the breakup of the
Mongol-Armenian ‘alliance’which partly separated Cilicia from the Eastern trade routes, it remains a significant effect of the inclusion of the kingdom in the Silk Road. Another interesting cultural element in the life of the elites was the “new interest in Alexander as a world conqueror (…) directly related to the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century”(Kouymjian, 129). These ideas, motifs and changes in the perception of both the Mongols and China are effects induced by the inclusion of foreign Eastern elements in Cilician Armenian elites’culture. These are even more significant if we consider that the new perception of China by the Western Europeans might have been partly induced by the transmission of goods and ideas through the ports of Cilicia, mainly Ayas, linking commercially the West to the Silk Road all the way to China. To conclude, through the connections of the West and East trade routes and the varying geopolitical forces entering Anatolia throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries led to the rise of a culturally hybrid elites and nobility in Cilician Armenia. These changes in culture compared to Greater Armenia are large and touch upon many fields: day-to-day, court, legal, political, artistic practices were all affected in several ways by the Western Christians and the Mongol Empire’s connection of Cilicia to the Silk Road and the Eurasian transcontinental cultural and commercial network. If the Eastern cross-cultural exchange may appear limited in this essay, one should consider the focus of the academic literature and national Armenian history on the Western ties. The short-lived Mongol-Sino influence on Cilician Armenia is significant particularly because of the vast scale separating the Orthodox and the Sinitic cultural spheres and for the deeper consequences it may have had on the larger history of Armenia and that of Western Europe, especially in the latters perception of China in arts.
Bibliography: Allsen Thomas T.. “Mongols as vectors for cultural transmission”in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 135-154. Atamian Ani Bournoutian. “Cilician Armenia”in The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times(New York: St. Martin's Press), 273-291. Kouymjian Dickran. “The Intrusion of East Asian Imagery in Thirteenth-Century Armenia: Po-litical and Cultural Exchange along the Silk Road”in The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road(Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2008), 119-133. Stewart Angus Donal. “Introduction”, “Armenians, Mamluks, Mongols and Franks”, “Conclu-sions”in The Armenian Kingdom and the Mamluks, War and Diplomacy during the Reigns of Het'um II (1289-1307) (Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2001), 1-30, 33-43, 185-193.