Journal ArticlePaywalled
Ter-Ghevondian, Vahan, 2025
Revue des Études Arméniennes, Vol. 43 (2025), pp. 411–426 (Peeters); DOI 10.2143/REA.43.0.3295032
Covers the six years separating two famous battles, ʿAyn Jalut (1260) and Mari (1266). Armenian, Arab and Syriac historians all report the first Mamluk invasion of Cilicia and the events preceding it, but Ter-Ghevondian examines angles that have not received sufficient attention: the internal conflicts within Cilicia, the role of the Sultanate of Iconium, and the importance of Egyptian espionage, the factors that favoured Mamluk success and Armenian failure. Where ʿAyn Jalut opened a half-century of Mamluk-Mongol struggle over Greater Syria, Mari was the prelude to the long series of incursions that ended in the fall of the last Armenian kingdom. The analysis rests on Grigor of Akner, Smbat Sparapet, Kirakos of Gandzak, Bar Hebraeus and Arabic chroniclers.
Journal ArticleOpen Access
Hovhannisyan, Aram, 2025
Fundamental Armenology, Issue 1(21) 2025, History (National Academy of Sciences of RA / All Armenian Foundation Financing Armenological Studies); ISSN 1829-4618
The 1320s were among the hardest decades in the history of Cilician Armenia: the Mongols were no longer allies, and the kingdom stood alone against the surrounding Muslim states. Drawing on medieval primary sources and current scholarship, Hovhannisyan reconstructs the internal political events and the struggle for power in the kingdom. He gives particular attention to the killing of the regents by the Armenian king at Adana on 27 January 1329, the circumstances of the act and the individuals involved, and works to establish the full set of causes behind it, after which Levon IV ruled alone.
Journal ArticleOpen Access
Dum-Tragut, Jasmine · Khachatryan, Ovsanna, 2025
Matenadaran: Medieval and Early Modern Armenian Studies (MEMAS), Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 119–143 (Mesrop Mashtots Matenadaran / Brepols); eISSN 3041-5063
Presents the first study of a previously unexamined medical manuscript, Matenadaran codex no. 11161, covering its physical characteristics, provenance, and textual composition. The authors analyze one of its key texts, a book on horses, and compare it with other Armenian medical manuscripts. This lets them date and localize the codex more precisely and situate it in the Armenian medical tradition between medieval Cilicia and early modern Nor Jugha (New Julfa). Khachatryan is based at the Matenadaran; Dum-Tragut heads Armenian Studies at Salzburg.
Journal ArticleOpen Access
Gevorgyan, Zohrab, 2024
Matenadaran: Medieval and Early Modern Armenian Studies (MEMAS), Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 107–122 (Mesrop Mashtots Matenadaran / Brepols); eISSN 3041-5063
The lawcodes in use in Cilician Armenia, those of Mkhitar Gosh and Smbat the Constable, contain many definitions of violence that need to be read in their medieval context. Gevorgyan concentrates on violence as defined under matrimonial law and in the ordinary run of domestic and social relations. He asks what examples of the legal definition of violence the Cilician sources actually give, how those cases were framed juridically, and what the formulations reveal about the multi-confessional, multi-ethnic coexistence of daily life in Cilicia.
Journal ArticleOpen Access
Ter-Ghevondian, Vahan, 2024
Matenadaran: Medieval and Early Modern Armenian Studies (MEMAS), Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 81–92 (Mesrop Mashtots Matenadaran / Brepols); eISSN 3041-5063
Drawing on the Anonymous of Edessa and Kamal ad-Din Ibn al-Adim, the article reconstructs how in 1208–1209, at King Levon's request, al-Malik al-Adil wrote to Kay Khosrov and al-Malik al-Zahir pressing them to make peace with the Armenian side. The resulting settlement halted the joint Seljuk-Ayyubid offensive against Cilicia, at the price of Armenian concessions. Levon honoured only the commitment to the Sultanate of Iconium, and his ambition in Antioch was realized in 1216. Ter-Ghevondian argues the exchange was not an isolated episode but evidence of sustained monarch-level relations between Egypt and Cilician Armenia.
Journal ArticleOpen Access
Zhamkochyan, Nelli, 2023
Պատմություն և մշակույթ / History and Culture, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 31–47 (Yerevan State University); DOI 10.46991/hc.2023.20.2.031
Treats the international recognition of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia and the coronation of Prince Levon II, using medieval Armenian and foreign chronicles alongside modern scholarship. Zhamkochyan reconstructs the favourable international configuration of the late 1180s to 1198 and the parallel negotiations Cilicia conducted with the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium. She gives particular weight to the confessional concessions the Papacy and Byzantium tried to impose, and to the counter-strategy adopted by the Cilician state and the catholicosate at Hromkla. She concludes that Levon was first anointed by Conrad of Wittelsbach, the papal representative, and subsequently blessed by Catholicos Grigor VI Apirat.
Journal ArticlePaywalled
Christianian, Jirair, 2020
Revue des Études Arméniennes, Vol. 39 (2020), pp. 379–420 (Peeters); DOI 10.2143/REA.39.0.3288977
In 2015, in the course of extensive internet searches, the author came across photographs posted online showing remnants of large crosses on the façade of a building identified as a church converted into a mosque. Close examination of the monument and its geographical setting led him to conclude that the church-mosque contains remains of the famous Cilician Monastery of Drazark, an important medieval Armenian foundation. The article documents the identification and its setting: a rare case of a lost Armenian monastic site being relocated through open-source photographic evidence.
Book ChapterPaywalled
Cowe, S. Peter, 2006
In Michael Angold (ed.), The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 5: Eastern Christianity, chapter 17, pp. 404–429 (Cambridge University Press); DOI 10.1017/CHOL9780521811132.018
Argues that the defining issue for Christendom in this period was ecclesiology, and that for the Armenians it took the form of renewed debate with the other Christian traditions of Byzantium, western Europe and the Near East. Cowe traces the consolidation of the Armenian Church from the catholicate of Yovhan Odznetsi, whose synods reaffirmed one-nature Christology and linked it to the joint celebration of Nativity and Baptism on 6 January and the use of unleavened bread and unmixed wine. He describes the defence of church structures, sacraments and religious art against the Paulicians, the compilation of doctrine and canon law, and an expanded sanctorale centred on St Gregory the Illuminator, all set against the great population movements of the era.
