Kingdom of Armenia
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The Kingdom of Armenia (or Greater Armenia) was an independent kingdom from 190 BC to AD 387 and a client state of the Roman and Persian empires until 428, stretching from the Caspian to the Mediterranean seas.[1][2]
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[edit] Origins
The predecessor of the kingdom was the Satrapy of Armenia ("Armina" in Old Persian, "Harminuya" in Elamite, and "Urartu" in the Bablylonian parts of Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great), which was a protectorate of the Achaemenid Empire, and later an independent kingdom under the Orontid Dynasty (with Macedonian influence).
[edit] Artaxiad dynasty
The Seleucid Empire's influence over Armenia had weakened after it was defeated by the Romans in the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC. A Hellenistic Armenian state was thus founded in the same year by Artaxias I alongside the Armenian kingdom of Sophene led by Zariadres. Artaxias seized Yervandashat, united the Armenian Highland at the expense of neighboring tribes and founded the new royal capital of Artaxata near the Araxes River.[3] According to Strabo and Plutarch, Hannibal Barca received hospitality at the Armenian court of Artaxias I. The authors add an apocryphal story of how Hannibal planned and supervised the building of Artaxata.[4] The new city was laid on a strategic position at the juncture of trade routes that connected the Ancient Greek world with Bactria, India and the Black Sea which permitted the Armenians to prosper.[3] At its zenith, from 95 to 66 BC, Armenia led by Tigranes the Great extended its rule outside of the Armenian Highland over parts of the Caucasus and the area that is now south-eastern Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. For a time, Armenia was one of the most powerful states in the Roman East. It came under the Ancient Roman sphere of influence in 66 BC, after the battle of Tigranocerta and the final defeat of Armenia's ally, Mithridates VI of Pontus. Mark Antony invaded and defeated the kingdom in 34 BC, but Romans lost hegemony during the Final war of the Roman Republic in 32-30 BC. In 20 BC, Augustus negotiated a truce with the Parthians, making Armenia a buffer zone between the two major powers.
Subsequently, Armenia was often a focus of contention between Rome and Parthia, with both major powers supporting opposing sovereigns and usurpers. The Parthians forced Armenia into submission in 37 CE, but in 47 the Romans retook control of the kingdom.
[edit] Arsacid dynasty
Under Nero, the Romans fought a campaign (55-63) against the Parthian Empire, which had invaded the Kingdom of Armenia, allied with the Romans. After gaining Armenia in 60, then losing it in 62, the Romans sent the legion XV Apollinaris from Pannonia to Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, legatus of Syria. In 63, strengthened further by the legions III Gallica, V Macedonica, X Fretensis and XXII, General Corbulo entered into the territories of Vologases I of Parthia, who then returned the Armenian kingdom to Tiridates.
Another campaign was led by Emperor Lucius Verus in 162-165, after Vologases IV of Parthia had invaded Armenia and installed his chief general on its throne. To counter the Parthian threat, Verus set out for the east. His army won significant victories and retook the capital. Sohaemus, a Roman citizen of Armenian heritage, was installed as the new client king. But during an epidemic within the Roman forces, Parthians retook most of their lost territory in 166. Sohaemus retreated to Syria, аnd Arsacid’s dynasty was restored power over Armenia.
After the fall of the Arsacid Dynasty in Persia, the succeeding Sassanian Dynasty aspired to reestablish Persian control. The Sassanid Persians occupied Armenia in 252. However, in 287, Tiridates III the Great was established King of Armenia by the Roman armies. After Gregory the Illuminator's spreading of Christianity in Armenia, Tiridates accepted Christianity and made it his kingdom's official religion. The traditional date for Armenia's conversion to Christianity is established at 301, which precedes the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great's conversion and the Edict of Milan by a dozen years.
In 387, the Kingdom of Armenia was split between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Persians. Western Armenia quickly became a province of the Roman Empire under the name of Armenia Minor; Eastern Armenia remained a kingdom within Persia until 428, when the local nobility overthrew the king, and the Sassanids installed a governor in his place. In 885, after years of Roman, Persian, and Arab rule, Armenia regained its independence under the Bagratid dynasty.
By the second century BC, the population of Greater Armenia spoke Armenian, implying that today’s Armenians are the direct descendants of those speakers.[5][6][7][8]
[edit] References
- ^ Time Almanac, page 724 by Editors of Time Magazine
- ^ The New Review, page 208. Edited by Archibald Grove, William Ernest Henley
- ^ a b Hovannisian, Richard G. (2004). The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiquity to the Fourteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 49. ISBN 1-4039-6421-1.
- ^ Bournoutian, George A. (2006). A Concise History of the Armenian People: From Ancient Times to the Present. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, p. 29. ISBN 1-56859-141-1.
- ^ Patrick Donabedian, “The History of Karabagh from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century,” in Levon Chorbajian, Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian,
- ^ The Caucasian Knot: The History and Geo-Politics of Nagorno-Karabagh (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1994), p. 53.
- ^ Armenia and Azerbaijan: thinking a way out of Karabakh David D. Laitin and Ronald Grigor Suny
- ^ Greek Geographer, Strabo,
[edit] Further reading
- M. Chahin, The Kingdom of Armenia (1987, reissued 1991)
- Vahan Kurkjian, Tigran the Great (1958)
- Ashkharbek Kalantar, Armenia: From the Stone Age to the Middle Ages, Civilisations du Proche Orient, Se´rie 1, Vol. 2, Recherches et Publications, Neuchâtel, Paris, 1994;ISBN 978-2-940032-01-3
- Ashkharbek Kalantar, The Mediaeval Inscriptions of Vanstan, Armenia, Civilisations du Proche-Orient: Series 2 - Philologie - CDPOP 2, Vol. 2, Recherches et Publications, Neuchâtel, Paris, 1999;ISBN 978-2-940032-11-2
- Ashkharbek Kalantar, Materials on Armenian and Urartian History (with a contribution by Mirjo Salvini), Civilisations du Proche-Orient: Series 4 - Hors Série - CPOHS 3, Neuchâtel, Paris, 2004;ISBN 978-2-940032-14-3
[edit] External links
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