Ashot Msaker

Ashot IV. Bagratuni ( Armenian Աշոտ Դ Բագրատունի , also: Ashot Msaker Armenian Աշոտ Մսակեր : German " Ashot the meat eater ") was an Armenian prince of the Bagratid dynasty . He was initially a refugee after the Battle of Bagrevand (Արձնիի ճակատամարտ, Ardsnii tschakatamart), a failed uprising against Arab rule in Armenia in 775. His father was killed in this battle. In the course of the next few decades, however, he continuously expanded his sphere of influence and acquired a clear supremacy in relation to the fortunes of the country, so that he was recognized by the Abbasid Caliphate as Prince of Princes (Ishkhan Ishkhanats ′) of Arminiya from 806 until his death in 826 has been.

Surname

The nickname "meat eater" apparently goes back to the fact that he refused to forego the consumption of meat during Lent .

Life

Ashot IV was the son of Smbat VII , the then prince of the Arab-ruled Arminiya. Smbat had participated in the rebellion against the Abbasids and was killed in the Battle of Bagrevand (Բագրևանդ) 775. After the battle, Ashot fled the family's lands in eastern Armenia north to his relatives near the springs of the Araxes (Արաքս, Araks), where he was further away from the Arab rulers and closer to the Byzantine Empire . He also owned silver mines there, the yield of which allowed him to purchase some lands from the Kamsarakan family and build a new principality around the fortress of Bagaran in Ayrarat province .

The extinction or exile of many noble families ( Nacharar ) after the Battle of Bagrevand left a power vacuum in the southern Caucasus: this vacuum was partially filled by Arab immigrants who founded a number of larger or smaller emirates in the region as early as the early 9th century had. The greatest beneficiaries, however, were the Artsruni , a formerly middle-class family of the Nacharar who now controlled most of south-east Armenia ( Vaspurakan ). At the same time, Aschot was able to establish the Bagratids as the most important family of the Nacharar next to the Artsruni through clever diplomacy and marriage alliances. Therefore, Caliph Harun al-Rashid chose Ashot as the new Ishkhan Ishkhanats ′ of Arminiya, thereby renewing an office that had been abolished with the death of his father thirty years earlier. The appointment was both an attempt to counterbalance the increasingly powerful Artsruni and at the same time to pull the loyalty of the Armenians away from Byzantium, to which many families had fled after 775. At around the same time, the caliph recognized another branch of the family, the Georgian Bagratids , under Ashot I , as princes of the Caucasian Iberia (ქართლის საერისმთავრო, kartlis saerismtavro).

Ashot was able to take advantage of the unrest in the caliphate after the death of Harun ar-Raschid in 809 and in the course of the ongoing Fourth Abbasid Civil War (Fourth Fitna, Arabic الفتنة الرابعة) greatly increase its lands and power. However, his rise was challenged by another ambitious family, the Muslim Jahhafids . The ancestor of the family, Jahhaf , was a newcomer to Armenia who had built a substantial power base for himself by taking lands of the Mamikonians by marrying a daughter of Mushegh VI. Mamikonian , one of the Armenian leaders killed at Bagrevand. Ashot defeated the Jahhafids twice in Taron and Arsharunik . Thereby he conquered not only Taron (which Jahhaf had captured from another Bagratid, Vasak) and Arsharunik with the region Shirak (which he had bought earlier from the Kamsarakans), but also Ashotz and the east of Tayk . Disappointed, Jahhaf and his son Abd al-Malik started an open rebellion against the caliphate and attacked the Armenian capital Dvin . In 813 they besieged the governor of the caliphate at Bardaa without success . Aschot defeated an army of 5,000 men sent against him by Abd al-Malik and killed 3,000 while Aschot's brother Shapuh devastated the area around Dvin. When Abd al-Malik went to face Shapuh, the local population rose up against him and killed him.

The death of Abd al-Malik "marked the victory of the Bagratids over their most dangerous opponents" and made Ashot the greatest feudal lord among the Naharar . He continued to secure his position through strategic alliance marriages, including by giving one of his daughters to the Prince of Artsruni of Vaspurakan and another to the Emir of Arzen .

At the time of his death in 826, Ashot had undergone a remarkable transformation: as Joseph Laurent comments: the “proscribed and dispossessed” refugee from Bagrevand died as the “most powerful and popular prince of Armenia” ). His property was divided between his sons. The eldest, Bagrat II Bagratuni , received Taron and Sasun and later the title of Ishkhan Ishkhanats', while his brother, Smbat VIII the Confessor , held the title of sparapet (Supreme Commander) of Armenia and the lands around Bagaran and the Araxes received.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Laurent 1919: 94, 98; Dadoyan 2011: 85.
2. ↑ Laurent 1919: 98; Whittow 1996: 214.
3. ↑ Laurent 1919: 96-97; Whittow 1996: 213-214.
4. ↑ Laurent 1919: 98-99; Whittow 1996: 214
5. ↑ Laurent 1919: 99; Whittow 1996: 214
6. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: 33-36; Laurent 1919: 101-104
7. ^ "Marked the victory of the Bagratids over their most dangerous enemies". Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: 36.
8. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: 35th
9. ↑ Laurent 1919: 104.
10. ↑ Laurent 1919: 104
11. ↑ Laurent 1919: 105.

swell

• Seta B. Dadoyan : The Armenians in the Medieval Islamic World: The Arab Period in Arminiyah, Seventh to Eleventh Centuries . Transaction Publishers, 2011, ISBN 9781412846523 .
• Joseph L. Laurent: L'Arménie entre Byzance et l'Islam: depuis la conquête arabe jusqu'en 886 ( French ). De Boccard, Paris 1919.
• Aram Ter-Ghewondyan : The Arab Emirates in Bagratid Armenia . Livraria Bertrand, Lisbon 1976, OCLC 490638192 .
• Mark Whittow: The Making of Byzantium, 600-1025 . University of California Press, Berkeley, California 1996, ISBN 978-0-520-20496-6 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Smbat VII.	Ishkhan Ishkhanats ′ around 806-826	Bagrat II. Bagratuni