Jeghegis
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Jeghegis Եղեգիս |
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| State : |
 Armenia
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| Province : | Vajoz Dzor | ||
| Coordinates : | 39 ° 52 ' N , 45 ° 22' E | ||
| Height : | 1544 m | ||
| Residents : | 512 (2012) | ||
| Time zone : | UTC + 4 | ||
| Community type: | Rural community | ||
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Yeghegis ( Armenian Եղեգիս ), other transcriptions Yeghegis, Yekhegis, Eghegis, elegis until 1994 Alayaz , is a village in the south Armenian province of Vayots Dzor Province north of the provincial capital Yeghegnadzor . The historic place below the hilltop castle Smbataberd , which was expanded in the 10th century, belonged to the domain of the Armenian Orbelian princes and their allies until the 15th century and is home to three churches built between the 13th and 17th centuries as well as a Jewish cemetery from the 13th to the 17th century 14th Century.
location
Jeghegis is located at an altitude of 1,544 meters in the valley of the river of the same name, which flows into the Arpa around 17 kilometers south of the village . Near the confluence, at the scattered settlement of Getap between Areni and Yeghegnadsor, the M10 trunk road branches off from the M2 and leads past the village of Schatin to the north over the Selim Pass to Lake Sevan . In Schatin, a side road turns to the northeast, which reaches Jeghegis after six kilometers. The Smbataberd fortress ruins towers over the town at an altitude of 1925 meters. The footpath up is one kilometer long from the center of the village.
The Shativank monastery above Schatin and the Tsaghats Kar monastery , which was connected to Smbataberd in the Middle Ages, are also of historical importance in the immediate vicinity .
In a side valley on the opposite northern side of the hill, a path also leads from Artabuynk up to the castle. The elongated village was called Yeghegis from 1946 to 1994 and only then took on its current name. The road into the side valley of Artabuynk branches off two kilometers east of Schatin. At the junction, four kilometers west of Jeghegis, was Hostun (Vostink), a medieval suburb of Jeghegis, which was destroyed by an earthquake except for the ruins of a 10th century monastery church. On a nearby hill was a watchtower belonging to the Smbataberd Fortress.
history
Jeghegis experienced its first heyday in the 10th and 11th centuries after the end of Arab rule as the headquarters of the Armenian princes of Sjunik, whose sphere of influence extended beyond today's province of Sjunik in southern Armenia. When the Seljuks invaded , Yeghegis was destroyed and lost its importance. From the middle of the 13th century and in the 14th century, Jeghegis was the main town of the Proschian family, who were related to the Orbelian family. Both dynasties ruled autonomously over a large part of the Sangesur region , while areas further north were under the suzerainty of the Mongol conquerors. Along with Smbataberd, Vorotnaberd was one of the most important fortresses in the Principality of Orbelian. In the 15th century the Armenians found themselves in alternating dependence on warring powers after Timur Lenk and his troops marched from Tabriz to Syunik in 1386 and devastated the country. In the riots that followed, the Orbelian family split into several groups. Around 1410, a Turkmen tribal association from Anatolia took over sovereignty and Smbat, the last ruler over Sjunik from the House of Orbelian withdrew to Georgia. Some earthquakes caused destruction. Because of the deportation of large parts of the Armenian population to Isfahan in 1604 by the Persian Shah Abbas I and subsequent wars between the Ottomans and the Safavids , the entire Jeghegis valley was deserted in the 17th century.
Later settlers, nomadic Turkic peoples , renamed the place Alayaz. Until the violent outbreak of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict , Azeris lived in Alayaz . In 1988 they were expelled from their homeland and settled in Azerbaijan . In their place came Armenians who had fled Sumgait and gave the place its old name again.
Townscape
The mostly single-storey farmhouses of the compact village are surrounded by large gardens with a dense population of walnut trees. The Jeghegis flows in a rocky gorge on the southern edge of the settlement area. A small grocery store and a bus stop for minibuses on the thoroughfare represent the center of the village; most of the houses are on winding paths north of the road on the flat foothills of the hill, which is jagged by transverse valleys.
According to official statistics from 2012, Jeghegis has 512 officially registered residents. The number was practically unchanged from the 2001 census.
The first medieval architectural monument shortly after the western entrance to the town on the main street is a small rectangular walled area with some gravestones that remind of the Orbelian family. Here two chatschkars stand next to each other, on which a semicircular relief stone was placed, which presumably formed the tympanum of a chapel that no longer exists and is dated to the 10th to 12th centuries due to stylistic features.
Surb Astvatsatsin
A winding path leads north of the road after 100 meters to the Church of Our Lady ( Surb Astvatsatsin ), a three-aisled basilica with a barrel vault , which was rebuilt in 1703 from the stones of a previous building. Two massive pillars in each row, which are connected to one another by round arches, divide the space into a wide, high central nave and two narrower, lower side aisles, which are covered by a single gable roof. The building is typical of the artistic building activity resumed in the 17th century. In the south of Armenia and especially in the Sangesur area, archaic-looking pillar basilicas were built from the basalt available in the area in the early Christian style . Due to the danger of earthquakes and for structural reasons, no domed churches were built from this heavy rock. The elongated type with two pairs of pillars includes, in addition to the Church of Our Lady of Jeghegis, the monastery church of Shativank in the province of Vajoz Dzor and the monasteries of Mec Anapat (newly founded in 1662), Haranc Anapat (founded in 1613 and destroyed by an earthquake in 1658). , the preserved Hripsime church in the valley of Khndzoresk (built in 1665) and the church in the village of Tandzaver (built in 1705).
The middle barrel vault divides belt arches between the two pairs of pillars, another belt arch delimits the semicircular apse , which is raised by a bema (platform) . The two apse side rooms are rectangular and accessible from the side aisles. The inside of the church is bare and unadorned. The entrance is in the west wall, a second entrance in the south wall was bricked up. Half of it is below today's ground level. The north wall is filled with soil almost to the level of the eaves. The outer walls consist of basalt blocks and rubble stones that have been carefully hewn in different ways. In between there are some older ornate Khachkar stones in the walls. The west entrance is surrounded by a pair of half-columns and a round arch in relief. The two symmetrically arranged relief stones above the round arch represent sirens , winged female mythical creatures that are common in medieval buildings in Vajoz Dzor. The upper half of the false window above the entrance, framed by a hollow profile, consists of an ogival muqarnas niche according to Islamic building tradition and a cross stone from elsewhere below. The stone slab roof of the church, which is no longer venerated today, is overgrown with grass.
Surb karapet
Further to the east, between tall walnut trees, the Baptist Church ( Surb Karapet ), also Holy Cross Church ( Surb Nshan , “Holy Sign”), from the 13th century has been completely preserved. In the case of the small, encased cross- domed church , the cruciform plan lies within rectangular outer walls, which include ancillary rooms in the four corners. It resembles the Surb Karapet of Tsaghats Kar with a semicircular apse in the east and rectangular walls on the three remaining side arms. The inside and outside circular tambour rests on belt arches that are supported by the four inner wall corners. The dome is surmounted by a conical roof. The only entrance enclosed by a round arch is to the west. Inscriptions name a Nerses Nahatak as the builder.
There are many chatschkars, some of them old, around the building. Some bear the dates of the Armenian calendar : the number 750 on a kachkar at the entrance to the clearing corresponds to 1301 AD, the number 98 equals 699 AD. At this time, however, Khachkars were not yet developed.
Zorats Church
The "Soldiers Church" ( Zorats Yekeghetsi ) stands free on a hill above the river on the eastern edge of the village. It owes its actual name "Stephanus Church" ( Surb Stepanos ) to its dedication to Bishop Stepanos Tarsayich in 1303. Stepanos was a grandson of Prince Sjunik Tarsayich Orbelian, whose headquarters were in Areni in the 13th century . From the middle of the 13th to the middle of the 14th century, the regional princes owed tribute to the Mongols. Before Armenian soldiers who were forcibly recruited to fight Turkmen tribes and Syrian Mamluks went into battle, they received Christian blessings in front of the church. Because the troops were blessed with the horses - a common practice at the time, the service was held outdoors in front of the church. The Zorats Church is the only church in Armenia that was built exclusively for this purpose and has a correspondingly unique shape.
There is no church interior, just a narrow building with an altar apse open to the west, in front of which the congregation gathered outdoors. The west wall of the semicircular apse is supported by a three-arched arcade on a high base. On both sides, rectangular passageways lead to narrow, ground-level side rooms, at the end of which there are semicircular apses with sacrificial niches embedded in the wall. The eastern outer wall is structured by a central window slot surrounded by a cross-shaped profile and by two deep, vertical triangular niches that reach up to eaves height. The church is very well preserved after its restoration in the 20th century.
Excavations in the area have unearthed remains of walls from the Middle Ages that belonged to a monastery. A few meters east of the church, a door frame made of carefully hewn blocks has been preserved. Some exposed tombstones in front of the church have an unusual eye hole on one side and seem to indicate a Bronze Age place of worship around which they were placed.
Jewish Cemetery
The Jewish cemetery is located on the south bank of the stream about 200 meters south of the thoroughfare and can be reached via a footbridge. It was rediscovered in 1996 and exposed by an Armenian-Israeli team between 2000 and 2003. More than 60 tombstones from the 13th and 14th centuries have been identified, 40 of them on the cemetery area, which is now surrounded by a wall, and the others in the area. Some tombstones had been used as the foundation for the footbridge and as a floor covering in a mill. The gravestones are cylindrical and lie on the ground with one flat long side. Ten gravestones bear inscriptions mostly in Hebrew and more rarely in Aramaic . They contain proper names and quotations from the Bible in a very old style of language used for tombstones and give an insight into religious practice at the time. The year numbers belong to a calendar used by oriental Jews, whose time calculation dates back to 331 BC. Begins. Accordingly, the oldest dated grave inscription results in the year 1266 AD and the youngest 1346 AD. Some ornaments, such as spiral shapes within a circle, were also found on contemporary tombstones of the Armenian Christians . There is no historical source for a Jewish community in medieval Jeghegis.
literature
- Paolo Cuneo: Architettura Armena dal quarto al diciannovesimo secolo. Volume 1. De Luca Editore, Rome 1988, p. 380f
Web links
- Rick Ney: Vayot's Dzor. TourArmenia, 2009, p. 20f
- Yeghegis. Armenian Heritage
- Yeghegis Village. Armeniapedia
Individual evidence
- ↑ Smbataberd 2: Lower Complex. Gates. Map legend. Armenian Heritage; Rick Ney, p. 18
- ↑ Simon Payaslian: The History of Armenia. From the origins to the present. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2007, p. 103
- ↑ RA Vayots Dzor Marz. 2012, armstat.am
- ^ RA 2001. Population and Housing Census Results. armstat.am, p. 63
- ^ Jean-Michel Thierry: Armenian Art. Herder, Freiburg / B. 1988, p. 321, ISBN 3-451-21141-6
- ↑ Yeghegis 1: Yeghegis (Alayaz). Map legend. Armenian Heritage
- ↑ Yeghegis 2: Zorats Church. Armenian Heritage
- ↑ Rick Ney, p. 21
- ↑ Yeghegis 3: Jewish Cemetery. Armenian Heritage
- ↑ Eghegis, Eghegiz, Yeghegis, or Elegis. International Jewish Cemetery Project