Jeghward
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Jeghward Եղվարդ |
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| State : |
 Armenia
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| Province : | Kotajk | ||
| Coordinates : | 40 ° 19 ′ N , 44 ° 29 ′ E | ||
| Height : | 1350 m | ||
| Area : | 7 km² | ||
| Residents : | 11,334 (2011) | ||
| Population density : | 1,619 inhabitants per km² | ||
| Time zone : | UTC + 4 | ||
| Community type: | city | ||
| Mayor : | Norair Sargsjan ( HHK ) | ||
| Website : | |||
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Jeghward ( Armenian Եղվարդ ), other transcriptions Yeghvard, Jeghvard, Ełvard, Eghvard, Eghiward , is a city in the central Armenian province of Kotajk a few kilometers north of Yerevan with 11,334 inhabitants in 2011. In the center of the place founded in early Christian times, the good The preserved Church of Our Lady ( Surb Astvatsatsin ), a three-storey burial church from the beginning of the 14th century, used for services. The outer walls of the grave church are unusually richly decorated with reliefs. Nearby are the ruins of a three-aisled basilica from the 6th century that belonged to a monastery.
location
Jeghward is located 19 kilometers north of the state capital Yerevan on the H4 extension of Jeghward Street in the Davtaschen district. The H4 runs past Jeghward through the neighboring village of Zoravan, three kilometers away, to the north, past the eastern flank of the 2575 meter high Ara mountain , until it joins the M4 expressway halfway between Ashtarak and Aparan . The H6 connects Jeghward with the city of Ashtarak, 12 kilometers to the west, and with the equally distant city of Nor Hatschen in the east. The 1,300 to 1,500 meter high, flat undulating plain on the southern edge of the rugged Ara volcano ( Arai lehr ) serves as pastureland for cattle and sheep, for growing grain and vegetables and in the home gardens of fruit trees. The Arzni-Shamiram Canal , used for field irrigation , runs past the northern outskirts. To the west of the city, between Ashtarak, Mughni and Saghmosavank , the plain is cut by the deep gorge of the Kassagh . The ruins of the round church Zoravar (Sorawor) from the 7th century stands in the open field near the village of Zoravan and can be seen from the northern outskirts.
history
In the late Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC) there was a larger settlement on the site of the place. In addition to the basilica, a smaller church with a single nave was built in early Christian times, of which only a few remains have survived. Jeghward was a bishopric in the Middle Ages and owned a monastery, which, according to the Armenian historian Vardan, was founded in the 13th century by Prince Grigor Mamikonian during the tenure of Catholicos Anastas († 668) at the same time as the church in Mamikonian's residence in Arutsch . In the 13th and 14th centuries, Mongolian and Turkic nomads drove out the inhabitants who had settled on the foothills of the Aragats and the Macaws and made summer pastures ( yaylak ) for their cattle from the farmland . When the Church of Our Lady was built, the Mongolian Ilkhan Ghazan Ilchan (ruled 1295–1304) and his successor Öldscheitü (ruled 1304–1316) ruled the area.
The monastery was completely destroyed during the wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Safavids in 1638 and 1735, except for the ruins of the basilica. During the socialist period from 1921 Jeghward was the capital of Nairi, one of the 33 districts ( gavarak ) of the country. ( Nairi was the Urartians' own name and from the end of the 19th century the middle name of nationalist Armenians for their country.)
Cityscape
In the 2001 census, the official population was given as 11,627. In January 2008, according to official statistics, there were 12,191 inhabitants in Jeghward.
The main roads H4 and H6 cross in the south outside the city. The old center, which looks like a village, consists of an irregularly branched network of streets, lined up with one to two-story single-family houses, the gardens of which are separated from the street by walls. In the gardens behind the houses, fruit trees (chestnuts, apples) and vegetables thrive. The Mother of God Church is located in a park in the maze of old town streets. On the southern outskirts, east of Yerevanjan Street, is a residential and industrial area with five-story apartment blocks.
The city's industrial plants mainly produce food, especially dairy and grain products (baked goods) and alcoholic beverages (brandy). There is also the production of leather goods and sports shoes. There are several primary schools and four secondary schools.
Mother of God Church
Origin and Distribution
According to an inscription above the entrance, the Church of Our Lady ( Surb Astvatsatsin ) is dated 1301 or 1321, depending on the reading, and was therefore donated by Prince Azizbek and his wife Vakhakh. In a colophon the year 1318 stands for the foundation and in the dome there is the painted number 1328. Since the Ilkhans increasingly suppressed the practice of the Christian religion from the beginning of the 14th century, the earliest possible construction time 1301 is most likely. According to historical sources, the church was restored in 1628 and 1745. The tower tower, which was later destroyed, was rebuilt from 1969 to 1970.
The church building types of the second heyday of Armenian architecture from the 9th to the 12th century go back to early Christian developments. The oldest Armenian central buildings of the 5th century consisted of a central room with a square plan, which was covered by a dome with a cylindrical drum connected in between . The extension of such simple central structures resulted in a symmetrical tetraconchus , the four semicircular conches of which protruded from the side walls, as in Mastara, polygonally or mostly rectangularly encased. A well-preserved example of the small cross- domed churches is Lmbatavank (around 600 AD). The Karmrawor church of Ashtarak (7th century) is a monoconchos, in which, apart from the eastern one, the three other side arms are rectangular on the inside. A variant called trikonchos with three semicircular cones and a rectangular western arm is the Church of Our Lady of Talin from the first half of the 7th century. Most of them served as a mausoleum church and were surrounded by a cemetery.
Between the 10th and 14th centuries, new grave churches were built in the area of commemorative culture - the Areni Church , dated 1329 and laid out as a monoconchos, was outstanding in terms of design , as well as a large number of khachkars (cross stones) that were freely placed or, as in the case of the Holy Cross Church ( Surb Nshan ) of Tsaghats Kar Monastery and the burial tomb of Haghpat Monastery were integrated into the architecture. In addition, in the first half of the 14th century there was the type of small tower-like grave churches, of which the mausoleum church of the Noravank Monastery, completed in 1339 and consecrated to Our Lady ( Surb Astvatsatsin ), is of particular importance. As in the case of the Areni Church, Momik is named as the architect and person responsible for the decoration . The tower grave churches were used to bury the regional ruling princes. The three-storey tower church that was built as the burial place of a prince of the Orbelian family in Norawank was built a little later, larger and more elaborately designed than the church in Jeghward. Another monument of this type has been preserved with the St. John's Church, dated 1349, on a hill northwest of the village of Kaputan. All three had the burial hall on the ground floor and the prayer hall on the upper floor.
Design
The ground floor of the square building is a low, dark room that is a few steps lower than today's floor level. It closes in the east with a horseshoe-shaped altar apse, the clear width of which is 4.0 meters, and rectangular side rooms. The ceiling is designed as a groin vault . Divine services of the Armenian Apostolic Christians take place in this former burial space . The walls of reddish tuff have been blackened inside by soot of candles over the centuries. Light practically only falls into the room through the open entrance door on the west side; there is a tiny window slot in the middle on the other sides. A later extension in front of the west side, serving as a Gawit , was removed during the restoration in 1969. The building measures 14.7 meters on the outside in an east-west direction.
Above that, on the second floor, there is a cross-shaped room with a straight east wall. This room is usually inaccessible. In the past, it could only be entered via a leaning wooden ladder. The ladder was leaned against two symmetrically arranged pairs of stairs that protruded from the wall at the side of the upper entrance and have now disappeared. At the church of Kaputan there is still a multi-step double staircase at the upper entrance for laying the ladder, in Norawank, on the other hand, the uncomfortable to walk because very narrow steps reach down to the floor. Obviously, the upper floor of this type of church should not be allowed to be entered for everyone and not at any time, because the liturgy was only practiced on special days.
On the third floor, the building is crowned by a rotunda bell tower with a diameter of 7.6 meters, the conical roof of which is supported by twelve columns with cubic capitals.
The building decor of the outer walls on the ground floor consists of simple parallel bulging cornices, with which the windows on the north and south sides are framed in a large cross and on the east side in a smaller square. A strict horizontal braided ribbon separates the lower square structure from the cross-shaped floor above, the facades of which are decorated with lavish relief decorations. The east gable is divided into three pointed arched fields of different heights. The central arch is supported by twin half-columns with rectangular capitals. They frame a wall field, in the middle of which a braided band delimits a rectangle around the narrow window. A panther can be seen above the window killing a goat. On the north side, a chimera is depicted in the stepped central field above the window , on the south side it is a round-bellied eagle holding an emaciated lamb in its claws.
The west gable is particularly rich. Above the door, a lion leaps from the right and a bull from the left. They represent the coat of arms of the Orbelian family appearing as the founder. The animal figures on the other sides also symbolize, in rare unity, princely families ( nakharars ) who had ceased their mutual hostilities in the 14th century in the face of the threat from the Timurids . The two animals are separated by the lower part of a large cross made of a braided ribbon, the left crossbeam of which bears the image of a Maria with child in the posture of a hodegetria . Her head is not strictly straight, as is customary with this type, but is lovingly inclined towards the child. The relief is stylistically similar to the portrait of Mary in the tympanum of the Church of Our Lady of Spitakavor, dated 1321 . Opposite to the right is the prophet Isaiah . The door itself is highlighted by a frame made of a braided band, several beads and a star chain. Some shapes such as the muqarnas niche above the door, the stars and the bas-reliefs of the animals on this page refer to Seljuk parallels, specifically to the mausoleum of Kachin Dorbatli from 1314 (in the territory of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic ). It could possibly be the same architect mentioned in the sources as Shahik in the case of Jeghward and Shahenzi in the case of the Muslim structure
basilica
About 300 meters northeast of the Church of Our Lady are the remains of a three-aisled basilica from early Christian times, which, according to style studies, is dated to the beginning of the 7th century and was probably built around 600 during the time in office of Catholicos Movses (Moses II, 574–604). The external dimensions of the walls, which are still upright with about five layers of mighty tuff stone blocks above a three-tier crepe , including the apse protruding from the east wall, are 31.5 × 14.1 meters. Inside, including the apse, 29.3 × 11.8 meters remain. According to Josef Strzygowski's investigations , who found the site freshly excavated on his visit in September 1913, the apse, which had completely disappeared, was horseshoe-shaped on the inside and five-sided on the outside. It was 5.8 meters wide and 5.6 meters deep. The double-shell masonry is around 1.2 meters thick.
Only fragments of the two rows with four pillars each have survived. The T-shaped pillars once supported three barrel vaults and were connected by round arches in each row and by belt arches in the transverse direction. While Strzygowski counted the church among the hall churches in 1918 , the strength of the pillars speaks for a high central vault, as is usual for a basilica. In addition to the main entrance on the western front side, there are also three entrances on the long sides, the position of which was unrelated to the column arrangement. At 5.5 meters, the central nave was twice as wide as the 1.9 meter wide side aisles. The latter ended - unique for Armenian basilicas - in the east in small semicircular apses that were sunk into the outer wall. They obviously correspond to the eastern ends of the porticos built on the longitudinal walls , as they were found in older basilicas. In this and in the proportions the basilica is comparable to the first cathedral by Dvin from the 5th century. The clear width of the arcades was 3.1 meters in the longitudinal direction.
Fragments of the relief decoration have been preserved on the portals of the south wall. A single-line inscription in Erkat'agir (Old Armenian "iron script ") ran along the entire south facade, parts of which are still present. The name Movses cannot be read on the inscription and its overall interpretation is uncertain. The lintel of the central entrance on the south side is adorned with a cross medallion, fine grooves underneath belong to a former rectangular frame. The tooth and ball decoration on the stone on the right was part of an arch that surrounded a tympanum field. It could be that the basilica was built on the site of an earlier church and this in turn was built above or near a pagan cult site. An inscription from 660 indicates a restoration and probably a new roof covering around this time. On this occasion, the original wooden ceiling was probably replaced by a massive stone structure.
Single nave church
A single-nave church stood a few meters north of the basilica. The ruin, of which only a few blocks of the lowest row of stones can be seen, is located in a private garden behind a residential building. As the ruins of the late 19th century has been excavated, the remains were inside a 6.6-meter-wide and including the semi-circular, protruding from the east wall apse 21.2 meter long hall church to light. The barrel-vaulted nave was divided in the middle by pillars and a belt arch. The apse was measured 4.9 meters wide and 3.8 meters deep. One or three entrances were in the south wall and one in the narrow west wall. On the basis of a few stones in relief and one or two capitals that were still there at the beginning of the 20th century but are missing today, the church is carefully dated to the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century.
In the old cemetery nearby are some khachkars and the remains of a Tukh Manuk shrine, which is still venerated by the population.
literature
- Burchard Brentjes , Stepan Mnazakanjan, Nona Stepanjan: Art of the Middle Ages in Armenia. Union Verlag (VOB), Berlin 1981
- Paolo Cuneo: Architettura Armena dal quarto al diciannovesimo secolo. Volume 1. De Luca Editore, Rome 1988, pp. 162-164
- Patrick Donabédian: Documentation of the art places . In: Jean-Michel Thierry: Armenian Art. Herder, Freiburg / B. 1988, pp. 535f, ISBN 3-451-21141-6
- Annegret Plontke-Lüning: Early Christian architecture in the Caucasus. The development of Christian sacred buildings in Lazika, Iberia, Armenia, Albania and the border regions from the 4th to the 7th century (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class, Volume 359. Publications on Byzantium Research, Volume XIII) Verlag der Österreichische Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2007, enclosed CD-ROM: Catalog of preserved church buildings, pp. 123–128, ISBN 978-3700136828
- Josef Strzygowski : The architecture of the Armenians and Europe. Volume 1. Kunstverlag Anton Schroll, Vienna 1918 ( online at Internet Archive )
See also
Web links
- Rick Ney: Kotaik marz . Tour Armenia, 2006, pp. 34-36
- Yeghvard Church . Armeniapedia
- Eghvard . Armenian Studies Program (basic plan of the basilica)
- St Astvatzatzin (Surb Nshan) church of Yeghvard. findarmenia.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://yeghvard.am/Pages/DocFlow/Default.aspx?a=v&g=e5da15ed-bc8b-422a-9596-3cd1390b0532 (accessed January 4, 2020)
- ↑ Josef Strzygowski, p. 48
- ^ RA 2001 Population and Housing Census Results . armstat.am, p. 73
- ^ RA Kotayk Marz. armstat.am, 2012, p. 246
- ↑ Yeghvard. ( Memento of the original from December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. officespace.am
- ↑ a b Rick Ney, p. 36
- ↑ Stepan Mnazakanjan: Architecture . In: Burchard Brentjes u. a., p. 64
- ↑ Stepan Mnazakanjan: Architecture . In: Burchard Brentjes u. a., p. 91
- ^ The Islamic Monuments of the Armenian Architecture of Artsakh. (PDF file, 46.34 MB) Research on Armenian Architecture, 2010, pp. 9–12 (comparison of figures)
- ^ Patrick Donabédian: Documentation of the art places . In: Jean-Michel Thierry, p. 535f
- ↑ Josef Strzygowski, pp. 144f
- ↑ Annegret Plontke-Lüning: Catalog of Church Buildings that have been preserved, CD-ROM, p. 126
- ^ Patrick Donabédian: Documentation of the art places . In: Jean-Michel Thierry, p. 535
- ↑ Stepan Mnazakanjan: Architecture . In: Burchard Brentjes u. a., p. 60
- ↑ Josef Strzygowski, p. 141; Patrick Donabédian: Documentation of the art places . In: Jean-Michel Thierry, p. 535
