Oshakan

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Oshakan
Օշական
State : ArmeniaArmenia Armenia
Province : Aragazotn
Coordinates : 40 ° 16 ′  N , 44 ° 19 ′  E Coordinates: 40 ° 16 ′  N , 44 ° 19 ′  E
Height : 1051  m
 
Residents : 5,962 (2012)
Time zone : UTC + 4
 
Community type: Rural community
Website :
Oshakan (Armenia)
Oshakan
Oshakan

Oschakan ( Armenian Օշական ), other transcriptions Oshakan, Ōšakan , is a small town in the central Armenian province of Aragazotn , which is best known as the burial place of Mesrop Mashtots , a saint of the Armenian Apostolic Church who, because of the introduction of the Armenian script in the year 405 is venerated. The new church built over its cenotaph in the years 1875–1879 instead of a previous building is a pilgrimage destination. On the hill Didikond one was Urartian fortress exposed, the oldest grave finds date from the Late Bronze Age . In the center of the village there is a small cross-shaped church called Surb Sion or Mankanoz with four conches from the 7th century and a Tukh Manuk shrine.

location

Bridge from 1705 over the Kassagh

Oshakan is located 23 kilometers northwest of Yerevan and can be reached via the M1 expressway leading to Gyumri . In the provincial capital Ashtarak , a secondary road (H19) branches off to the southwest, which after four kilometers leads through Oshakan and on to Etschmiadzin , where it connects to the M5 between Yerevan and Armavir .

A five-kilometer road (H20) in a north-westerly direction also connects Oschakan with the M1 near the village of Agarak and then climbs up the slope of Aragaz to Tegher and Bjurakan . With a height of 1051 meters, Oschakan is still in the broad plains of the Aras Valley on the edge of the southern foothills of the 4090 meter high Aragaz. There the river Kassagh rises , which crosses Aschtarak in a deep gorge, flows south of the town center past Oschakan and later flows into the Aras.

history

The history of the Aras Valley goes back to the Early Bronze Age from the middle of the 4th millennium BC. BC back. In the late Bronze Age (from the 15th century BC) a settlement was established on the hill Didikond on the eastern edge of the village. There are the remains of an Urartian fortress from the first half of the 1st millennium BC. And the Hellenistic settlement of Nor Oschakan ("New Oschakan").

The importance of the place goes back to the monk Mesrop Maschtoz (around 360-440), whose grave became a place of pilgrimage after his death. The name Mesrop stands for the introduction of the Armenian script in the year 440, a date that, in addition to the declaration of Christianity as the state religion by King Trdat III. 314 and the first Armenian chronicle written by Moses von Choren (Movses Chorenatsi) in the 5th century is one of the three cornerstones on which the historical myth of the Armenian national identity is based. The Armenian dynasty of the Arsacids lost its autonomy in 337 when Armenia became a disputed territory between the Roman Empire and the Sassanids as a result of the Roman-Persian power struggle . In the middle of the 4th century, the toponym "Armenia" included the Arsacid Empire with the capital Dvin in the north, several satrapies in the south in the Roman sphere of influence and Roman Lesser Armenia northwest of the Euphrates . The Arsacids of the 4th century included the Armenian dynasty (Nacharare) of the Amatuni, who spread from their center in Shavarshan (in today's Iranian province of Azerbaijan ) to the north and west of Lake Sevan , where they made the fortress of Oshakan theirs Headquarters made.

Legend has it that King Trdat, a follower of the ancient Armenian gods, had the preacher Gregory imprisoned, the Christian virgin Hripsime and her 37 companions, who later became martyrs, killed, whereupon he himself soon fell ill and turned into a boar. An angel appeared in a dream to Trdat's sister and told her that only Gregory could heal the king. Gregory was released and when he performed the miracle and the king had again assumed human form, he converted to Christianity out of repentance and declared the new faith 301 (in fact probably more like 314) the state religion. From then on Gregory set about destroying the pagan temples with zeal. In the politically unstable 4th century Christianity became an essential identification factor for the Armenians.

The problem with proselytizing was that the first preachers read the Bible in Greek or Syrian and then had to translate their message into Armenian, which was laborious for the common people; a process that stood in the way of the further spread of Christianity. The officials spoke Greek or Parthian and the Sassanid rulers tried to impose their culture - and as strict adherents of Zoroastrianism, above all their faith - on the Armenians. After the partition of Armenia between the Eastern Roman emperor Theodosius I (r. 379–395) and the Sassanid great king Shapur III. (r. 383–388) by the Treaty of Ekeghiats (Ekeleac) in 387 the northern Armenian territories came to the east. Now the Byzantines put pressure on the Armenians in a similar way by declaring Greek the language of the liturgy and after the 6th century they tried to spread the Chalcedonian Orthodoxy through missionary means. Mesrop Maschtoz The Armenians' invention of the Armenian alphabet based on the Greek alphabet in the year 405 according to church tradition was therefore welcomed as a miracle. Scripture was thought to have a divine origin. Mesrop found the writing of God carved in stone with a golden hammer and only had to copy it. Perhaps the legend is also supposed to recall an ancient Armenian alphabet, which at that time had been forgotten, and to rediscover it the king sent the scholar Mesrop to all parts of the country. To this day, writing is regarded as the means by which knowledge and wisdom can be acquired and passed on. Oschakan is a place where the magical meaning of writing, handed down from pre-Christian times, is remembered, another is a sculpture park consisting of letters in an open field 20 kilometers south of Aparan .

The translation of the Bible into the Armenian language began with Mesrop Maschtoz. In the 5th century, Armenian was officially adopted as the liturgical language. The illuminated manuscripts produced in the monasteries in the Middle Ages are still considered to be the actual bearers of the Armenian cultural heritage.

A first church was founded after Mesrop Mashtoz's death around 443 by Vahan Amatuni, a prince of the Amatuni dynasty appointed by the Sassanids as assistant to the governor , who rebelled with other Armenian dynasties in 451 against the introduction of the Persian religion in his country and for it Gorgan was sent into exile. Apart from the crypt, nothing has been preserved from this building and the numerous subsequent ones. The current church was built under Catholicos Georg IV. 1875–1879.

Oschakan is mentioned together with Karbi (north of Mughni ) in an inscription dated 1244 by Prince Kurd, son of Prince Vache Vachutyan, on the main church of the former Astvatsnkal monastery (on Kassagh halfway between Saghmosavank and the Aparan reservoir). The prince donated land to both places. During the tenure of the Catholicos Movses Siunetsi (1620–1633) and his successor Pilippos Haghbaketsi (1633–1655), the monastery of Oshakan and other Armenian monasteries that had been closed two troubled centuries before were rebuilt.

In 1827 a battle between the troops of the Persian Shah Abbas Mirza and the units of the Russian Empire under the leadership of General AfanassiKrassowski took place near Oschakan during the Russo-Persian War 1826-1828 . A memorial was erected in 1833 to commemorate the defeat of the Russians, who lost between 1154 and 3200 men. In 2011 a new monument was inaugurated south of the Kassagh on the road to Etchmiadzin.

Townscape

Center towards Voskevaz. Stork nests, front gardens with walnut trees and grapes.

In the 2001 census, the official population was given as 5106. In January 2012, according to official statistics, there were 5962 inhabitants in Oschakan.

The geographic center of the village is located roughly at the confluence of the three roads coming from the south, north-east and north-west. Less than a kilometer in the direction of Kassagh, the church with the burial tomb of Mesrop Maschtoz and the old cemetery on the edge of the Didikond settlement hill are close together. The one- to two-storey houses, often located in walled gardens, surround the settlement hill on its west and north sides, on the other sides it is bounded by a large arch of the Kassagh river valley. From the church to the south, after a few meters, the road leads down into the gorge to a road bridge from 1705. The Zionskirche (Mankanoz) is located north of the confluence. Along the north-western arterial road, Oschakan has grown together with the village of Voskevaz, on whose surrounding fields viticulture is practiced.

Mesrop Mashtots burial church

Mesrop Mashtots Church from the southwest

A first shrine for the holy Mesrop is said to have stood here as early as 443, three years after his death. This emerges from a report by the contemporary chronicler Koriun (Koriwn) “Life of Mashtots ” ( Varkʿ Maštocʿi ), chapter 26: “After three years had passed, the Wahan Amatuni succeeded in building a splendid altar with Christ-loving zeal decorated chiseled stones, and inside the altar he prepared the resting place (Martyrosaran) of the saint. ”While the chapel originally built over the tomb and later successors have long since disappeared, the underground vaulted chamber is said to still be original. According to Koriun's description, the two-story building should have looked similar to the relief image of a grave monument on the Odsun stele . It shows a cubic substructure with a canopy supported by four pillars above it. Such tetrapyls are known in the field of the Syrian Dead Cities from Brad (3rd century) and Dana (North) (2nd century). It is more likely, however, that the above-ground altar was in a closed chapel.

The current building was completed by Catholicos Georg IV by 1879. The church is located in a park surrounded by fruit trees. It is an aisle church, unusual for Armenia, with a series of blind arches over the arched windows on the long sides in a somewhat neo-Romanesque style. The slightly ogival barrel vault inside is structured by belt arches over the pillars between the windows. From the middle of the east wall emerges a circular bell tower, which was added in 1884, the belfry of which is crowned by a folding roof. The wall paintings were made during the restoration of the building in 1960.

The two entrances to the burial chamber under the altar are outside on the north and south sides. The almost ten square meter, dark vaulted chamber has an apse with an altar in the east and a niche on the west side, which once housed a window. This indicates that the room used to be partially above ground level. Under the trees in the park there is a collection of tuff stones that are ornamented as modern khachkars and represent the letters of the Armenian alphabet.

Mankanoz

Zion Church from the south

The Zion Church ( Surb Sion ), called Mankanoz , "Church of the Young Girls", is a small tetraconchos , a complex with four semicircular cones that extend from a center and are rectangularly encased on the outside and thus appear as a cross-domed church . The external dimensions are 6.8 × 6.8 meters. Small tetracones are typical of the 7th century, they resemble the tricons that were created at the same time , in which, like the Church of Our Lady in Talin, the west side is not semicircular, but square or rectangular. Lmbatavank and the Kamrawor Church of Ashtarak are among the cross-shaped monocons of the 7th century with a semicircular east apse and three rectangular side arms . It was not until the 10th century that small tetracones were created with side rooms, so that a rectangular outer wall was created.

The inner wall corners are connected to each other by belt arches and form a central square base that supports an octagonal drum with a dome. Fan-shaped gussets create the transitions between square and octagon. The portal in the west wall is emphasized by a porch with pairs of side half-columns. The building, made of tuff stone, was carefully restored in 1950; it is covered with stone slabs on the side arms and with tiles above the dome.

A slender stone stele stands on a pedestal next to the church, which, according to Armenian tradition , is intended to mark the grave of the Byzantine emperor Maurikios (r. 582–602) or his mother.

Tukh Manuk Shrine

A few meters north of the Mesrop Mashtots Church, a path branches off to the right, from which the cemetery at the foot of a flat hill can be reached. In the oldest part of the cemetery there is a chapel made of gray and red-brown tuff, the gable roof of which is covered with stone slabs. The shrine is dedicated to Tukh Manuk , a mythical figure adopted into the Christian folk cult from ancient Armenian times, to whom animal sacrifices (pigeons, chickens) are offered in front of its stone altar. There is a large Khachkar in front of the entrance.

The Tukh Manuk Shrine has been restored. In his work on Armenian architecture in 1918, Josef Strzygowski describes how old tombstones were lying around in the vicinity. One illustration shows the shrine called the cemetery chapel in a badly damaged condition with a partially missing roof. A footpath leads further towards the gorge to an altar in a cave, which is dedicated to Our Lady ( Astvatsatsin ). A Gregory Chapel ( Surb Grigor ) on the edge of the excavation site is said to date back to the 5th century.

Didikond settlement hill

Remains of the Urartian fortress on the hilltop with the Gregory Chapel.

A late Bronze Age fortress was uncovered further up on the hilltop, and a younger Hellenistic settlement of the Jerwandid dynasty (around 600 - around 200 BC) on a smaller hill to the north-east of it was uncovered in Soviet times . The Urartian fortress from the 8th century BC BC first mentioned Toros Toramanian , whose research focus was the medieval churches, but who also included pre-Christian fortresses and tombs ( Kurgane ) in his catalog of the historical monuments of Armenia created from 1914 onwards . The Urartean sites at the southwest, western and northern foothills of the Aragaz include Metsamor, Aragaz, Tsaghkahovit , Shamiram, Horom and Oschakan. In 1988 SA Esajan and Aram A. Kalantarjan published the results of the Hellenistic settlement excavated from 1971 to 1983. In 2002, Kalantarjan and others undertook further excavations, which they reported the following year.

The north-west of Aragaz and Oschakan belonged to the smaller Urartean border fortresses. The exposed foundations consist of massive stone blocks. They weren't discovered until after the Armentel telephone company began digging to erect transmitter masts. The wooden roof structures of the large rooms were supported by rows of columns.

The development in the post-Urartian period was similar to that in Argishtihinili (15 kilometers southwest of Armavir) and in Artaxata . In the 4th century BC The hill, which was destroyed and largely abandoned at the end of the 7th century, was repopulated. In the Urartian building complex consisting of 39 rooms, the excavators found more than 30 graves from the Hellenistic period in 15 of the rooms and partly outside. Most were stone box tombs covered with stone slabs . Burn marks in the graves indicate burial rituals. Some graves were covered stone circles , in other rooms there were jug burials. Some of the graves had already been robbed or did not contain any graves. In the others, pieces of jewelry made of bronze, silver and gold as well as glass containers were found, the manufacturing method of which shows that since the middle of the 1st millennium BC The existing cemetery was still in use in the 3rd century AD.

Twin cities

literature

  • 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. 240–242, ISBN 978-3700136828
  • Josef Strzygowski : The architecture of the Armenians and Europe. Volume 1. Kunstverlag Anton Schroll, Vienna 1918 ( online at Internet Archive )
  • Jean-Michel Thierry: Armenian Art. Herder, Freiburg / B. 1988, ISBN 3-451-21141-6

Web links

Commons : Oschakan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Hamlet Petrosyan: In the Beginning. In: Levon Abrahamian, Nancy Sweezy (Eds.): Armenian Folk Arts, Culture, and Identity. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2001, p. 18.
  2. Mihran Dabag: Memory and Identity. In: Armenia. Rediscovery of an old cultural landscape. (Exhibition catalog) Museum Bochum 1995, p. 22.
  3. Simon Payaslian: The History of Armenia. From the origins to the present. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2007, p. 39.
  4. Hamlet Petrosyan: Writing and the Book. In: Levon Abrahamian, Nancy Sweezy (Eds.): Armenian Folk Arts, Culture, and Identity. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2001, p. 52.
  5. Nina G. Garsoïan: Janus: The formation of the Armenian church from the IVth to the VIIth century. In: Robert F. Taft (Ed.): The Formation of a Millennial Tradition: 1700 Years of Armenian Christian Witness (301-2001). (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 271) Pontificio Instituto Orientale, Rome 2004, p. 84.
  6. Amatuni. Armenian dynastic house, known historically after the 4th century CE. Encyclopædia Iranica
  7. Brady Kiesling: Rediscovering Armenia Guidebook - Aragatsotn March.
  8. Vrej Nersessian: Treasures from the Ark. 1700 Years of Armenian Christian Art. The British Library, London 2001, p. 34.
  9. Aštarak. Encyclopædia Iranica
  10. Monument dedicated to Russian soldiers to open on April 19th tert.am, April 15, 2011.
  11. ^ RA 2001 Population and Housing Census Results . armstat.am
  12. ^ RA Aragatsotn March. armstat.am, 2012
  13. ^ Koriun: The Life of Mashtots. Arthur Ambartsumian's Personal Web Page
  14. Josef Strzygowski, p. 252
  15. Annegret Plontke-Lüning, p. 242
  16. Jean-Michel Thierry, p. 67
  17. Rick Ney, Tour Armenia, p. 29f
  18. Josef Strzygowski, pp. 254f
  19. Adam T. Smith et al. a .: The Archeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies. Vol. 1: The Foundations of Research and Regional Survey in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia. The Oriental Institute, Chicago 2009, p. 14
  20. Lori Khatchadourian: Attachments to the Past in Hellenistic Armenia. In: Norman Yoffee (Ed.): Negotiating the Past in the Past: Identity, Memory, and Landscape in Archaeological Research. University of Arizona Press, Tucson 2007, pp. 64–66, ISBN 978-0-8165-2670-3 ( minimally changed text version )