A Fish Out of Water? Armenia(ns) and the Mediterranean

La Porta, Sergio

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-72865-0_4

Sergio La Porta⁵

Part of the book series: Mediterranean Perspectives ((MEPERS))

2222 Accesses

Abstract

La Porta challenges ways in which Armenia and Armenians have been either included or excluded from the Mediterranean discourse. He explores how the Armenian experience can expand the conversation of Mediterranean Studies and argues that essentialized notions of Armenian identity, pre-supposed both by Armenologists and scholars of the Mediterranean, should be deconstructed in order to engage in a discussion of Armenians “of” the Mediterranean, rather than just “in” it. La Porta further suggests the contested notion of Armenia as a Mediterranean analogue, and posits that Mediterranean Studies can provide Armenian specialists with methodological tools for conceptualizing the intricacies of Armenian history.

I would like to thank Dr. Michael Pifer for his insightful comments and suggestions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 79.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 99.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 129.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
He and his men had been hired as mercenaries by Cyrus the Younger in his fight against his brother, the Achaemenid Shah Artaxerxes II. With Cyrus’s defeat in 401 BCE, the Greek soldiers were forced to flee home.
2.
ἐνταῦθα εἶχον τὰ ἐπιτήδεια ὅσα ἐστὶν ἀγαθά, ἱερεῖα, σῖτον, οἴνους παλαιοὺς εὐώδεις, ἀσταφίδας, ὄσπρια παντοδαπά.…πολὺ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα ηὑρίσκετο χρῖμα, ᾧ ἐχρῶντο ἀντ᾽ ἐλαίου, σύειον καὶ σησάμινον καὶ ἀμυγδάλινον ἐκ τῶν πικρῶν καὶ τερμίνθινον. ἐκ δὲ τῶν αὐτῶν τούτων καὶ μύρον ηὑρίσκετο, Xenophon, Anabasis, ed. Carleton L. Brownson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1992), IV.14.9,13.
3.
Trdat (Tiridates) I was the first Arsacid (Arshakuni) king of Armenia. By the terms of the Treaty of Rhandeia (63 CE), the Romans and Parthians agreed that the king of Armenia was to be a member of the Parthian Arsacid royal family, who would be crowned by the Roman Emperor. The Arsacids ruled Armenia until their removal by the Sasanians in 428 CE.
4.
καὶ ὁ Τιριδάτης ἐς τὴν Ῥώμην, οὐχ ὅτι τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ παῖδας ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς τοῦ Οὐολογαίσου τοῦ τε Πακόρου καὶ τοῦ Μονοβάζου ἄγων, ἀνήχθη, καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτῶν πομπὴ διὰ πάσης τῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ Εὐφράτου γῆς ὥσπερ ἐν ἐπινικίοις.… καὶ τοῦτο ἐπ᾽ ἐννέα μῆνας, οἷς ὡδοιπόρησαν, ὁμοίως ἐγένετο. ἵππευσε δὲ πανταχῇ μέχρι τῆς Ἰταλίας, καὶ αὐτῷ καὶ γυνὴ συμπαρίππευε, κράνος χρυσοῦν ἀντὶ καλύπτρας ἔχουσα, ὥστε μὴ ὁρᾶσθαι παρὰ τὰ πάτρια, Cassius Dio, Roman History, vol. 8, ed. Earnest Cary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1925), LXIII.1–2.
5.
On the Greek idea of anabasis as a descent from coastal lands into the interior, see Nicholas Purcell, “The Boundless Sea of Unlikeness? On Defining the Mediterranean,” Mediterranean Historical Review 18, no. 2 (2003): 15.
6.
As noted above, King Trdat was a Parthian Arsacid, not an Armenian. His voyage is evoked here as indicative of personal travel from Armenia to the Mediterranean. The problematic question of “Armenian identity” is discussed more generally below.
7.
On the factiousness of the “Mediterranean diet,” however, see Michael Herzfeld, “Po-Mo Med,” in A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 123–124.
8.
Nina Garsoïan, “Le vin pur du calice dans l’Église arménienne,” in eadem, Studies on the Formation of Christian Armenia (Farnham-Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), XI.
9.
Cassius Dio, however, notes (LXIII.6) that the Arsacid king did cross the sea from Brundisium to Dyrrachium on his return home. Although Trdat was Parthian, his mores were arguably shared by the Armenian population he ruled.
10.
The thirteenth-century historian, Kirakos Gandzakets‘i. Patmut‘iwn Hayots‘ (History of the Armenians), ed. Karapet Melik‘-Ōhanjanyan (Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1961), 159–160, recounts that when King Lewon I set out to return from Cyprus, his enemies planned to attack him at sea. Learning about the planned attack, Lewon turned back to Cyprus and gathered “his warships” (iwr naws paterazmakans) and rammed the main ship of the naval ambush. Why, however, King Lewon supposedly kept his own warships in Cyprus is unexplained, as is the ethnicity of the sailors on these ships.
11.
“fearsome Ocean sea”: P‘awstos, Patumut‘iwn Hayots‘ (History of the Armenians) (Venice: Mekhitarist, 1889), Engl. trans. Nina Garsoïan, The Epic Histories (Buzandaran Patmut‘iwnk‘) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1989), IV.6; Agat‘angeghos, Patmut‘iwn Hayots‘ (History of the Armenians), trans. Robert W. Thomson (Albany: SUNY, 1976), §867. Cf. the list of names for the sea given by David Abulafia, The Great Sea, A Human History of the Mediterranean, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), xxiii.
12.
Although Agat‘angeghos is dependent on the Buzandaran for this characterization of the Mediterranean Sea, his repetition of it indicates that the conception of the Mediterranean as a dangerous space may have been somewhat commonly held.
13.
Anania Shirakats‘i, Ashkharhats‘oyts‘ (Geography), trans. Robert Hewsen (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1992), 43–45A, 47–48A, and 100n1.
14.
Movsēs Khorenats‘i, Patmut‘iwn Hayots‘ (History of the Armenians), ed. Manuk Abeghyan and Sargis Yarut‘iwnean (Tiflis: Aghaneani, 1913); Engl. trans. Robert W. Thomson, Moves Khorenats‘i, History of the Armenians (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1978), I.8, II.64, III.12. The date of the composition of this text remains contentious among scholars. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to engage in that debate, but I think the text as we now have it was completed around the year 800. See Nina Garsoïan, “L’Histoire attribuée à Movsēs Xoreanc‘i: Que reste-t-il à en dire?,” Revue des études arméniennes 29 (2003–2004):29–48, and the bibliography cited there; however, cf. Aram Topchyan, The Problem of the Greek Sources of Movsēs Xorenac‘i’s History of the Armenians (Leuven: Peeters, 2006).
15.
Topchyan, The Problem of the Greek Sources, III.6.
16.
Matthew of Edessa refers to it simply as “the great sea Ocean” (mets tsovn Ovkianos) in his twelfth-century Chronicle, Matt‘ēos Uṛhayets‘i, Zhamanakagrut‘iwn (Chronicle), ed. Mambrē Mēlik‘-Adamean and Nersēs Tēr Mik‘aēlean (Vagharshapat: Holy See of Ejmiatsin, 1898), 66; Engl. trans. Armenia and the Crusades: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, trans. Ara Dostourian, Belmont: NAASR, 1993), 56. Dostourian, however, translates the phrase as “the vast large Mediteranean Sea.” The thirteenth-century Chronicle attributed to Smbat Sparapet similarly refers to the Mediterranean as “the sea,” or “the sea Ocean.”
17.
The province of Cilicia rests in southeastern Anatolia along the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean sea. In antiquity, the province was to the east of Pamphylia and was bordered by the Taurus mountains to the North and East. The region was considered to consist of two parts: mountainous Cilicia (Kilikia Trakheia) and level Cilicia (Kilikia Pedias), the latter referring to the littoral plain.
18.
Ghewond Alishan, Sissouan ou l’Arméno-Cilicie (Venice: Mekhitarist, 1899). It is to be noted that Alishan, who was a monk in the Armenian Mekhitarist monastery on the island of San Lazzaro in the Venetian lagoon, was a student of the same nineteenth-century Romantic geographic tradition as Braudel.
19.
The literature that draws upon Armenian settlement in Cilicia and involvement with the Crusades is very large. In addition to the work of Alishan mentioned above, a few other works may be listed here: Claude Cahen, La Syrie du nord à l’époque des croisades et la principauté franque d’Antioche (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1940); Sirarpie Der Nersessian, “The Kingdom of Cilician Armenia,” in A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth Setton, et al., 6 vols. (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1969–89), 2:630–659; The Cilician Kingdom of Armenia, ed. Thomas S. Boase (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1978); Claude Mutafian, La Cilicie au Carrefour des Empires, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988); Angus Donal Stewart, The Armenian Kingdom and the Mamluks: War and Diplomacy during the Reigns of Het‘um II (1289–1307) (Leiden-Boston-Köln: Brill, 2001); Gerard Dédéyan, Les Arméniens entre Grecs, Musulmans, et Croisés. Étude sur les pouvoirs arméniens dans le Proche-Orient méditerranéen (1068–1150), 2 vols. (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2003); Christian MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008); Claude Mutafian, L’Arménie du Levant ( xi ^e-xiv ^e siècle), 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012).
20.
Édouard Dulaurier, ed. and trans., Recueil des historiens des croisades. Documents arméniens, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1869), vol. 1. On the need for caution in using these translations, see the remarks of Timothy Greenwood, “Armenian Sources,” in Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources, ed. Mary Whitby (New York: Oxford University, 2007), 228.
21.
E.g., Peter Charanis, The Armenians in the Byzantine Empire (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1963); Marius Canard, “Notes sur les Arméniens en Égypte à l’époque fâtimite,” Annales de l’Institut d’Études Orientales de la Faculté d’Alger 13 (1955): 143–157; Seta Dadoyan, The Fatimid Armenians (Leiden-New York-London: Brill, 1997), cf. Paul Walker’s review, Journal of the American Oriental Society 120, no. 2 (2000): 270–271; Avedis Sanjian, The Armenian Communities in Syria under Ottoman Dominion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1965); Levon B. Zekiyan, ed., Gli Armeni in Italia (Rome: De Luca edizioni d’arte, 1990).
22.
E.g., Bernard Hamilton, “The Armenian Church and the Papacy at the Time of the Crusades,” Eastern Churches Review 10 (1978): 61–87; Levon B. Zekiyan, “Saint Nersês Chnorhali en dialogue avec les Grecs,” in Armenian Studies/Études Arméniennes In Memoriam Haig Béberian, ed. Dickran Kouymjian (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1986), 861–883; Gerard Dédéyan, “Le rôle complémentaire des frères Pahlawuni Grigor III. Catholicos et Saint Nersès Šnorhali, coasjuteur, dans le rapprochement avec les Latins à l’époque de la chute d’Edesse (v. 1139–1150),” Revue des études arméniennes 23 (1992): 237–252; Peter Halfter, Das Papsttum und die Armenier im frühen und hohen Mittelalter. Von den ersten Kontakten bis zur Fixierung der Kircheunion im Jahre 1198 (Köln: Böhlau, 1996); Isabel Augé, Byzantine, Arménien, et Francs au temps de la croisade. Politique religieuse et reconquête en Orient sous la dynastie des Comnènes 1081–1185 (Paris: Geuthner, 2007).
23.
E.g., Mkrtich‘ Aghawnuni, Miabank‘ ew ayts‘eluk‘ hay Erusaghēmi (Monks and visitors to Armenian Jerusalem), (Jerusalem: St. James, 1929); Michael E. Stone, The Armenian Inscriptions from the Sinai (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1982); Michael E. Stone, ‘Holy Land Pilgrimage of Armenians before the Arab Conquest,’ Revue Biblique 93 (1986): 93–110; Michael E. Stone, Robert R. Ervine, and Nira Stone, eds., The Armenians in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, (Leuven: Peeters, 2002).
24.
Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 2–3 and passim; Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, “The Medietrranean and the ‘New Thassology’,” American Historical Review (June 2006): 729–730; cf. also the remarks of Brian Catlos, review of Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150. Oxford studies in Byzantium, ed. Jonathan Harris, Catherine Holmes, and Eugenia Russell, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2014.04.37. The focus on a history of Armenians in the Mediterranean is also true of the collection of many valuable essays in La Méditerranée des Arméniens, ed. Claude Mutafian (Paris: Geuthner, 2014).
25.
Alain Ducellier, preface to Claude Mutafian and Eric van Lauwe, Atlas historique de l’Arménie (Paris: Autrement, 2001), 8, as cited in Gerard Dédéyan, “The Founding and Coalescence of the Rubenian Principality, 1073–1129,” in Armenian Cilicia, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian and Simon Payaslian (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2008), 79. Cf. the judicious conclusions of Angus Stewart, “Alliance with the Tatars: The Armenian Kingdom, the Mongols and the Latins,” in La Méditerranée des Arméniens, 225.
26.
See the remarks of Christina Maranci in her review of Dédéyan, Les Arméniens entre Grecs, in Speculum 84, no. 2 (2009): 415–418.
27.
See, for example, the essay of James G. Schryver, “Identities in the Crusader East,” in Mediterranean Identities in the Premodern Era: Entrepôts, Islands, Empires, ed. John Watkins and Kathryn L. Reyerson (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 173–189.
28.
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 1972–73), vol.1, 51.
29.
Abulafia, The Great Sea, xvii.
30.
“From Cyprus trade routes extended to another Christian kingdom, Cilician Armenia, on the south-east coast of modern Turkey. Western merchants supplied wheat to Armenia by way of Cyprus, and they used Armenia as a gateway to exotic and arduous trade routes that took them away from the Mediterranean, to the silk markets of Persian Tabriz and beyond,” Abulafia, The Great Sea, 392.
31.
John Watkins and Kathryn L. Reyerson, eds., Mediterranean Identities in the Premodern Era: Entrepôts, Islands, Empires (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2014).
32.
As, for example, Sebouh Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley: University of California, 2011).
33.
See Molly Greene, “The Early Modern Mediterranean,” in A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita (Oxford: Wiley & Sons, 2014), 91–106.
34.
See the contributions of Sharon Kinoshita, “Mediterranean Literature,” in A Companion to Mediterannean History, 314–29, and Brian Catlos, “Ethno-religious minorities,” in A Companion to Mediterannean History, 361–77.
35.
Cf. Michael Herzfeld, “Practical Mediterraneanism: Excuses for Everything, from Epistemology to Eating,” in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. William V. Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 48. On the applicability of comparing “Mediterraneans,” see David Abulafia’s contribution to the same volume.
36.
Herzfeld, “Practical Mediterraneanism.”
37.
Levon B. Zekiyan, “Towards a ‘Discourse On Method’ in Armenian Studies: A survey of recent debates with special regard to the problem of textual hermeneutics,” in Armenian Philology in the Modern Era: From Manuscript to Digital Text, ed. Valentina Calzolari (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2014), 533 n2.
38.
Ian Morris, “Mediterraneanization,” Mediterranean Historical Review 18, no. 2 (2003): 37.
39.
The volume, Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia, ed. Andrew Peacock, Bruno de Nicola, and Sara Nur Yildiz (Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), contains many valuable essays that will help advance conceptualizations about ethno-religious interaction in the area.
40.
Hakob Manandyan, The Trade and Cities of Armenia in Relation to World Trade, trans. Nina Garsoïan (Lisbon: Bertrand, 1965).
41.
Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea, 96–101; William V. Harris, “The Mediterranean and Ancient History,” in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. William V. Harris, 29.
42.
Nina Garsoïan, “Frontier-Frontiers? Transcaucasia and Eastern Anatolia in the Pre-Islamic Period,” in Formation of Christian Armenia (Farnham-Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), III.
43.
Nora Berend, “Medievalists and the Notion of the Frontier,” The Medieval History Journal 2, no. 1 (1999): 55–72; Ronnie Ellenblum, “Were there border or borderlines in the Middle Ages? The example of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” in Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices, ed. David Abulafia and Nora Berend (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 105–119.
44.
Paul Guérin, Les Petits Bollandistes. Vies des Saints, 7th ed., vol. 3 (Paris: Bloud and Barral, 1876), 450–455.
45.
Cf. Jean-Michel Thierry and Nicole Thierry, “Peintures murales de caratère occidentale en Arménie: l’église Saint- Pierre et Saint-Paul de Tat‘ev (début de Xe siècle). Rapport préliminaire,” Byzantion 38 (1968):180–242.
46.
See the new translation of Sharon Kinoshita, Marco Polo, The Description of the World (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2016); on the missionaries, see Raymond-Joseph Loenertz, La Société des frères péregrinant: étude sur l’Orient dominicain (Rome: Institutum Historicum FF. Praedicatorum, 1937) and Jean Richard, La Papauté et les missions d’Orient au Moyen Age (XIIIe-XVe siècles) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1977); Claudine Delacroix-Besnier, “Les missions dominicaines et les Arméniens du milieu du xiv^e siècle aux premières années du xv^e siècle,” Revue des études arméniennes 26 (1996–97): 173–191.
47.
Irene Bueno, “Avignon and the World. Cross-cultural Interactions between the Apostolic See and Armenia,” Rechtsgeschichte, 20 (2012): 344–346; Sergio La Porta, “Armeno-Latin intellectual exchange in the fourteenth century: Scholarly traditions in conversation and competition,” Medieval Encounters 21 (2015): 269–294.
48.
Sergio La Porta, “‘The kingdom and the sultanate were conjoined’: Legitimizing Land and Power in Armenia during the 12th and early 13th centuries,” Revue des études arméniennes 34 (2012):73–118; on the notion of mutual intelligibility, see also Brian Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom c.1050–1614 (Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University, 2014), 485, 509.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

California State University, Fresno, CA, USA
Sergio La Porta

Authors

Sergio La Porta
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Armenian Studies Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Kathryn Babayan
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Michael Pifer

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

La Porta, S. (2018). A Fish Out of Water? Armenia(ns) and the Mediterranean. In: Babayan, K., Pifer, M. (eds) An Armenian Mediterranean. Mediterranean Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72865-0_4

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72865-0_4
Published: 08 May 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72864-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72865-0
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics