It is most regrettable that whatever ancient historical sources the Aghuans may have possessed have not survived. Indeed, for the pre-Christian period, we must rely entirely on the writings of classical authors. These are described and analyzed in M. L. Chaumont's article "Albania" in Encyclopaedia Iranica. After the Arab conquests of the 7th century, Aghuania became known as Arran and subsequently was administratively part of a large unit called Arminiya which also included parts of historical Armenia, Iberia/Georgia, and northern Mesopotamia. The history of Arran in the Islamic period is described by C. E. Bosworth in his Encyclopaedia Iranica article. There are also important scholarly articles on Aghuania available online in Russian.
It is due to the lack of early native sources that the work translated below acquires particular significance. This History is the sole-surviving written account of a culture now extinct. It is the only literary artifact—aside from incidental notices in Armenian and Georgian historical sources—which describes events of note from the socio-economic, ecclesiastical, political, and military history of the Aghuan people. The History of the Aghuans contains a wide range of invaluable and unique historical and ethnographical information: from an astounding description of a pagan cult's ritual, to the Christian cult of relics, from the Aghuan king at table, to a description of the royal court on the move, from descriptions of Sasanian presents, dress, and court protocols to a priceless interview with a Khazar Qaqan. Indeed, the History is a primary, but under-utilized, source for the history of the Turkic Khazar kingdom (7-10th centuries). Additionally it provides otherwise unknown information on Caucasian tribes and peoples, resident and nomadic, and supplements and enhances our information on Aghuania's neighbors.
[ii] The History of the Aghuans exists in three books. Book One, in 30 chapters, gives a brief summary of Armenian and Aghuanian history reaching to the end of the 5th century. Book Two, in 52 chapters, describes events from the 5th-7th centuries reaching the year 683. Book Three, in 24 chapters, describes the Arab domination. It reaches into the 10th century, and also includes some final chapters from later periods.
Almost nothing biographical is known about the author(s) of the History of the Aghuans. The first two books may be the work of a single individual who wrote at the end of the 7th century and the beginning of the 8th. This author or compiler claims that he hailed from the district of Uti on historical Armenia's eastern borders, and possibly from the village of Dasxuran (also Kaghankatuats'). But as the celebrated Armenist Manuk Abeghyan suggested, it is quite possible that these two books are themselves compilations. Discrepancies in style and occasional discrepancies in person among various sections in the first two books lend credence to this proposal. The author of the bulk of the third book, on the other hand, clearly lived some centuries later. He describes events occurring up to the late 980s. Yet the final event mentioned in Book Three occurred in the reign of Senek'erim king of Siwnik' (1080-1105). Thus more than one hand is apparent in the third book as well as in the first two. "Movse's" to whom the entire work is attributed, could have been any of the authors or compilers from the 7th through the early 12th centuries.
Although biographical details are lacking, we may construct a partial portrait of the author(s) based on the contents of the three books and the treatment of certain topics. The compiler of Books One and Two (hereafter we shall call him Movse's, for convenience) was an educated cleric with an impressive vocabulary. His prose style is highly ornate, full of alliteration, extended similes, and allusions to Biblical personalities and situations. He had a penchant for long sentences with many subordinate clauses. The documents Movse's had at hand were varied. They included Church-related materials: lists of Patriarchs, martyrologies, narratives such as the account of the discovery and elimination of the cult of the finger-cutters, the sojourn of Mesrop Mashtots' in Aghuania, the Aghuanian conversion of some Altaic Hun leaders to Christianity; and correspondence between various Church leaders about doctrine and sectarians. Some of the religious material in Book One originally seems to be the work of extremely pious, incredulous clerics, enamoured of Christian wonder-tales. More secular material is represented in the List of Rulers (I. 15), the Law Code of King Vach'agan (I. 26), the account of the invasion of the Huns (I.29), the chapters in Book Two on the Khazars (II. 11-16), and the gestes of Prince Juansher (II. 18 ff.). Much of this material probably derives from Church and Royal archives. Movse's also had at hand some Armenian historical works such as P'awstos Buzand, Ghazar P'arpets'i, Movse's Xorenats'i, and perhaps Sebeos and used them, as needed, for the historical glue to hold together the different documents when he was unable to find native sources. However, the stylistic glue which holds Book One and Book Two together is the learned Movse's' euphuistic writing style.
[iii] The fineness of Movse's' Classical Armenian suggests that he was a well-educated cleric and that either: (1) he was an ethnic Armenian with the requisite command of Aghuanian to read material written in Aghuanian; or (2) he was an ethnic Aghuan with a remarkable knowledge of Armenian. In the historical period covered in Books One and Two, the Armenian language appears to have been used as a second language in the Aghuan Church. Consequently, it is even possible that some of the Aghuan archival material was written in Armenian or existed in Armenian copies when Movse's used it.
With Book Three, a different personality emerges. This author or compiler has a simpler and more straightforward writing style. He is less interested in relics and miracles than Movse's, but quite interested in heresies, schismatics, and Christological issues. He is a bitter foe of Islam. Book Three is the shortest of the three books and the most "historical." It contains, in addition to invaluable material about the negative impact of the Arab domination, otherwise unknown information about the birth, life, and death of the Prophet Muhammad, and similarly unique information about the rebellion of Babak in the 830s. Like Books One and Two, Book Three is a best characterized as a collection of documents.
A History of the Aghuans certainly existed in Armenian in some form in the 10th century, since the Armenian kat'oghikos Anania Mokats'i mentions consulting it in 948. There was debate about the author already in the 13th century among Armenian clerics. But irrespective of the original language or the identities of the author(s) of this important compilation, the resultant product is a splendid Armenian literary history, in the same tradition as the medieval Armenian translation of the Georgian Chronicle. The 12-13th century Armenian cleric Mxit'ar Gosh, who mentions using a History of the Aghuans, brought a record of Aghuan events forward to his own time. Gosh's important Aghuanian Chronicle is available on another page of this website.
[iv] The Classical Armenian text of the History was published in 1860 in two places: in Paris by Karapet Shahnazarean [Patmut'iwn Aghuanits' arareal Movsisi Kaghankatuats'woy, 2 vols.] and in Moscow by Mkrtich' Emin [Movsisi Kaghankatuats'woy Patmut'iwn Aghuanits' ashxarhi, reprinted Tiflis, 1912]. The Shahnazarean edition has been the preferred one until the publication of the critical edition by Varag Arak'elyan, Patmut'iwn Aghuanits' ashkharhi, S. A. Avagyan, editor (Erevan, 1983). Arak'elyan's excellent text is available online as part of the Armenian Classical Digital Library Project (Armenian fonts required). A full Russian translation by K. P. Patkanean appeared in St. Petersburg in 1861. A more recent Russian translation by Sh. V. Smbatyan was published in Erevan in 1984. Partial and selective translations have appeared in French, Georgian and Turkish. The History was translated into English by C. J. F. Dowsett, The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movse's Dasxuranc'i (London, 1961), based on the Shahnazarean edition and several other manuscripts. Dowsett's scholarly edition is accompanied by an excellent Introduction which discusses theories of authorship and the manuscript tradition. We have relied on Dowsett's translation completely for chapters dealing with theological and Christological issues. Our own translation of Books One and Two was initially made from the Shahnazarean edition and follows its pagination. Subsequently it was corrected according to the online critical edition. Our translation of Book Three was made directly from the online critical edition.
Currently the most accessible scholarly treatment of the history of Aghuania in English is found in the aforementioned writings of M. L. Chaumont and C. E. Bosworth, plus in the writings of the great Caucasiologist Cyril Toumanoff, especially his Studies in Christian Caucasian History (Georgetown, 1963); and his article, "Armenia and Georgia," [Chapter XIV in The Cambridge Medieval History, vol. IV, The Byzantine Empire, part I, (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 593-637]. Perhaps the best, most current English-language source for the history of Aghuania is Robert H. Hewsen's Armenia, a Historical Atlas (Chicago, 2001). Hewsen's beautiful maps are accompanied by text which meticulously documents the changing borders and vicissitudes of the Aghuan people and state.
The transliteration used here is a modification of the new Library of Congress system for Armenian, substituting x for the LOC's kh, for the thirteenth character of the Armenian alphabet (խ). Otherwise we follow the LOC transliteration, which eliminates diacritical marks above or below a character, and substitutes single or double quotation marks to the character's right. In the LOC romanization, the seventh character of the alphabet (է) appears as e', the eighth (ը) as e", the twenty-eighth (ռ) as r', and the thirty-eighth (o), as o'.
Robert Bedrosian
Long Branch, New Jersey 2010
The following chronological tables may be useful as accompaniments to the translation. The tables open in separate windows.
Return to Historical Sources
Menu
Return to History Workshop Menu