Smbat I of Armenia
Smbat I | |
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Armenian Apostolic |
Smbat I (
Rule
Smbat I was crowned king in 892 in
Smbat's successes shortly came to a halt when Afshin decided that he could not countenance a powerful Armenia so close to his domains. He retook Dvin and managed to take Smbat's wife as a hostage until she was released in exchange for Smbat's son Mushegh, and his nephew also called Smbat. The wars against Armenia continued even after Afshin's death in 901, when his brother
As Yusuf began a new campaign against Smbat in conjunction with Gagik in 909, neither the Byzantines nor the
Death
Yusuf's army ravaged the rest of Armenia as it advanced toward Berd Kapoyt (Blue Fortress), where Smbat had taken refuge, and besieged it for some time. Smbat finally decided to surrender himself to Yusuf in 914 in hopes of ending the Arab onslaught;[7] Yusuf, however, showed no compassion toward his prisoner as he brought him to Yernjak, tortured the Armenian king to death, beheaded him, and put the headless body on display on a cross in Dvin. Smbat's contemporary, Hovhannes Draskhanakerttsi, writes that the ground where the crucifix was raised became a site for pilgrimage for both Christians and non-Christians. Information provided by later Armenian authors suggested that Smbat's body was taken down and brought to the monastery at Artsvanist.[8]
References
- ^ Yovhannes Drasxanakertc'i (1987), History of Armenia, trans. Krikor Maksoudian. Atlanta, GA: Scholar's Press, p. 138.
- ^ Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994). The Making of the Georgian Nation, 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 30-31.
- ^ Madelung, Wilfred (1975). "The Minor Dynasties of Northern Iran," in The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. Richard N. Frye. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. 4, pp. 227ff.
- OCLC 490638192.
- ^ (in Armenian) Arakelyan, Babken N. (1976), "Երկիրը միավորելու ձգտում և պայքար օտար ներխուժման դեմ" [Attempts to Unify the Country and the Struggle against Foreign Invasion] in Հայ Ժողովրդի Պատմություն [History of the Armenian People], eds. Tsatur Aghayan et al. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, vol. 3, pp. 36-67.
- ^ Garsoïan, Nina G. (1997), "The Independent Kingdoms of Medieval Armenia" in The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, Volume I, The Dynastic Periods: From Antiquity to the Fourteenth Century, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian. New York: St. Martin's Press, p. 157.
- ^ Garsoian. "Independent Kingdoms," pp. 157-158.
- ^ Manuk-Khaloyan, Armen, "In the Cemetery of their Ancestors: The Royal Burial Tombs of the Bagratuni Kings of Greater Armenia (890-1073/79)," Revue des Études Arméniennes 35 (2013), pp. 143-44, 158.