The Bagratids and The Mamikonians

The Bagratids

The Bagratid dynasties – Bagratuni in Armenia and Bagrationi in Georgia – count among the longest-reigning royal families in the Caucasus (and in Europe), starting as princely houses and attaining to the royal status in both countries in the 9th century.

The origins of the Bagratids are disputed though more widely accepted version has it that the both dynasties had common roots, beginning in Armenia and branching later into Georgia.

The root of the names Bagrationi and Bagratuni, Bagrat-, derives from the Old Persian Bagadāta, “God-Given”. In Armenia and Georgia, the respective names for the Bagratid dynasties literally translate to “The children of/house established by Bagrat” (Bagrat + Classical Greek: – id, “the children”).

The name Baghdad is pre-Islamic and its origins are under some dispute. Some say it comes from an Aramaic phrase that means “sheep enclosure”. Others contend that the word comes from ancient Persian: “bagh” meaning God, and “dad” meaning gift. “The gift of God….” During at least one point in history, it certainly seemed so. The name has been found as Baghdadu on Assyrian cuneiform records of the 9th century BC, and on Babylonian bricks bearing the Royal Seal of King Nebuchadnezzar (6th century BC). However it is related to previous settlements, which did not have any political or commercial power.

When the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur founded a completely new city for his capital, he chose the name Madinat al-Salaam or City of Peace. This was the official name on coins, weights, and other official usage, although the common people continued to use the old name. By the 11th century, “Baghdad” became almost the exclusive name for the world-renowned metropolis.

There are several rival theories as to the etymology of the specific name Baghdad. The most widely accepted among these is that the name is a Middle Persian compound of Bag “god” + dād “given”, translating to “God-given” or “God’s gift”, from which comes Modern Persian Baɣdād. This in turn can be traced to Old Persian. A less probable guess is the Persian compound Bāğ “garden” + dād “fair”, translating to “The fair garden”.

Bagratuni is a common name in Armenian language and an Armenian ruling dynasty. The main Armenian house went extinct by the 12th century, while the Georgian line, in its minor branch, continues to this day as the nominal Royal House of Georgia.

The Bagrationi Royal Dynasty was the ruling family of Georgia. Their ascendency lasted from the early Middle Ages until the early 19th century. In modern usage, this royal line is frequently referred to as the Georgian Bagratids, a Hellenized form of their dynastic name.

Later, under biblical influences, they entertained another claim, of Hebrew ancestry, further elaborated by Moses of Khorene as the well-known myth of their descent from the biblical king-prophet David. Once the Georgian branch, who had quickly acculturated in the new environment, assumed royal power, the myth of their biblical origin helped to assert their legitimacy and emerged as a main ideological pillar of the millennium-long Bagrationi rule in Georgia from 575 AD to 1810 AD.

The claim is given no credence by modern scholarship. The harp on their Coat of Arms is a reference that ancestry. Modern scholarship outside of Georgia, notably Cyril Toumanoff, gives little credit to the medieval narratives, regarding both claimed biblical descent and descent from Guaram.

Toumanoff traces the origins of the family to ancient Ispir, but according to him, the Georgian branch of the family appeared only in the 8th century, during an anti-Arab rebellion in 772, when one of the sons of Ashot III the Blind, called Vasak fled into Iberia (Georgia). His son, Adarnase, was granted hereditary possessions in Klarjeti and Samtskhe by the Georgian dynast Archil. Adarnase’s son Ashot gained the principate of Iberia and founded the last royal dynasty of Georgia.

Certain, generation by generation, history of the family begins only in the 8th century, when the downfall of the rival clan of the Mamikonians helped the Bagratids to emerge as a major force in the ongoing struggle against the Arab rule.

Ashot III Bagratuni also known as Ashot the Blind (c. 690 – 762) was a member of the Bagratuni family who was presiding prince of Armenia as a Prince from 726 and as an ishxan from 732 to 748. He was the nephew of Smbat VI Bagratuni. He had two sons, Smbat VII Bagratuni and Vasak Bagratuni.

He won the favour of the caliphate by defeating one of the emirs who had revolted against Baghdad and attacked Armenia, of the Bagratuni dynasty was a presiding prince of Armenia for the Caliph from 732 to 748. His ascension signaled the coming to power of the Bagratids. He was blinded by the rival nobles of the Mamikonian clan. The new power of Armenia had reached such a level that the country, at short notice, could summon an army of 90,000 men, ready to be sent out to battle.

The Mamikonians

Mamikonian or Mamigonyan was a noble family which dominated Armenian politics between the 4th and 8th century. They ruled the Armenian regions of Taron, Sasun, Bagrevand and others. Their patron saint was Saint Hovhannes Karapet (John the Baptist) whose monastery of the same name (also known as Glak) they fiercely defended against the Sassanid invaders.

The origin of the Mamikonians is shrouded in the mists of antiquity. Moses of Chorene in his History of Armenia (5th century) claims that three centuries earlier two Chinese noblemen, Mamik and Konak, rose against their half-brother, Chenbakur, the Emperor of Chenk, or China. They were defeated and fled to the king of Parthia who, braving the Emperor’s demands to extradite the culprits, sent them to live in Armenia, where Mamik became the progenitor of the Mamikonians.

A theory from the 1920s postulated that the Chenk mentioned in the Armenian sources were not the Chinese but probably from a different ethnic group from Transoxania, such as the Tocharians.

Another reconstruction, similar to the previous ones but without references whatsoever to distant China, has that the family originally immigrated from Bactriana (present northern Afghanistan) under the reign of Tiridates II of Armenia, likely coinciding with the accession of the Sassanids in Iran.

The first known Mamikonid lord, or nakharar, about whom anything certain is known was a certain Vatche Mamikonian (fl. 330-339). The family reappears in chronicles in 355, when the bulk of their lands lay in the province of Tayk.

By 750, Mamikonians lost Taron, Khelat, and Mouch to the Bagratuni family. In the 770s, the family was led by Artavizd Mamikonian, then by Musel IV (+772) and by Samuel II. The latter married his daughter to Smbat VII Bagratuni, constable of Armenia. His grandson Smbat Msaker (“the Carnivore”) became forefather of Bagratid rulers of Armenia and Taron.

Mamikonians are known to have led a national rebellion against the Arab Caliphate in 774-775. After the rebels were rooted out, Mamikonians’ supremacy in Armenia came to an end. Even in their homeland of Tayk, they were succeeded by the Bagratids. One Kurdik Mamikonian was recorded as ruling Sasun c. 800. Half a century later, Grigor Mamikonian lost Bagrevand to the Muslims, reconquered it in the early 860s and then lost it to the Bagratids for good. After that, Mamikonians pass out of history.

After their disastrous uprising of 774, some of the Mamikonian princes moved to the Georgian lands. The latter-day Georgian feudal houses of the Liparitids-Orbeliani and Tumanishvili are sometimes surmised to have been descended from those princes.