Armenian Historians: Movses Kaghankatouatsi

Armenian Historians

In 1924 Bartold delivered a series of lectures at a university in Baku. Once he was asked “aren’t the Aghvans and the Armenians the same people? It’s hard to imagine that a nation who had a writing system and a translation of the Bible suddenly lost their language and disappeared from the scene of history.”

While Bartold responded by citing examples of other ethnicities with a similar fate, nevertheless, this question itself confirms that the Armenians are the closest nation to the Aghvans culturally, historically, religiously, racially and geographically, and it is not surprising that the records of Armenian historians dealing with Aghvank throughout centuries are the most exhaustive of all.

Especially after Mesrop Mashtots’ invention of the Armenian alphabet at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century AD, the Golden Age of the Armenian literature brought forth numerous authors who recorded the historic accounts of their time and translated those of their predecessors into Armenian. Among these are Movses Khorenatsi, Pavstos Buzand, Agathangelos, Sebeos and Ghazar Parpetsi, who have also chronicled the events pertaining to the Aghvans.

Keeping in mind the limitless rancor and hate propaganda against the Armenians that has intensified after their miserable defeat from the Armenians in their self-perpetrated war on Artsakh, the ugly manifestations of this hatred in the barbaric slaughter of Gurgen Markarian on February 19, 2004 by the “Azeri” monster Ramil Safarov, the savage destruction of the ancient Jugha cemetery in December 2005 in front of the eyes of an indifferent civilized world, the endless warmongering rhetoric from the highest “Azeri” authorities, to name but a few, it is certain that the mention of the word Armenian throws the “Azeris” into a hysterical frenzy rejecting everything coming from Armenian sources, ancient or modern. It is as if the fifth century Armenian historians who never saw a Turk in their lives had supernatural prophetic powers to foresee that Turks would ravage the civilizations west of the Caspian starting six hundred years after their time and a fake “Azerbaijan” would be counterfeited on the soil of their homeland fifteen centuries later. Whatever the Turks want to believe and make believe, at least one Armenian historian can in no way be neglected when talking about the Aghvans: Movses Kaghankatouatsi, a historian who is also abused by the “Azeris” who misquote him in their baloney history inventions and attribute him to themselves.

Movses Kaghankatouatsi

Without any doubt, the most complete historical record of Aghvank, History of Aghvank, comes from the seventh century Armenian historian, Movses Kaghankatouatsi, himself a citizen of Kaghankatooik (Kalankatu) a village in the Utik province near the River Tartar in the Aghvank of the day.

It should be noted that another Armenian historian with the same first name, Movses Daskhorantsi, added additional chapters to this work in the 10th century. This has confused some researchers who do not read Armenian and have had to consult second hand sources, to express fallacious ideas about Kaghankatouatsi’s era and have mistakenly put him in the 10th century.

Relating the accounts of war between Khossrow II Parviz (591-628 AD) and Heraclius I (610-641 AD), he writes: “In the winter, the Roman emperor captured 50,000 prisoners from Atrpatakan and moved to the lands north of the Arax, especially Aghvank that had warmer winters and after settling in Aghvank, wrote letters to the Kings of Aghvank, Iberia (Georgia H.), and Armenia to aid the Romans in the war against Iranians”.