THE FIRES of NAXČAWAN in Search of Intercultural Transmission in Arabic, Armenian, Greek, and Syriac

THE FIRES OF NAXČAWAN In Search of Intercultural Transmission in Arabic, Armenian, Greek, and Syriac

Introduction

Near the turn of the eighth century, Armenian nobles rebelled against Arab rule and turned to Byzantium to secure their independence. Muḥammad b. Marwān, the brother of the caliph ῾Abd al-Malik, responded and defeated the Greek forces in order to reclaim Armenia as a caliphal province. He told the Armenian nobles that he wanted to increase their stipends and under this pretext he gathered them in the churches of the province Vaspurakan in southern Armenia. He then ordered his forces to burn the churches down, immolating the Armenians as punishment for their rebellion. This event, “the year of the fire” as Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ calls it, rever- berated through the Near East and today we have accounts of the fires in Arabic, Armenian, Syriac, and Greek, dating as early as the eighth century. These accounts exhibit substantial differences, though: the reigning caliph is either ῾Abd al-Malik or al-Walīd; the date is 696, 703, 704, or 705; the churches are in Xram or Khilāṭ/Xlat‘ and/or al-Nashawā/Naxčawan (modern: Naxçıvan); the victims are the Armenian nobles or maybe just their troops; and the names of the instigators and captives change, although Muḥammad b. Marwān remains as a constant thread. This article joins the search for intercultural transmission between the various literatures of the Near East by untangling the discrepancies between the different accounts about the fires in Naxčawan. The goal is not to determine which account best describes “what really happened,” though there are some details that we might forward as possibilities; instead, this article places each version into its proper context and questions what we mean by reliability in texts about the Umayyad period. It first introduces the three main sets of traditions: Armenian sources, non- Armenian Christian sources, and Muslim Arabic sources. Subsequently, it identifies the main discrepancies between the various versions, such as the date, caliph, place, victims, and captives. Finally, it presents the context of two different renditions in order to speculate on the use and value of this particular event in the Arabic and Armenian historiographical traditions and thereby to explain some of the more notable discrepancies.

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1. A Brief Note on Scholarly Context

With the publication of M. Cook and P. Crone’s Hagarism: the Making of the Islamic World in 1977, historians of Islam met the zenith of the skeptic movement that was born from transferring the methods of Biblical criticism into the context of Near Eastern history1. In the decades since, scholars are still responding to the charges of the skeptics by examining deficiencies of the Arabic sources, struggling to justify their continued use. Hagarism is a wonderfully provocative book; it is the great “what if…?” of early Islamic historiography2. In rejecting the traditional Arabic accounts for early Islamic history, Cook and Crone venture into fraught territory. First, this approach assumes that Arabic traditions are wholly other, independent of the historical sources in other Near Eastern lan- guages. Second, it rejects one set of flawed sources for another several sets of flawed sources, putting the onus on the modern historian to reveal and mediate the problems inherent in a number of diverse Christian and Jewish texts. None of our sources, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, are inherently impartial or flawless. Since the publication of Hagarism, numerous scholars have explored the relationship between Muslim and Christian historical writing, fore- most among whom we find L. Conrad and R. Hoyland. Hoyland published his Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam in 2007 and Theophilus of Edessa’s Chronicle and the Circulation of Historical Knowl- edge in Late Antiquity and Early Islam in 20113. Hoyland logically advo- cates for a “promiscuity of approach” in writing Islamic history due to the shared experience and similar circumstances of the disparate groups in the Near East. He supported this with the argument that “no one tradition was insulated from the influence of others”4. At the same time, he is quick to clarify that ties between different literary traditions cannot always be explained by direct textual transmission: “I am not denying that there was influence and borrowing, but rather doubting that enough ground- work has been done as yet to allow determination of its nature”5. Hoyland continues to contribute significantly to this discussion, and his subsequent

1 Cook – Crone, Hagarism. On the relationship between the skeptic movement and Biblical criticism, see Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu; Donner, Narratives, p. 35- 63. 2 Humphreys, Islamic History, p. 81. 3 See also Hoyland, Historiography. 4 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 32. 5 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 34, n. 8.

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work on Theophilus of Edessa suggests that “a lot more historical material was circulating between the Muslim and Christian communities than is usually assumed”6. There have been several other recent studies that have honed in on the question of intercultural transmission, notably those of A. Borrut, M. Conterno, and L. Conrad7. In particular, though, this study is inspired by L. Conrad’s insightful case-study on the Arab conquest of Arwād8. In studying closely the texts concerning the Arab conquest of this small Mediterranean island off the coast of Syria, Conrad is able to demonstrate that the accounts in Arabic must be read with a broader eye to their placement in the works of history. He successfully demonstrates the confusion between Arwād, Cyprus, and Crete in Arabic texts. However, Conrad’s conclusion, namely that it is impossible to obtain much information about the Arab conquests based on the futūḥ genre in Arabic, is hopefully one that future scholarship will continue to challenge. While Conrad’s case about Arwād is convincing, the only way we can verify his conclusion is to repeat comparable case studies to see if these corroborate his findings. This article attempts just that, while also adding an extra layer: historical texts composed in Armenian. Some historians of Armenia share Conrad’s conclusion about the reliability of Arabic sources on the seventh century. In their historical commentary to the translation of Sebēos, R. Thomson, J. Howard-Johnston, and T. Greenwood note that …the latter-day historian should not expect more than a highly distorted view of both the general and the particular in Arab accounts of the conquests… The historian determined to try to grasp something of what happened to change the late antique world out of all recognition in the seventh century cannot start from the Islamic sources any more than from the Syrian and Byzantine. A start has to be made elsewhere, in the fourth of the Near East’s historical traditions, that of Armenia9.

Presumably the authors here intend to offer Sebēos as an alternative to the troublesome futūḥ narratives. The problem, of course, is that we cannot assume that the Armenian sources are independent from the Arabic, Greek, or Syriac, let alone that they are a single undifferentiated group or that they tend to be more correct.

6 Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa, p. 29. 7 Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir; Borrut, La circulation; Conterno, La ‘Descri- zione dei tempi’; Conrad, The mawālī; Conrad, Theophanes; Conrad, Arabic Chronicle. 8 Conrad, The Conquest of Arwād. 9 Thomson et al., Sebeos, vol. 2, p. 237.

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T. Greenwood engaged with exactly this question when he published his extensive “Reassessment of the History of Łewond” (2012)10, an updated study of the source that preserves one of the most significant accounts of the fires in Naxčawan. One of his main arguments is that we cannot read Armenian sources as independent from broader trends in Near Eastern historiography: Although its Armenian character and language gives the text an exotic fla- vour for modern scholars, and hence an impression of otherness, an opposite contention shall be advanced, that Łewond’s History was influenced by both Armenian and non-Armenian historical traditions and that far from being conceived and written in historiographical isolation, it should be seen as an expression of cross-cultural engagement and acculturation in early medieval Armenia11.

Given these significant advances in Islamic and Near Eastern historiography, this article offers Muḥammad b. Marwān’s fires as a case study, like Conrad’s exposition of the Arab conquest of Arwād, to examine the independence, coherence, and reliability of Near Eastern sources.

2. The Corpus

There are three main sets of traditions about the fires in Naxčawan: the Armenian sources, the non-Armenian Christian sources, and the Muslim Arabic sources.

2.1. The Set of Armenian Sources The longest and most specific accounts of the fires at Naxčawan and Xram are in Armenian. Specifically, the oldest known account of the event, should we trust the traditional late eighth-century date, is Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn, or History, which has confusingly attained the modern title Aršawank‘ Arabac‘ i Hays, or Arab Incursions into Armenia12. A priest, Łewond wrote his history of the Caliphate from 632 to 788 in Armenian at the behest of a Bagratid sponsor. In his Patmabanut‘iwn, Łewond describes how the Armenians and Byz- antines joined forces against the Arabs and faced an army with Muḥammad b. Marwān at its head. The Arabs defeated the Greeks, killing many as

10 Greenwood, Reassessment. 11 Greenwood, Reassessment, p. 102. 12 On the date of Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn, see Akinean, Łewond erēc‘ patmagir; Gero, Byzantine Iconoclasm; Mahé, Le problème; Greenwood, Reassessment. The title used here, Patmabanut‘iwn, is pulled from the oldest extant manuscript of the text (Matenadaran 1902).

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they ran away from the battle. Muḥammad then returned to Dabīl/Dwin, the caliphal capital of Armenia, where he received an order from the caliph al-Walīd himself. Since the Armenians had led the Greek forces, the caliph demanded that Muḥammad eliminate the Armenian nobility (henceforth: naxarark‘) in punishment. Mahmet received the wicked order and commanded a certain Kasm, who was his commander in the region of the city of Naxčawan, to call to him the Armenian naxarark‘ with their cavalry under the pretext of recording [their names] in the royal record, collecting their salary, and returning. They, in their typical credulity, reckoned the deception of the stealthy hunters to be trustworthy and arrived there immediately. When they gathered there, they [the Arabs] ordered to divide them into two groups, one of which they gathered in the church of Naxčawan. They sent [the other] half to the village of Xram and threw them into its church, fixing guards over [them]. They pondered how to kill them. All of them together agreed to remove those of noble birth (azatatohmn) from the prison and to burn those who were imprisoned in the sanctuary; and they set fire to the roof of the divine altar. When they who were trapped in such bitter danger saw that they were deprived of human help from all sides, they took refuge in the God of all. They implored Him alone, saying: “You, who are Refuge for the tormented, Aid for those in danger, and Comforter for the weary! Come to the aid of us [who are] tormented and in this danger that they set upon us. Save us from the bitter death that they have inflicted upon us. For, behold, the heat of the flame has grown insupportably strong over us and, enveloping us, is burning seven times more than the heat of the fire of Babylon. Just as You sent aid, the protective power of the angel, to the three children, so too do not neglect us in Your compassion, for we are also Your servants. Even though we sinned many times and angered Your sweet benevolence, nevertheless even in Your anger may You remember to show mercy to Your servants. For behold Your sanctuary and the place where Your name is glorified is a grave for us. On account of which we, thanking Your holy and formidable name, commend our spirits, our breath, and our bodies into Your hands.” Having said this, all of them together raised hymns on high and departed from this world. But they threw the noble naxarark‘ in chains into prison and tormented them with insupportable tortures13.

Łewond completes his story with a short list of naxarark‘ who were tortured and killed after having offered all of their possessions to the Arabs: Smbat the son of Ašot Bagratuni, Grigor and Koriwn Arcruni, and Varašapuh Amatuni and his brother. Łewond states, though, that there were so many naxarark‘ killed in this way that he could not enumerate

13 Łewond, ed./trans. La Porta – Vacca, in preparation. For published versions, see Łewond, trans. Chahnazarian, p. 31-33; Łewond, trans. Ter-Łewondyan, p. 38-39; Łewond, trans. Arzoumanian, p. 64-65. In Armenian, see Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 55-57; Łewond, ed. Ezean, p. 33-34; Łewond, ed. Ter-Vardanean, p. 754-756.

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them all. Due to the unending complaints about the excessive behavior of Muḥammad b. Marwān in Armenia, Łewond claims, al-Walīd finally recalled the general to Damascus and sent in his place “Abdlaziz,” or ῾Abd al-῾Azīz b. Ḥātim al-Bāhilī. Shorter accounts of the fires appear in the works of T‘ovma Arcruni, Dasxuranc‘i, Drasxanakertc‘i, Asołik, and Vardan Arewelc‘i. It is quite clear that these versions do not all link back to a common source, as two of the tenth-century versions are considerably different from Łewond’s account as seen above. This is hardly surprising, as scholars have noted the lack of transmission of Łewond’s text in Armenian histories before the eleventh century14. T‘ovma Arcruni wrote his Patmut‘iwn tann Arcru- neac‘, or History of the Arcruni House, in the tenth century to celebrate the role of the Arcruni family in Armenian history. He includes a brief note on the fires of Naxčawan: Vlid, son of Abdlmelik‘, [ruled] for ten years. He planned even more evil. By a deceitful trick he trapped the princes (naxarark‘) of Armenia and burned them all in the city of Nakhchavan and in the town of Khram which is below the monastery of Astapat on the bank of the Araxes15.

T‘ovma may very well have relied on Łewond for this account, as he includes details shared with Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn in his description of the Umayyad and ῾Abbasid-era North16. However, his description of the fires reveals his interest in the province of Vaspurakan, which was Arcruni territory when he wrote his history. Accordingly, he focuses on physically placing the event and not the victims, who were scions of Arcruni rivals, the Bagratids. Yovhannēs Drasxanakertc‘i, sometimes known as John the Historian, similarly wrote Hayoc‘ Patmut‘iwn, or The History of Armenia, in the tenth century. Immediately preceding the account of the fires, he identifies the goals of the Arabs, namely to “burn, tear down and destroy the Arme- nian churches, take captive all of the population and mercilessly put them to the sword”17. His version of events, though, is different from Łewond’s in several key aspects. At this time, after the eighty-fifth year of their era [-anno Hegirae], ῾Abd al-Malik became the Ishmaelite caliph. Soon thereafter his troops that were

14 This was the rationale for Gero’s hypothesis that Łewond’s text was much later, see Mahé, Le problème, p. 122-124. 15 T‘ovma Arcruni, trans. Thomson, p. 170-171; T‘ovma Arcruni, ed. Vardanyan, p. 166. 16 T‘ovma Arcruni, trans. Thomson, p. 37. 17 Drasxanakertc‘i, trans. Maksoudian, p. 108; for the Armenian, see Drasxanakertc‘i, ed. T‘usunyan, p. 100.

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in Armenia burned a fire in our midst, since the satan had blown its wrath into them. Subsequently, by deceit, fraud, vain hopes and heartening promises they gathered in one place everyone, both the azats and the cavalry forces, and registered their names in the archives, as if to give them their annual wages. Then, depriving them of their arms, they imprisoned them in the temple of God in the city of Naxǰawan, and shutting on them the gates with bricks, enclosed all the exits. But when they [the Armenians] learned of the treachery, they chanted aloud the words of the children in the fur- nace. Then the wicked prosecutors tore down the roof of the church, filled it with fire, and through incendiary material raised the flames higher than those of Babylon. Thus, the ceiling of the wooden church burned, and hot bricks mixed with smoke and fire fell from above, and killed all of them. Their ceaseless thanksgiving did not stop until they had exhausted their last breath. The avenging foreigners, however, being secure from the fear of the brave troops, took captive the surviving families of those who had been burnt, and brought them to the city of Dvin, from whence they were sent to Damascus18.

Drasxanakertc‘i then places the death of ῾Abd al-Malik and the ascension of al-Walīd after this account, making the destruction of the church at Naxčawan ῾Abd al-Malik’s only deed in Armenia. Significantly, he offers a date of 85AH, or 704CE. The hijrī dating suggests that Drasxanakertc‘i was familiar with Arabic traditions about the fires, but, as we will see shortly, none of the extant Arabic accounts corroborate 85AH. The only other source to identify 85AH as the year of the fires is the martyrology of Vahan Gołt‘nec‘i. R. Hoyland points out that Drasxanakertc‘i serves as one of the earliest references to the martyr19, but it is clear that Drasxanakertc‘i here also serves as one of the earliest references to the martyrology, as well. His account of the fires matches the one in Vahan’s martyrology, a text that cannot be easily dated. Asołik refers to a martyrology extant in his time, the eleventh century20, but it is not clear if the martyrology was the source for Drasxanakertc‘i’s account of the fires or vice versa. The text of the martyrology itself claims that a monk wrote it around the year 744CE, seven years after the death of Vahan in 737CE, after hearing the story from someone named Theophilus, whom the Arabs called Abu Step‘an, in Greek when he traveled to the martyrium21. If the martyrology is indeed from the early eighth century, it served as the basis of Drasxanakertc‘i’s account of the fires and, as we will see later, possibly even the confusion of Łewond’s chronology.

18 Drasxanakertc‘i, trans. Maksoudian, 108-9; Drasxanakertc‘i, ed. T‘usunyan, 100. 19 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 375. 20 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 374, n. 120. 21 Gatteyrias, Élégie, p. 212-213.

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Movsēs Dasxuranc‘i, also known as Movsēs Kałankatwac‘i, wrote his Patmut‘iwn Ałwanic‘ ašxarhi, or History of the land of the Albanians, in the tenth century, though the irregular organization of this text makes it likely that it is composite and compiled several layers of historical narratives22. Like Drasxanakertc‘i, Dasxuranc‘i provided a version of the fires that differs substantially from Łewond’s account. He had Muḥammad b. Marwān appear in Armenia in 146 of the Armenian era, or 697-8CE, on his way to Darband; he does mention the significance of 85AH, but only as a date for the ecclesiastical Council of Bardh῾a/Partaw. The Armenians rebelled and called on Byzantine reinforcements when Muḥammad was in Darband. Passing thence into Armenia, he defeated the Greek and Armenian armies. All the Armenian leaders whom he was unable to capture he seduced by means of a mighty oath, gathering them together by fraud and treachery. Taking them to the town of Naxijewan, he shut 800 men in the churches and burned them alive; in the same way he burned 400 in Xram and put the rest to the sword. The cause of their downfall was that they were all inspired by the spirit of error, despised and mocked the patriarchs and priests, and harassed the monks23.

Muḥammad b. Marwān’s punishment, Dasxuranc‘i continues, was that when he returned to die in Syria, the ground refused to accept his body and so spit him back out three times. They finally succeeded in burying him by tying his corpse to a dead dog. Although Dasxuranc‘i had earlier mentioned that the Armenians were written into the dīwān during the caliphate of ῾Abd al-Malik, he did not link this to the fires and, in fact, explains that it was instead a way to clarify to the caliph which of the naxarark‘ were monophysite24. Next we find Step‘anos Tarōnec‘i, known as Asołik, “the storyteller,” who wrote his Patmut‘iwn Tiezerakan, or Universal History, in the eleventh century. This work is the first to show significant borrowing from Łewond’s text, though he collapsed the latter’s extensive explanation of the martyrs into just a few short lines. Nach Abdlmēlikhs Tod herrschte über die Araber [tačiks] sein Sohn Wlith 10 Jahre. (Schon) im ersten Jahre seiner Herrschaft gedachte dieser, das Adelsheer [azatagund] der Armenier vom Erdboden zu vertilgen und gab dem Feldherrn Mahmet den Befehl, dies zu bewerkstelligen. Und dieser (hinwiederum) gab einem gewissen Kasm, der Befehlshaber im Gebiet der

22 Zuckerman, The Khazars. 23 Dasxuranc‘i, trans. Dowsett, p. 208; Dasxuranc‘i, ed. Aṙak‘elyan, p. 318. 24 Dasxuranc‘i, ed. Aṙak‘elyan, p. 305.

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Stadt Naḫčavan war, den Auftrag, die Satrapen [naxarark‘] der Armenier mit ihrer Reiterei zu sich zu berufen (unter dem Vorwande) eine Parade abhalten und ihnen Sold aus dem königlichen Schatze auszahlen zu wollen. Und diese versammelten sich in ihrer Arglosigkeit auch sofort dort. Und es wurde der Befehl gegeben, sie in zwei Gruppen zu teilen, die einen in der Kirche von Naḫčavan und die andere Gruppe in der Kirche von Ḫram (ein- zuschliefsen [sic]). Sie legten aber Feuer an die Kirchen an und verbrann- ten sie auf diese Weise alle, im Jahre 153 der Ära. Und die vornehmsten Satrapen verurteilten sie dazu an Bäume gehangen zu werden. Unter diesen waren begriffen Smbat, der Sohn Ašots Bagratuni, sowie Grigor und Koriun aus dem Hause Arcruni. Ihre Frauen und Kinder aber wurden in die Gefan- genschaft geführt. Wardan aber, den Sohn Ḫosrows, den Fürsten von Gołthn, (noch) ein kleines Kind, den führten sie weg, zogen ihn auf und unterwiesen ihn in ihrem gottlosen Gesetze25.

It is clear that Asołik worked with a copy of Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn: he places the fires under the caliph al-Walīd, provides the same motive, offers the same Kasm as the Arab commander in Naxčawan, and had the Arabs torture the naxarark‘ before hanging them. There are a few notable changes, though. First, he provides a specific year: 153 of the Armenian era, which is 704-5CE, before or immediately after the ascension of al- Walīd. Second, he omits the martyrdom narrative as found in Łewond. Third, Asołik is the first Armenian source to specify the significance of the captives taken in the aftermath of the fire, i.e. that the martyrology of Vahan Gołt‘nec‘i traces the start of his story to this event. Finally, Vardan Arewelc‘i’s thirteenth-century Hawak‘umn patmut‘ean, or Compilation of History, relies heavily on Asołik’s account of the fires26. We may therefore trace a common thread of an Armenian tradition from Łewond to Asołik and thence to Vardan. The tenth-century sources, though, demonstrate the richness of the Armenian historiographical tradition in that some of them may be independent of Łewond and clearly incorpo- rated other traditions. Determining if “Armenian” sources offer reliable accounts of the seventh century, then, is not a reasonable task, since these do not always evince common ground from one to the next.

2.2. The Set of Non-Armenian Christian Sources The fires also appear in a set of non-Armenian Christian texts in Greek, Arabic, and Syriac that have attracted considerable attention recently. Although there are a few significant differences between the accounts in

25 Step‘anos Tarōnec‘i, trans. Gelzer – Burckhardt, p. 91; Step‘anos Tarōnec‘i, ed. Malxasyanc‘, p. 124-125. 26 Vardan Arewelc‘i, ed./trans. Muyldermans, p. 51 (Armenian), and p. 97-98 (French).

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this set, it is the most cohesive set of the corpus of accounts of the fires. Further, these offer the only incontrovertible argument for intercultural transmission of the accounts of the fires of Naxčawan. This is due to a common source, frequently identified as Theophilus of Edessa, a Maronite Christian and astrologer in the court of the caliph al-Mahdī (r. 158AH/ 775CE – 169AH/785CE). R. Hoyland reconstructed the history of Theo- philus of Edessa by organizing common traditions in the eighth-century Syriac history of Dionysius of Tellmaḥre, a source that has not survived except as excerpts in Michael the Syrian’s Chronicle and the Chronicle to 1234; the ninth-century Greek chronicle of Theophanes; and the tenth- century Arabic history of Agapius of Manbij27. Theophilus was long recognized as the “eastern source” or the “Syriac common source” of this set of texts28. Recently M. Conterno argued that this common source was instead written and circulated in Greek, though with clear elements of Arabic influence, whether via textual or oral transmission29. Our goal here is not to ascertain the exact relationship between each of these texts, but to evaluate which, if any, demonstrate common ground with the other two sets of Armenian and Muslim Arabic traditions. Theophanes, d. 818CE, was a Byzantine iconophile who wrote his Chronographia in Greek30. Although his chronology is famously suspect31, he places the fires in 703CE, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Tiberius III Apsimar, who ruled from 698 to 705CE: The Armenian chieftains rebelled against the Saracens and killed the Sara- cens who were in Armenia. Once more they made contact with Apsimarus and brought the Romans into their country. Muhammad (ibn Marwan), however, made an expedition against them and killed many people. He subju- gated Armenia to the Arabs and as for the Armenian chieftains he gathered them in one place and burned them alive32.

This same account appears in an Arabic history a century later. Agapius was a Melkite bishop of Manbij, who wrote his Kitāb al-῾unwān, or The Book of the Title, the full title of which is actually a dedication to Abū Mūsā ῾Isā b. Ḥusayn, in Arabic in the 940s. From what we can tell, his text tends to remain more faithful to the history traditionally ascribed

27 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 631-671; Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa. 28 Conrad, Theophanes, p. 5-6; Conrad, The Conquest of Arwād, p. 322-348; Hoy- land, Theophilus of Edessa, p. 4-29. 29 Conterno, La ‘Descrizione dei Tempi’. See also Debié, Oriental Source, p. 378-379. 30 On the possibility of Theophanes’ familiarity with the Arabic historical tradition, see Conrad, Theophanes. 31 Ostrogorsky, Die Chronologie. 32 Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa, p. 195.

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to Theophilus than Theophanes Chronographia33, and he also had access to Muslim Arabic sources34. His version of the fires is as follows: The people of Armenia shut themselves in their fortresses; Muhammad b. Marwan marched out to them and defeated them and killed a group of Romans there. Then he assembled the patricians of Armenia, confined them in a great church and set fire to it, thus burning them, and he allowed their women to be taken as spoil35.

Theophilus tradition also appeared in the now-lost history of the Mia- physite Dionysius of Tellmaḥre (d. 845CE), which we know today only through the later Syriac texts of Michael the Syrian (d. 1199CE) and the anonymous Chronicle to 1234. Michael the Syrian was the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch from 1166 to 1199CE, and wrote his Chronicle in Syriac, though it was translated into Armenian as the Žamanakagrut‘iwn in 124836. The Syriac version reads: Muhammad ibn Marwan gathered the Armenian leaders in one place and had them enter a church, which he then set on fire, burning them all to death37.

The translator of the slightly later Armenian version was familiar with the versions outside of this set of non-Armenian Christian sources, though, since he added the city name. This is not at all surprising, since Vardan Arewelc‘i, whose account we saw above, was responsible for the text’s translation from Syriac to Armenian. Placing the event in 75AH/696- 7CE, the Armenian version of Michael the Syrian’s Chronicle, the Žamanakagrut‘iwn, adds a new twist. This Mahmēt gathered the Armenian princes (ark‘ayazunk‘) in Naxǰawan with a trick and tried to convert (them) to his religion. And when they did not believe this, he put (them) in a big church and burned them with fire38.

Despite the translator’s familiarity with the Armenian tradition, the use of ark‘ayazunk‘ here, where all of the other Armenian versions use naxarark‘ or azatk‘, suggests that he is working mainly from the Syriac. The addition of the Arab attempt to convert the Armenians to Islam, though, is unique to the Armenian Žamanakagrut‘iwn.

33 Howard-Johnston, Witnesses to a World Crisis, p. 230-231. 34 Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa, p. 14. 35 Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa, p. 195; the Arabic is not available in the printed editions of Agapius and appears only in Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa, p. 323 / f. 106r. 36 Brock, Syriac Sources, p. 22. 37 Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa, p. 196; Michael the Syrian, ed. Chabot, vol. IV, p. 448-449. 38 Michael the Syrian, Žamanakagrut‘iwn, p. 329.

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The Chronicle to 1234, despite the author’s apparent knowledge of Armenian39, records the event as per the so-called Theophilus with little indication of familiarity with the set of Armenian sources as seen above. The Armenian leaders organized a revolt against the Arabs. Muhammad ibn Marwan went up and crushed the Romans who had come to Armenia and he also killed many Armenians. Then Armenia reverted to Arab con- trol40.

Finally, Bar Hebraeus (d. 1286), also known as Gregory Abū l-Faraj, wrote his Makhtĕbhânûth Zabhnê, or Descriptions of the Times, in Syriac in the thirteenth century. He places Muḥammad b. Marwān’s arrival in Arme- nia under ῾Abd al-Malik, after the ascension of Apsimaros in 1010AG/699CE. After trying to convert Christian Arabs (not Armenians) to Islam, then “he also collected the chiefs of the Armenians and shut them up in one of the churches of Armenia, and then he set the church on fire and burnt them all”41. Bar Hebraeus omits this passage in his Arabic abridgement, Ta᾿rīkh mukhtaṣar al-duwal42. While the reliance on a “common source” clearly demonstrates intercultural transmission among these Christian texts in Greek, Arabic, and Syriac, it is not until the thirteenth-century Armenian translation of Michael the Syrian’s Žamanakagrut‘iwn that we find evidence of dialogue between this set of sources and the Armenian tradition. Further, while we know that some of these historians had access to the Islamic sources in Arabic, there is no evidence that they made use of them for the accounts of the fires.

2.3. The Set of Muslim Arabic Sources The transmission of the accounts in Arabic is particularly interesting, in part because the fires do not appear in texts later than the ninth century43. Although Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ (d. 240AH/854-5CE), al-Balādhurī (d. 297AH/ 892CE), and al-Ya῾qūbī (d. 284AH/897-8CE) all report the event, al-Ṭabarī

39 Conrad, Syriac Perspectives, p. 13; Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir, p. 148- 149. Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa, p. 13 claims that the Chronicle of 1234 remains more faithful to Theophilus than Michael the Syrian. 40 Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa, p. 196. For the Syriac, see Chronicon ad 1234, ed. Chabot, I, p. 297 (p. 339 in margin). 41 Bar Hebraeus, trans. Budge, p. 104; Bar Hebraeus, ed. Bedjan, p. 112. 42 Bar Hebraeus, ed. Salihani, p. 193-194: his coverage of ῾Abd al-Malik’s Caliphate involves the fitna of Ibn al-Zubayr and Ibn Hajjāj, not Muḥammad b. Marwān. 43 The only other reference I have found postdates the parameters of this study, as it is from the fifteenth century. Ibn Taghrī Birdī, al-Nujūm, vol. I, p. 207: “In it (the year 84AH), Muḥammad b. Marwān raided Armenia, vanquished them, and burned their churches. And this was called the year of the fire.” Given the date of 84AH and the phrase “the year of the fire” here, presumably Ibn Taghrī Birdī’s source is Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ.

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does not, which might possibly explain its exclusion from texts such as those by Ibn al-Athīr or Yāqūt. Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ’s description of the fires in his Ta᾿rīkh is the earliest extant Arabic rendition. He places the fires in 84AH/703-4CE: Abū Khālid b. Sa῾īd informed me on the authority of Abū Barā᾿. He said: The Romans marched against Muḥammad b. Marwān in Armenia and God defeated them. It was the year of the fire, and this was because Muḥammad b. Marwān, after the defeat of the people, sent Ziyād b. Jarrāḥ the mawlā of ῾Uthmān b. ῾Affān and Hubayra b. al-A῾raj al-Ḥaḍramī. He burned them in their churches, their places of worship, and their villages. The fire was in al-Nashawā and al-Basfurrajān. And Abū Barā᾿ said: in that raid, the mother of Yazīd b. Usayd was captured from al-Sīsajān. She was the daughter of its patrician44.

The details of Khalīfa’s report place him apart from the other Arabic versions. For example, al-Balādhurī uses the name al-Basfurrajān several times in his Futūḥ al-buldān, but not in reference to the fires. Al-Balādhurī’s rendition does not include specific dates, but places the original rebellion during the fitna of Ibn al-Zubayr: When it was the fitna of Ibn al-Zubayr, Armenia broke away and its nobles and their followers rebelled. And when Muḥammad b. Marwān was gover- nor of Armenia on behalf of his brother ῾Abd al-Malik, he fought them. He defeated, killed, and imprisoned them and subdued the land. Then he promised those of them who remained that he would allocate for them their rank (al-sharaf)45. Then they gathered for that in churches from the region of Khilāṭ. Then he locked them in and put guards at their doors, then he frightened them. And in that raid, the mother of Yazīd b. Usayd was captured from al-Sīsajān. She was the daughter of its patrician46.

he“ ,حرقهم he frightened them,” should read“ ,خوفهم Al-Balādhurī’s burned them,” as corroborated in Khalīfa’s version47. The second khabar about the mother of Yazīd b. Usayd appears with identical wording in Khalīfa and al-Balādhurī’s accounts even though the latter omits the sanad, indicating that both historians have access to the same broad tradition about the fires, even if it is worked into their accounts in very different ways. The final version in Arabic is in al-Ya῾qūbī’s Ta᾿rīkh, which follows the other two Arabic versions with the basic information: the Armenians rebelled, Muḥammad b. Marwān offered them a higher rank, and then the Arabs burned the churches down. Despite the fact that al-Ya῾qūbī lived in Armenia, there is similarly little to suggest reference to the Armenian

44 Khalīfa, ed. Fawwāz – Kishlī, p. 183. 45 Laurent – Canard, L’Arménie, p. 416: “an yafriḍa lahum fî l-šaraf, c’est-à-dire šaraf al-῾aṭâ᾿, ῾aṭâ᾿ signifiant cadeau, présent et solde, paye des soldats.” 46 Al-Balādhurī, ed. de Goeje, p. 205. 47 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 374.

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traditions about the fires. He described how ῾Abd al-Malik appointed his brothers over several of the main provinces of the Caliphate: And he appointed his brother Muḥammad over al-Mawṣil. He sent the Azd and the Rabī῾a there from Baṣra. And he raided Armenia. The people [of the land] had rebelled. He killed and took prisoners, then he wrote to the nobles (al-ashrāf) from the people of the land, to those who are called freemen (aḥrār). He gave them protection (amān) and promised that he would allocate for them their rank (al-sharaf). Then they gathered for that in the churches in the region of Khilāṭ and he ordered to gather wood around the churches. He locked their doors against them and then lit those churches on fire. He burned them all. And Muḥammad b. Marwān remained in Armenia until he died48.

Just as there are verbatim passages in both Khalīfa’s Ta᾿rīkh and al-Balādhurī’s Futūḥ al-buldān, here there are exact parallels between al-Balādhurī’s text and al-Ya῾qūbī’s Ta᾿rīkh: al-Balādhurī’s “then he promised those of them who remained that he would allocate for them their rank (al-sharaf). Then they gathered for that in churches from the region of Khilāṭ” appears nearly verbatim. Thus the “unreliable” futūḥ genre, at least as it is represented by al-Balādhurī, cannot be separated from other early Arabic historical genres. Still, al-Balādhurī’s and al-Ya῾qūbī’s versions are substantially different: al-Balādhurī’s version supplied the fitna as a casus belli and mentions Yazīd b. Usayd, while al-Ya῾qūbī was interested in the region’s ties to Mesopotamia and the Arabization of Armenia. He also defines the term aḥrār, suggests that the Armenians had been granted amān, and ends his account with the death of Muḥammad b. Marwān. These three traditions are the only references to the fires in Arabic, though several other sources mention an Armenian rebellion, sometimes with the support of Byzantine troops, at the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century49. We are left with the impression that the traditions circulating about the fires in Arabic were extremely short, along the lines of a single sentence, and that even though Khalīfa, al-Balādhurī, and al-Ya῾qūbī may have heard the same akhbār, these were dissected and repurposed to serve different goals in each text. Each of these sets of sources, the Armenian sources, the non-Armenian Christian sources, and the Muslim Arabic sources, is distinct, despite the fact there are clear points of disagreement even within each set. The non- Armenian Christian set offers the only clear example of intercultural transmission, as the version frequently ascribed to Theophilus of Edessa appears in Theophanes’ Greek, Agapius’ Arabic, and the later Syriac

48 Al-Ya῾qūbī, ed. Houtsma, vol. II, p. 324-325. 49 Ter-Łewondyan, 703-t‘vakani apstambut‘yunə, p. 40.

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chronicles of Michael the Syrian, Bar Hebraeus, and the anonymous Chronicle to 1234. The goal of this article, though, is to evaluate the specific details in each account to ascertain whether, and in what form, there was intercultural transmission between the three sets outlined above.

3. The Discrepancies

At first glance, these three sets of texts seem independent of one another, at least until the Armenian translation of Michael the Syrian’s Chronicle in the thirteenth century. They certainly evince a number of details that are not consistent from one to the next. The main differences between the versions above are the date and reigning caliph, the location of the fire, the victims, and the captives.

3.1. The Date and Caliph We encounter a number of difficulties in the attempt to untangle these traditions, the first of which is that the sources do not agree on the date or the reigning caliph. Further, there are at least four sets of traditions that are combined differently in these sources. These include: Muḥammad b. Marwān’s campaign against the Byzantines and/or the Armenians, the Armenian recognition of Arab control of the North, the burning of the churches, and the taking of captives. While these appear as distinct events in some of the sources, even separated by years, they are collapsed in other sources, appearing as a single moment. Łewond’s version of the fires offers the most problematic chronology. Łewond places the fires in the first year of the reign of al-Walīd, r. 86AH/ 705CE - 96AH/715CE. This seems to be based largely on the chronology internal to the Patmabanut‘iwn: Muḥammad b. Marwān first arrived in Armenia in his brother’s sixteenth regnal year, meaning c. 700CE, then he stayed there for two years before leaving. In ῾Abd al-Malik’s eighteenth year, or c. 702CE, Muḥammad returned but remained tranquil for three years. At this point, logically, Łewond arrived at 705CE and so placed the death of ῾Abd al-Malik and the ascension of al-Walīd. The insertion of al-Walīd’s ascension creates a tension in the text, as Łewond claimed that the caliph “again” tried to kill the naxarark‘. This would have made more sense if the caliph here were ῾Abd al-Malik, given that al-Walīd was only in his first year as caliph: how was he doing this “again”? Łewond’s text had already exposed ῾Abd al-Malik’s antagonism for the Armenian nobility. Further, this chronology makes al-Walīd the caliph who appointed the next governor of Armenia, ῾Abd al-῾Azīz b. Ḥātim al-Bāhilī. According to

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Łewond, ῾Abd al-῾Azīz then invited the émigrés back to Armenia after an absence of six years from the time of the fires. If al-Walīd did indeed appoint ῾Abd al-῾Azīz and ῾Abd al-῾Azīz did invite the Armenians back from P‘oyt‘ six years after the fires, those émigrés returned, at the earliest, in 711CE, though A. Ter-Łewondyan marks 709CE as the end of ῾Abd al-῾Azīz’s position as governor, based on the nomination of Maslama b. ῾Abd al-Malik as provincial governor in 91AH/709-10CE50. If the fires took place instead during the reign of ῾Abd al-Malik, then it was possible for the émigrés to return six years later under ῾Abd al-῾Azīz. In his Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge, J. Markwart suggests that we reconsider Łewond’s troublesome chronology by replacing ῾Abd al-Malik’s sixteenth regnal year with his thirteenth, placing the arrival of Muḥammad b. Marwān in Armenia c. 697CE, instead of 700CE51. The passage that Markwart proposed as problematic (the sixteenth year of ῾Abd al-Malik’s reign) also appears in the martyrology of Vahan Gołt‘nec‘i. Should there be a relationship between the Patmabanut‘iwn and the martyrology, though, the insecure dating of the latter text makes it impossible to verify if it was dependent on Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn or vice versa. Although we have no convincing reason to alter the text, this change would pull the fires back into the reign of ῾Abd al-Malik and, additionally, would put Łewond’s text in line with Dasxuranc‘i’s, which offers the date 146 of the Armenian era, or 697-8CE. Yovhannēs Drasxanakertc‘i corrects Łewond’s chronology, putting the death of ῾Abd al-Malik immediately after the fires. As we saw above, Drasxanakertc‘i starts his account as follows: “after the eighty- fifth year of their era, ῾Abd al-Malik became the Ishmaelite caliph.” Here Drasxanakertc‘i’s chronology is unique not just as it pertains to the fires, but to ῾Abd al-Malik’s regnal dates, as well. The start of ῾Abd al-Malik’s reign, usually designated as 65AH, is hard to pin down due to the second fitna, but he died in 86AH. Drasxanakertc‘i’s chronology therefore works better if al-Walīd were responsible for the fires, as Łewond claimed, since unlike his father he did become caliph “after the eighty-fifth year of their era.” It seems, then, that Drasxanakertc‘i is attempting to correct a corrupted chronology by placing the event in ῾Abd al-Malik’s reign even though his source attributed it to al-Walīd. Theophanes, presumably working with Theophilus’ history, places the fire in the fifth year of Apsimaros, the twentieth year of ῾Abd al-Malik,

50 Ter-Łewondyan, Arminiayi ostikanneri, p. 119. M. Canard circumvented this with the suggestion that ῾Abd al-῾Azīz may have remained in Armenia after the arrival of Maslama; see Laurent – Canard, L’Arménie, p. 417-418, n. 10. 51 Marquart, Streifzüge, p. 444.

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and the tenth year of the bishop Kallinikos of Constantinople. This corre- sponds to 6195AM, or 703-4CE. That said, some of the traditions related to the fires as found in the other versions also appear in the Chronogra- phia under different years: Muḥammad b. Marwān defeated the troops of Justinian II in 6184AM/692-3CE, then the Armenians under Smbat capitulated the following year, in 6185AM/693-4CE. Muḥammad returned to Armenia in 6187AM/695-6CE to take prisoners, then the fires, as we saw above, occurred in 6195AM/703-4CE. The Armenian set and the non-Armenian Christian set thus agree that the fires occurred in Muḥammad b. Marwān’s second campaign in Armenia: he fought Byzantine and Arme- nian troops at the end of the seventh century, then ordered the fires of Naxčawan in the beginning of the eighth century, either in the last year or ῾Abd al-Malik’s reign or the first year of al-Walīd’s. The Arabic sources show no common ground beyond agreeing that the fires occurred during the reign of ῾Abd al-Malik. Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ’s text agrees with the set of non-Armenian Christian sources and places the fires in 84AH/703-4CE. However, unlike Theophanes, he continues that the prisoners were taken immediately after the fires in the same year. Al-Balādhurī pushes the fires, or at least the Armenian rebellion, earlier: the Armenians rebelled during the fitna of Ibn al-Zubayr, who died in 73AH/692CE. In other words, al-Balādhurī’s version places the fires in Muḥammad b. Marwān’s campaign against the Byzantines (6184AM/692- 3CE). This first campaign, at least, is corroborated in other Arabic sources, as al-Ṭabarī, Ibn al-Athīr, and Ibn A῾tham mentioned the Arab expedition against the Byzantines in Armenia in 73AH/692CE52, though they did not refer to fires or churches. It seems possible that al-Balādhurī shifted the fires back roughly a decade by conflating Muḥammad’s two campaigns against Armenia, either by mistake or to present the fitna as an explanation for the rebellion and the subsequent fires.

3.2. The Location The Armenian tradition is consistent in placing the fires in Naxčawan and Xram, both towns in the southern Armenian province Vaspurakan. The only Armenian accounts that sit apart from the others are Drasxanakertc‘i’s Hayoc‘ Patmut‘iwn, which names only Naxčawan, and T‘ovma Arcruni’s Patmut‘iwn tann Arcruneac‘, which locates the town of Xram for his audience. The set of non-Armenian Christian sources, with the exception of the Armenian translation of Michael the Syrian’s Žamanakagrut‘iwn, does not

52 Al-Ṭabarī, ed. de Goeje, vol. II, p. 853; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, vol. IV, p. 135; Ibn A῾tham, Kitāb al-futūḥ, vol. II, p. 351-352.

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place the fires specifically, except that they were in Armenia. Two of the works, Theophanes’ Chronographia and the Chronicle to 1234, even omit that the fires were set in churches. The Arabic sources, though, offer a more specific glance at the varied nature of Arabic historical sources. Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ places the fires in “al-Nashawā and al-Basfurrajān.” The use of Vaspurakan here is interesting. First, it does not appear in the other Arabic renditions, even though the name Vaspurakan appears elsewhere in al-Balādhurī’s Futūḥ al-buldān. Second, it suggests, albeit weakly, that Khalīfa’s sources knew enough about Armenian geography to avoid the stumble that we see in the other Arabic versions. Al-Balādhurī and al-Ya῾qūbī place the fires “around Khilāṭ” (Xlat‘), a city that presumably would have been much more rec- ognizable than Xram, but that is not actually located in Vaspurakan.

3.3. The Arab Leaders The Armenian sources list a certain Kasm, clearly the Armenian version of the Arabic Qāsim, as the local leader responsible for following Muḥammad b. Marwān’s orders. This name does not appear in any of the Arabic versions of the fires53. There had been a governor of Armenia with the name Qāsim before the fires, Qāsim b. Rabī῾a b. Umayya b. Abī l-Salt al-Thaqafī, whom al-Balādhurī and al-Ya῾qūbī place in Armenia under the caliph ῾Uthmān (r. 23AH/644CE – 35AH/656CE)54, but no other Qāsim appears in the Arabic sources about Armenia in the late-seventh or early-eighth century. The other sources are silent on this matter, with the sole exception of Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ, who noted the presence there of a mawlā of the caliph ῾Uthmān named Ziyād b. al-Jarrāḥ and a certain Hubayra b. al-A῾raj al-Ḥaḍramī. The former appears in Tahdhib al-tahdhib, where Ibn Hajar admits that he was uncertain whether this Ziyād was the same person as Ziyād b. Abī Maryam. Although he specifies that “Ziyād b. al-Jarrāḥ was a man from the people of the Hijāz, one of the mawlās of ῾Uthmān, while Ziyād b. Abī Maryam was a man from Kūfa who settled in Ḥarrān,” he also ends his account with a claim that the two Ziyāds were one in the same, and he concludes with the literary equivalent of a shrug: “and God knows best.” Still, Ibn Hajar notes that Ziyād b. al-Jarrāḥ transmitted on the authority of ῾Abd Allāh b. Ma῾qil and ῾Amr b. Maymūn, while Ja῾far

53 Ter-Łewondyan, Arminiayi ostikanner, p. 119, n. 5, notes: “It is not clear whether he was a ostikan or some other high-level official.” Ter-Łewondyan here cites only Łewond. 54 Laurent – Canard, L’Arménie, p. 409, n. 3.

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b. Barqān and ῾Abd al-Karīm al-Jazarī narrated on his authority55, which is consistent with the date of his death around the year 100AH/718-9CE56. Although this fits our timeline, his presence in Armenia is not corroborated elsewhere.

3.4. The Armenian Leaders Some of the accounts of the fires, notably those dependent on Łewond, explain that the naxarark‘ were pulled from the churches, tortured, and then hung. This adds an extra layer to the deprivation that the nobles suffered under Muḥammad b. Marwān, as their deaths were stretched out over a longer time and followed the surrender of all of their wealth and goods. According to Łewond, then, only the troops of the naxarark‘ were killed in the churches. The Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and even many of the later Armenian renditions differ on this matter, as they claim that the Arme- nian nobles perished in the fires. Specifically, though, we can see the separation of the three main sets based on the words they use to refer to the Armenian nobles. Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn is unusual in that it refers to the victims as naxarark‘. Drasxanakertc‘i and Vardan specified that the lesser nobility, the “freemen” (azatk‘), and their cavalry burned. Dasxuranc‘i uses “all of the Arme- nian leaders” (amenayn glxawork‘ Hayoc‘). Asołik explains that the nobles (naxarark‘) were hung, following Łewond, but he uses a different word (azatagund) for the nobles who rebelled. This is not from Łewond, but appears in Theophanes’ Chronographia, where the “Armenian princes” (hoi arxontes Armenias) rebelled against the Caliphate, while the “gran- dees of Armenia” (megistanas tōn Armeniōn) died in the fires. Agapius used the word “patricians” (baṭāriqa), while the Syriac versions used either “chiefs of the Armenians” (raorbāne d-Armīn) or “princes of Arme- nia” (rišanē d-Arminiā), which appears in the Armenian version of Michael the Syrian as “princes” (ark‘ayazunk‘). Khalīfa did not specify who died in the fires, saying merely “he burned them,” but both al-Balādhurī and al-Ya῾qūbī use “freemen” (aḥrār). The later also clarifies that by “freemen,” he means the “nobles” (ashrāf). Arabic sources frequently use the words “freemen” (aḥrār), “patricians” (baṭāriqa), and “sons of kings” (abnā᾿ al-mulūk) to refer to the nobles in Armenia without consistently differentiating in rank. Armenians used azatk‘ to refer to the lower nobility, while the naxarark‘ were the higher lords57.

55 Ibn Hajar, Tahdhib al-tahdhib, vol. III, no. 701. 56 Mitter, Islamic Patronate, p. 88, n. 73. 57 Toumanoff, Āzād.

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The Arabic sources, by contrast, used aḥrār, a term that is probably a direct translation of the Persian āzādān58 and therefore analogous to azatk‘.

3.5. The Captives It is not until the very end, the postscript of most of the accounts, that we reach a glimmer of a tradition that might have crossed between the Armenian and the Muslim Arabic sets, even if there is no evidence for direct textual transmission. Several of the texts, both Christian and Mus- lim, note that the Arabs took captives and transported them to Damascus. This appears in the non-Armenian Christian set, as well; Theophanes mentions that Muḥammad b. Marwān took captives from Armenia, but he places this in 6187AM/695-6CE. Specifically, though, Drasxanakertc‘i notes that there were captives sent to Dabīl/Dwin after the fires and thence to Damascus. Asołik explains why the reader should care: Vahan Gołt‘nec‘i was taken to Damascus as one of these prisoners. Raised as a Muslim, Vahan returned to Armenia as an adult and served as the governor of his region59. He then decided to convert back to Armenian Christianity and was put to death for apostasy under Hishām in 186 of the Armenian era, or 737CE60. Two of the three Muslim Arabic sources also mention a specific captive taken after the fires: the patrician of al-Sīsajān/Siwnik‘’s daughter, whose son was Yazīd b. Usayd b. Ẓāfir al-Sulamī. Yazīd, like Vahan, returned to Armenia and served as governor, starting in 134AH/751-2CE. Yazīd gained fame for his campaigns against the Khazars and for his marriage to the daughter of a Khazar khāqān. Stories about him seem fluid, though. The accounts of his marriage and the death of his wife, as found in the works of Łewond, al-Balādhurī, and Ibn A῾tham, also reappear in al-Ṭabarī and al-Azdī’s histories, but in the later the groom appears as al-Faḍl b. Yahyā l-Barmakī. Here Yazīd’s life parallels Vahan Gołt‘nec‘i, an example of how the captive-turned-governor should have behaved. The common plot of Vahan Gołt‘nec‘i and Yazīd b. Usayd cannot prove intercultural transmission, but it does in fact reveal a disconnect between the concerns of the historians preserving this tradition. Some of the Armenian sources portray the fires as religious persecution, and they produced the background story for the life of a governor when he returned

58 Ibn al-Faqīh, ed. de Goeje, p. 317; al-Suhaylī, al-Rawḍ, vol. I, p. 189; see also Yāqūt, Muj῾am al-buldān, vol. I, p. 161. Amabe, The Emergence, p. 113, suggested that aḥrār is an Arabic calque of the Armenian naxarar, but it is a translation of āzādān and therefore roughly equivalent to azatk‘. 59 Gatteyrias, Élégie, p. 190. 60 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 375.

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to the North to claim his ancestral religious identity. Meanwhile, the Ara- bic sources portray the fires as political retribution, and they produced the background story for the life of a governor of Armenia when he returned to the North to claim his ancestral right to rule (as the grandson of the patrician of al-Sīsajān/Siwnik‘). The traditions about Yazīd, both his marriage and his connection to the fires at Naxčawan, may very well have been manipulated based on the concerns of traditionalists in the ninth and tenth centuries. If the khabar that links Yazīd to the fires of Naxčawan was modeled on the life of Vahan, this suggests that Arabs were familiar enough with the martyr to forward their own captive-turned-governor. Given these discrepancies between the different versions of the fires, there is no clear evidence for intercultural transmission, beyond the well- known resilience of Theophilus’ traditions in the non-Armenian Christian set. We can certainly forward the conclusion that there exists considerable variety even within the sets of sources seen above.

4. The Discrepancies in Context

This case study cannot adequately resolve questions about the reliability of these traditions, whether Arabic, Armenian, Greek, or Syriac. In fact, the question of reliability is in itself disingenuous. Presumably, every source is reliable in some way or another, as reliability is tied inextricably to the questions asked of the text. If our question to the text is “what really happened?” then one of these must indeed be more reliable than the others, though we frequently lack the ability or methodology to divine which one to trust. Understanding the purpose of the passage in the broader schema of these histories and explaining why so many historians found this particular event worth remembering may be admittedly speculative endeavors, but they help figure out which questions modern scholars should be asking of these texts to clarify the discrepancies.

4.1. Łewond: Multiple Loyalties during Marwānid Occupation One of the most interesting and unique aspects of the Armenian accounts of the fires is the persistence of martyrdom narratives. In particular, Łewond especially, but also Dasxuranc‘i and Drasxanakertc‘i, couch their descriptions in terms to vaunt the spiritual triumph of the Christian martyrs. That said, T‘ovma, Asołik and, subsequently, Vardan do not refer to the victims of the fires as martyrs. Asołik’s reliance on Łewond is clear, but he excises the religiously-charged drama. If we turn to the other Chris- tian renditions, this is even more striking. Theophanes, for example, does not even mention a church. The fires could have been anywhere. Recent

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studies have suggested that as a whole the Armenian Church fared remark- ably well in the early Islamic period61, a fact that is easily forgotten in Łewond’s drama of martyrdom. How, then, can we understand the martyrdom narrative in Łewond’s text? The context of the account about the fires is extremely significant, as Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn includes two episodes immediately before- hand that work in tandem to place the event in Arab-Armenian relations at the turn of the eighth century. There are three important events in Muḥammad b. Marwān’s tenure as governor of Armenia that should be seen as a single narrative. Together they demonstrate that Łewond’s pri- mary concern was to denigrate Arab presence in Armenia by lamenting the fate of the Armenian clergy and churches, while still balancing the interests of his pro-Arab sponsors, the Bagratids. Łewond was clear to specify: (1) that Muḥammad b. Marwān was acting against the interests of the Armenian nobility; (2) that the nobility, and specifically the Bagratids, recognized Muḥammad’s treachery from the start; and (3) that the Arme- nian nobility, and specifically the Bagratids, were nobler than the Arabs. First, in the sixteenth year of his reign, ῾Abd al-Malik sent his brother, “the bloodthirsty and devil-possessed” Muḥammad b. Marwān, to Armenia during the reign of Ap‘semeros (Tiberius III). Muḥammad wreaked havoc in the land, making false promises to make people trust him before killing them. Finally, after two years of wanton destruction and devastation, the Arabs became familiar with the Church and piety of the Christians. “They were wounded by envy in their souls, so they deceitfully contrived their fatal ruin”62. They proceeded to kill their own servant and to hide his body as a pretext to torture the clergy of the church at Zwart‘noc‘. On Muḥammad’s direct order, the Arabs cut off the hands and feet of the Armenians, then hung them in punishment for the crimes that the Arabs themselves had committed. With this, Łewond leads into several pages of lamentation, as he weeps for the state of the Church and the unjust fate of its clergy. Significantly, Łewond sees in this a demonstration of Muḥammad’s plans for the naxarark‘. “He fabricated a vile plot to remove the noble houses along with their cavalry from this land of Armenia. His treachery was immediately apparent to Smbat, who was from the Bagratid house, and to the other naxarark‘ and their cavalry”63. Łewond is here setting the scene for the

61 On the development of the Armenian Church under the Arabs, see Garsoïan, Inter- regnum; Jinbashian, Church-State Relations. 62 Łewond, ed./trans. La Porta – Vacca; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 41. 63 Łewond, ed./trans. La Porta – Vacca; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 44.

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fires at Naxčawan by letting the readers (and his Bagratid sponsor) know that Muḥammad planned to eliminate the Armenian nobles and that the Bagratids saw through his deception. He even provides the method of execution: hanging. He concludes that Muḥammad subsequently left Armenia, while “[t]he inhabitants of this land remained like a firebrand smoldering in the fire”64. The second event that precedes the fires in Łewond’s narrative is a clash between Armenians and Arabs in Vaspurakan. The Armenians were victorious, leaving 280 Arabs who fled to take sanctuary in a church. Łewond recounts: When they [the Armenians] were not able to prevail, they thought to set fire to the sanctuary; however, Smbat, the prince of the region of Vaspurakan and the son of the prince Ašot, did not permit them and would not allow [them] to commit such wickedness, for he said: “Far be it from us to lay hands on the dwelling place of the glory of God, who has granted us such a triumph.” They assigned guards to watch over them until the shrine itself should dislodge them65.

After negotiating with a traitor, the Armenians killed all of the Arabs without burning the church. As a result, ῾Abd al-Malik sent Muḥammad b. Marwān back to Armenia. Here we can make a direct comparison between two sets of church-bound captives who met their deaths in Vaspurakan. The Armenians were able to achieve their goals without burning the church, but, interestingly, that had been their exact plan: it was the intervention of a nobleman, a Bagratid, that saved the church. The third event, the fires of Naxčawan and Xram as discussed above, is explicitly linked to the first event: al-Walīd “again ordered Mahmet to complete that same malicious plan,” namely: to eliminate the naxarark‘66. Al-Walīd “thought to rid this land of Armenia of naxarar houses with their cavalry because of the resentment that they [the Arabs] harbored for the curopalates Smbat, for he [al-Walīd] said that ‘they will always be a hindrance and an obstacle to our rule’”67. The fires at Naxčawan and Xram thus exhibit the culmination of Muḥammad’s and, by extension, the caliph’s goal: “In killing all of them, they rendered this land heirless of naxarark‘. At that time this land of Armenia was empty of its naxarar houses and they were delivered like sheep in the midst of wolves”68.

64 Łewond, ed./trans. La Porta – Vacca; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 44. 65 Łewond, ed./trans. La Porta – Vacca; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 48. 66 Łewond, ed./trans. La Porta – Vacca; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 55. 67 Łewond, ed./trans. La Porta – Vacca; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 54. 68 Łewond, ed./trans. La Porta – Vacca; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 58.

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The three events, placed one after another along with the battle at Warthān/Vardanakert, work to expose a problem of loyalty in Łewond’s description of the Arab occupation. He clearly abhorred Marwānid control of Armenia, but he wrote his Patmabanut‘iwn at the behest of a Bagratid and the Bagratids generally followed a pro-Arab policy in the ῾Abbasid period69. In these sections, we see Łewond’s arguments against supporting Arab rule: his laments for the state of the Armenian Church under Muslim governors, but more importantly, his explanation to his Bagratid sponsor of why pro-Arab policy was harmful to the interests of the naxarark‘ and, further, how his sponsor’s ancestors had been capable of recognizing the deceit and danger of Arab ambitions in the North. Łewond prioritizes his point, namely about Muḥammad b. Marwān’s brutality and the dangers of pro-Arab policy, over chronology. This is very much in line with the other main anachronism of the eighth century as described in the Patmabanut‘iwn, Maslama b. ῾Abd al-Malik’s campaign against Constantinople. Łewond’s account places the ill-fated Umayyad siege of Constantinople as late as the 730s70. Łewond contorts his chronology so that Maslama, despite his successes in the North, would die immediately after his more catastrophic defeat. By the end, he admitted his own errors to the Byzantine emperor and concluded “I could not fight against God”71. T. Greenwood addresses the corrupted chronology in Łewond’s descriptions of Maslama’s campaigns by explaining that “[a]n error of this mag- nitude is hard to interpret unless one understands it as somehow inten- tional on the part of Łewond himself. It has the effect of postponing the humiliation of Maslama to the end of his career, much as the final notice describing the actions of Muḥammad b. Marwān also contemplates his failure on campaign”72. The inconsistencies in dating both the account of Muḥammad b. Marwān’s fire at Naxčawan and Maslama’s defeat at Constantinople are part of the same narrative agenda to compare Maslama and his uncle Muḥammad, leaving the reader with the sense that they both died defeated and, at least in Maslama’s case, full of regrets. This further explains the remarkable disconnect between Łewond’s version of Muḥammad’s final defeat, a disastrous campaign against China, and the Arabic accounts of Umayyad campaigns in the East at this time. The only way to make sense of Łewond’s account of Muḥammad’s final

69 On Bagratid pro-Arab policy, see Greenwood, Reassessment, p. 113-115. 70 Book of K‘art‘li, trans. Thomson, p. 259 also places Maslama’s campaign later, after Ašot became curopalates in 813. 71 Łewond, ed./trans. La Porta – Vacca; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 143. 72 Greenwood, Reassessment, p. 131.

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campaign based on the Arabic sources requires changing China to Tran- soxania, Muḥammad b. Marwān to Qutayba b. Muslim, and the Bawtis to the Oxus. Muḥammad b. Marwān’s last deeds in the Patmabanut‘iwn are a ruinous attempt to take a rival empire, and Maslama’s Byzantium becomes Muḥammad’s China. Given the comparison between Maslama b. ῾Abd al-Malik and Muḥam mad b. Marwān, compounded by the discrepancies in the accounts of both leaders’ campaigns, the unique chronology found in Łewond’s text is suspect. It is determined by internal concerns specific to the author. Of course, this does not suggest that Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn is wholly unreliable. Instead, it informs the modern scholar about the types of questions Łewond’s text is likely to answer. In particular, a surface reading of the Patmabanut‘iwn will add to the perception that the Arabs persecuted the Armenian Church and Christian Armenians. While we have several accounts of martyrs from the period of Arab control of Armenia, we actually face a number of obstacles in identifying any endemic persecution of the Armenian Church. The seventh century was a formative period of both Armenian identity and the Armenian Church. Instead of taking his account at face value and prioritizing the prayers of the martyrs, we should be looking to Łewond to deliberate on the question of multiple loyalties and complex religious and political identities in the early Islamic world and, specifically, the autonomy of individual naxarar families that is at odds with the modern perception of a single unified Armenian society.

4.2. Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ: the Arab Expeditions against the Khazars If the evaluation of Łewond’s account of the fires hinges on its placement in relation to other events and his political agenda, this demonstrates the clear role of the historian in crafting the narrative. It is difficult to mimic this approach with Arabic sources given the nature of early Islamic historiography. Each of the reports (akhbār) are discrete and at times even ahistorical. We still need to examine the context of each source, but comparing a khabar to the one immediately before or after is less likely to garner results. We turn here to Khalīfa’s account of the fires, since it is the one that evinces the most promise to demonstrate intercultural transmission: he gives a date that matches the one offered in the set of non-Armenian Christian sources and, further, he avoids the slip from Xram to Khilāṭ/ Xlat‘ as found in the other Arabic sources. For this particular project, our task is not to decide about the role of Khalīfa as compiler, but to analyze his traditions in an attempt to ascertain if there is any link between his sources and the Armenian, Greek, or Syriac sources. As such, we are not

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as concerned here with what Khalīfa is trying to do with his sources so much as whence he is getting the information. Khalīfa offers his sources for the account of the fires: Abū Khālid b. Sa῾īd, whom Wurtzel identifies as Abū Khālid Yūsuf b. Khālid al-Samtī, d. 190AH/805-6CE. Wurtzel notes that “[m]uch of Abū Khālid’s information is unique to Khalīfa” and covers historical events in the Caucasus and North Africa73. Khalīfa also lists Abū Khālid’s sources, usually Abū Barā᾿ al-Numayrī or Abū l-Khaṭṭāb. The line of transmission for the account of the fire is thus Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ, on the authority of Abū Khālid, on the authority of Abū Barā᾿. Almost every single one of Abū Barā᾿’s traditions in Khalīfa’s Ta᾿rīkh concerns the Arab-Khazar wars between 84AH/704-5CE and 117AH/735- 6CE. The sole exception predates the Umayyad period and ties the Khazars to the Arab conquest: Salmān [b. Rabī῾a] raided al-Baylaqān and they made peace with him. Then he went to Bardh῾a and they made peace with him and he seized it. He sent its lord to Jurzān and they made peace with him. Salmān advanced to Ḥayzān and they made peace with him, then he went to Masqaṭ and its inhabitants made peace with him. And he reached Balanjar74.

Normally, the accounts of the Arab conquest of the North do not bring troops as far as Balanjar, so Abū Barā᾿ here reaches out of his normal field in order to locate the start of the Arab-Khazar wars in the reign of the caliph ῾Uthmān. All of Abū Barā᾿’s other traditions, as they appear in Khalīfa’s text, concern the first and second Arab-Khazar wars. Floating out of context, then, the story of the fires demonstrates Arab concern for the archetypal nemesis (Byzantium). In context of Abū Barā᾿’s information, though, the story becomes an expression of Arab concern for the other nemesis in the North (Khazaria). This may explain why the dīwān crops up: it is not just a ruse to lure Armenians into the churches, but a reminder to the readers that the Armenian cavalry formed a significant contingent in the Arab- Khazar wars. The argument that the fires of Naxčawan are transmitted out of interest in the Arab-Khazar wars is further substantiated by Dasxuranc‘i’s version of the fires, which has Muḥammad b. Marwān arrive in Armenia from a campaign in Darband. This sets Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ apart from the other Arabic versions, namely al-Balādhurī, who, as we saw above, marks concerns internal to the Caliphate (the fitna of Ibn al-Zubayr) as a casus belli for the fires. In brief, the discrepancies between the different versions, in this case the dating, point to the different reasons each historian had in compiling the relevant reports: if Abū Barā᾿ (or Khalīfa)

73 Wurtzel, The Umayyads, p. 48. 74 Khalīfa, ed. Fawwāz – Kishlī, p. 94.

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is concerned with the Khazars, al-Balādhurī is working to fit the North into a broader Islamic history and al-Ya῾qūbī is more focused on the society in Armenia where he lived. Since the other Arabic sources do not offer a specific date, where did Khalīfa hear that the fires occurred in 84AH/703-4CE? This date matches the information from the set of non-Armenian Christian sources, such as Theophanes who places the fires in 6195AM/703-4CE. If this were actually evidence of intercultural transmission, though, we should expect some other overlap in the traditions transmitted on the authority of both Abū Barā᾿ and Theophilus. In fact, except for the account of the fires, almost none of Abū Barā᾿’s akhbār appear in Theophanes’ Chronographia or the other sources transmitting Theophilus’ history. The only other common ground between Abū Barā᾿’s akhbār and the traditions from Theophilus is the account of al-Jarrāḥ b. ῾Abd Allāh al-Ḥakamī’s final campaign against “the son of the Khagan” in Azerbaijan in (according to Michael the Syrian) 1039AG/727-8CE and the subsequent retaliation by Maslama in 1042AG/ 730-1CE75. According to Abū Barā᾿’s akhbār, the Khazars reached as far as Warthān/Vardanakert under “the son of the khāqān” in 108AH/726-7CE, when they were defeated by al-Ḥārith (not al-Jarrāḥ), then as far as Ardabīl/ Artawēt and then later reached al-Mawṣil under “the son of the khāqān” in 112AH/730-1CE when they defeated al-Jarrāḥ. Theophilus’ tradition seems to refer to the later campaign, since it involves al-Jarrāḥ. Theophanes, Agapius, Michael the Syrian, and the Chronicle to 1234 all continue with Maslama b. ῾Abd al-Malik’s campaign against the Khazars at the Caspian Gates, which could refer to Abū Barā᾿’s account of Maslama’s attack of Darband before al-Jarrāḥ’s defeat, in 110AH/728-9CE, or more likely, his campaign in Sharwān and Laks in 113AH/731-2CE. Even though there is some overlap between Theophilus and Abū Barā᾿ here, it is hard to believe that this could be traced back to a single account due to a number of details, such as the name of the “son of the khāqān” (missing in Theophilus, but present in Abū Barā᾿’s account), the knowledge of specific toponyms, and the spin on the events. Specifically, the accounts tracing back to Theophilus do not note al-Jarrāḥ’s death, while the Arabic conveys this as a martyrdom. Further, the Theophilus set has Maslama run away from the Khazars, while Abū Barā᾿’s Maslama is always victorious. Thus despite the fact that Khalīfa, relying on Abū Barā᾿, offered information that corroborates the date of the fires of Naxčawan as found in the non-Armenian Christian set, this cannot possibly be attributed to intercultural transmission. At the same time, there are several points of

75 Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa, p. 228-229.

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commonality between Abū Barā᾿’s traditions and the Patmabanut‘iwn of Łewond, such as the rebuilding of Dabīl/Dwin by ῾Abd al-῾Azīz al-Bāhilī or the episode about “the son of the khāqān” (Khalīfa named “the son of the khāqān” Mārdīk, which appears in other Arabic and Persian sources as Bārjīk or Bārsbīk; Łewond named his mother P‘arsbit‘)76. Even though we lack clear proof of textual borrowing, we must here recognize the immense significance of orality in historical transmission. Łewond reveals little about the sources of the Patmabanut‘iwn, though he at one point claims to have heard descriptions “from the enemy himself”77. Additionally, he or his source heard ῾Abd al-῾Aziz al-Bāhilī recount the story of the conquest and rebuilding of Dabīl/Dwin: “He is said to have related this about himself with his own mouth”78. Abū Barā᾿ also took information directly from people (specifically: Arabs) who were present in the North during the Arab-Khazar wars, as he lists his informants as Yazīd b. Usayd himself; “a Bāhilī tribesman” who was on campaign with Maslama; Sawāda, “a credible shaykh who was with al-Jarrāḥ at Balanjar”; and Mālik b. Adham, who fought the Khazars with al-Jarrāḥ. Al-Balādhurī, although he does not offer a sanad for his account of the fires, substantiates the significance of oral transmission among Arabs in Armenia and Albania by claiming to have heard about the provinces from local Arabs living in the North79. While we cannot prove textual transmission from one set of sources to the other, it seems likely that stories about the wars and the governors of the North, including the accounts of the fires at Naxčawan, were circulating orally among a diverse community including Arabs and Armenians.

5. Conclusions

5.1. Coherence and Reliability The various accounts of the fires in Arabic, Armenian, Greek, and Syriac demonstrate a few basic principles of Near Eastern historiography. We should obviously be careful of discussing “Arabic sources” or “Armenian sources,” a habit seemingly born more from practicality

76 Khalīfa, ed. Fawwāz – Kishlī, p. 218; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 131; Kurat, Kitāb al-futūḥ, p. 280-281. 77 Łewond, ed./trans. La Porta – Vacca; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 183. Łewond refers here to the account about the battle of Bagrewand. This passage does not correspond exactly with any accounts in Arabic, but it is certainly worth noting that it shares several details in common with Ibn A῾tham, Kitāb al-futūḥ, vol. VIII, p. 366, which tells of a caliphal foray against the Ṣanāriyya/Canark‘ immediately following Bagrewand. 78 Łewond, trans. La Porta – Vacca; Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 60. 79 Al-Balādhurī, ed. de Goeje, p. 193.

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than any sustained expectation that there is agreement between any set of sources based on language. But still, there are broad groups that, while they demonstrate significant variety from one text to the other, were clearly produced in dialogue. The verbatim passages in al-Balādhurī and al-Ya῾qūbī, for example, and the resilience of the traditions attributed to Theophilus demonstrate that there are sets of texts that we should approach as various interpretations of a single body of traditions. That said, the variety within each set encapsulates why it is important not to speak of broad tendencies of reliability, but to assess narratives on a case-by-case basis. It is not clear that we can adequately weigh in on the question of reliability, given the number of accounts and the discrepancies between them. Some, like al-Balādhurī’s placement of the fires during the second fitna, stand apart from the others and seem to indicate the concerns of the compiler or historian. This is, as we saw, very much a possibility for the problematic chronology offered in Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn or T‘ovma’s omission of the identity of the victims, as well. We could dismiss the discrepancies as misinformation, but we should assess whether these discrepancies in fact reveal the tampering of the compiler or historian. If so, the misinformation is at least as significant as the “correct” account, because it provides clues to the goals of the historian. Why and how traditions changed provide more fertile ground for inquiry than “what really happened” when the churches burned down in Naxčawan. In that, reliability is a moot point, as we could hope that, mis- takes aside, every text is a reliable indicator of what its author was trying to say. If we dismiss texts for their unreliable nature, we are in fact prioritizing the question “what really happened?” over “what does this source tell us?” This means that we must speculate on the goals of the author, a task that is not possible to complete with any sense of surety.

5.2. Independence The heart of this article, though, was the search for intercultural transmission about the fires of Naxčawan. Although there is clear evidence of intercultural transmission in the Arabic, Greek, and Syriac of the account attributed to Theophilus, there is nothing to support the argument that the authors of the Armenian set or the Muslim Arabic set were familiar with or influenced the non-Armenian Christian set. Our best bet to continue on this path is the prospect that the Muslim Arabic and Armenian accounts all lead back to the same group of Arab informants on the ground in Arme- nia. Presumably, there was some discussion of events, as we saw recorded as sources in Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn and the sanad provided in Khalīfa’s Ta᾿rīkh.

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First, it is important to recognize that Armenian sources should certainly been seen as internal to the development of Islamic history80 and, specifically, that Armenian historians inhabited a setting that had much in common with that of other Christian historians writing in Arabic, Syriac, and Greek in the Islamic world81. The significance of T. Greenwood’s argument about “cross-cultural engagement and acculturation in medieval Armenia” cannot be overstated. That said, there is little to no evidence that Armenians were familiar with Arabic historiography or vice versa before the tenth century. Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn certainly does demonstrate familiarity with a biography of the caliphs, some sort of sīrat al-khulafā᾿, as Greenwood pointed out82, but these were circulating in several lan- guages by the eighth century. Until we identify a specific example that exhibits close similarity to Łewond’s regnal lengths or characteristics of each caliph, it is not yet possible to determine if this information is coming from Arabic or, just as likely, Syriac83. This consideration of the fires at Naxčawan is the third case study to demonstrate that Łewond’s material is at odds with Arabic traditions about the Umayyads84. The issue of textual transmission is inextricable from the question of how pervasive knowledge of Arabic was in Armenia before the tenth century, a topic for which our sources offer little concrete data85. While there must have been bilingual Arabs and Armenians before the tenth century, there is little indication that Arabic was a literary language86, something that should be seen as a prerequisite for the textual transmission of historical accounts from one language to the next. Our earliest examples of

80 Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir, p. 137-140 ; Debié, Oriental Source, p. 367- 368 on how this relates to the phrase “intercultural transmission.” 81 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 34. 82 Greenwood, Reassessment, p. 121-133. 83 The eighth-century examples of caliphal lists do not match Łewond’s; see, for example, the Liber Calipharum = Chronicon ad annum 724, in Cowper, Syriac Miscel- lanies, p. 75-92. I suspect that the Syriac is more likely because there are a few hints of common ground between Łewond’s text and Syriac sources, such as the use of the Armenian zuzē to render the Syriac zuz in passages about neck-sealing (a topic found more commonly in Syriac than Armenian histories) and a passage in Łewond’s text that seems based on Ps.-Methodius: compare Łewond, ed. Chahnazarian, p. 123-124 to Brock, Syriac Sources, p. 34; Palmer, Seventh Century, p. 233. 84 The other two are both in Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir, which examines traditions about Maslama b. ῾Abd al-Malik and ῾Umar b. ῾Abd al-῾Azīz. 85 Thomson, Arabic in Armenia, p. 614 wrote that “There is no specific reference to Armenians speaking Arabic in the early stages of the seventh to tenth centuries”; note, however, that Ibn Ḥawqal, ed. Kramers, p. 348-349, who is pulling a passage directly from al-Iṣṭakhrī, mentions traders and lords of Armenia speaking Arabic in the tenth century. 86 Outtier, Traductions de l’arabe, p. 59-60.

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translation are Nonnus of Nisibis’ Commentary on the Gospel of John, twice translated from Arabic to Armenian (presumably due to the fact that Armenians could not read Arabic)87, and the Arabic version of the Hayoc‘ Patmut‘iwn, or History of the Armenians, of Agat‘angełos, translated first from Armenian into Greek and only then into Arabic88. Both demonstrate that the circulation of texts between Armenians and Arabs was not yet an easy or direct process. There is a reason that studies of translations between Arabic and Armenian start in the tenth century89. This does not suggest that Armenian sources before the tenth century should be seen as isolated from the other Near Eastern historical traditions. The Melkite translation of Agat‘angełos and the Armenian version of the Greek correspondence between ῾Umar b. ῾Abd al-῾Azīz and Leo the Isaurian preserved in Łewond’s Patmabanut‘iwn are indicators of the continued ties between Greek and Armenian literature in the early period of Arab control. But the relationship between Armenian and Arabic literature before the tenth century, should any exist, seems to be rooted in oral transmission instead of textual. This might be related to genre (history, as opposed to theological or scientific texts) and, if so, this adds another dimension to the reasons and expectations of history as a genre in the Near East as a whole.

Bibliography

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87 On the Commentary of Nonnus of Nisibis, see Mariès, Un commentaire; van Roey, Nonnus de Nisibe; Thomson, Nonnus of Nisibis. 88 On the Arabic translations of Agat‘angełos, see Garitte, Documents; van Esbroeck, Un nouveau témoin; the introduction to Agat‘angełos, trans. Thomson; Ter-Łewondyan, Araberen hamaṙotumə; Ter-Łewondyan, Nor xmbagrut‘yunə; Ter-Łewondyan, Bnagirə. 89 Cf. Mkrtč‘yan, T‘argmanut‘yunnerǝ.

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University of Tennessee, Knoxville Alison Vacca Department of History 2633 Dunford Hall, 915 Volunteer Blvd Knoxville, TN 37996-4065, USA [email protected]

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Abstract — This article questions the independence, coherence, and reliability of Near Eastern sources by focusing on the various Muslim and Christian accounts of a single event. Around the turn of the eighth century, Arab forces under Muḥammad b. Marwān defeated an Armenian-led Byzantine army in the Umayyad North. In retribution for their rebellion, Muḥammad subsequently tricked the Armenian nobility into gathering into churches in southern Armenia, then he locked the doors and ordered his men to burn the captives alive. Sources from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries record the fires in Arabic, Armenian, Greek, and Syriac. The first goals of this article are to examine each extant report and to record the discrepancies between the different versions. From there, the article delves into more detail about two accounts, the first in Łewond’s eighth- century Armenian Patmabanut‘iwn and the second in Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ’s ninth- century Arabic Ta᾿rīkh. This speculates about why the stories concerning the fires were so compelling across linguistic, religious, and cultural divides and why the accounts differed one from the next. This article concludes that questions of reliability are tied to authorial intention, as the details in any given account may not reflect “what really happened” so much as why the author cared about the event. Finally, this article also concludes that, with the exception of the traditions related to Theophilus, there is no evidence of intercultural transmission of accounts of the fires until the thirteenth century.

Appendix 1 Traditions in Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ’s Ta᾿rīkh from Abū Khālid b. Sa῾īd, on the authority of Abū Barā᾿ al-Numayrī

Year Page Summary of the Report Abū Barā᾿’s source 29AH 94 Salmān conquered al-Baylaqān, 649-50CE Bardh῾a, Jurzān, Ḥayzān, and Masqat. He reached as far as Balanjar. ῾Uthmān sent Ḥabīb b. Maslama to Jurzān to reinforce him. 84AH 183 The Year of the Fire account, as seen 703-4CE above. 84AH 184 The mother of Yazīd b. Usayd was 703-4CE captured. 85AH 184 Muḥammad b. Marwān returned to 704-5CE Armenia and appointed first ῾Abd Allāh b. Ḥātim b. al-Nu῾mān al-Bāhilī then his brother ῾Abd al-῾Azīz. The later rebuilt Dabīl, al-Nashawā, and Bardh῾a. 95AH 196 Maslama b. ῾Abd al-Malik raided Yazīd b. Usayd 713-4CE Sharwān and Ṣūl as far as Bāb al-Abwāb/Darband.

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Year Page Summary of the Report Abū Barā᾿’s source 95AH A traitor gave Bāb al-Abwāb to Abū Marwān 713-4CE Maslama. The battle ends with the al-Bāhilī, on the takbīr. authority of a Bāhilī tribesman who was on the expedition 99AH 204 The Turks raided Azerbaijan and 717-8CE ῾Abd al-῾Azīz responded, killing them all before joining the caliph ῾Umar. 103AH 210 Ma῾laq b. Ṣaffār, the governor of 721-2CE Armenia, led the campaigns against the Khazars, meeting defeat at Marj al-Ḥijāra during the winter (Ramaḍān). 104AH 211 Al-Jarrāḥ b. ῾Abd Allāh al-Ḥakamī, 722-3CE the governor of Armenia, fought the Khazars in Balanjar and near Bāb al-Abwāb in Albania. He accepted the surrender of the inhabitants and displaced them to Ḥayzān. He accepted the surrender of Targu and displaced them. 104AH 211 Al-Jarrāḥ’s attack on Balanjar was Sawāda, 722-3CE hindered by the fortification of the a credible shaykh city with a barricade of wagons. who was with The ṣāḥib of Balanjar escaped as al-Jarrāḥ at al-Jarrāḥ took the city. Al-Jarrāḥ Balanjar fought 40 families of Turks, who agreed to join Arab fight against the Khazars. Together they moved on Warthān. 105AH 213 The Arabs won a battle against the Mālik b. Adham, 723-4CE Khazars. who was with al-Jarrāḥ on his expedition against the Khazars 106AH 216 Al-Jarrāḥ made peace with the Alans, 724-5CE who agreed to pay jizya and kharāj and raided Khazar territory. 107AH 217 On the order of Maslama b. ῾Abd 725-6CE al-Malik, al-Ḥārith b. ῾Amr al-Ṭā῾ī raided Kh-sh-dān in the land of the Kurr.

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Year Page Summary of the Report Abū Barā᾿’s source 107AH 217 Maslama b. ῾Abd al-Malik raided 725-6CE from Malatya as far as Qaysāriyya. 108AH 218 Mārtīk, the son of a khāqān, raided 726-7CE Warthān. Al-Ḥārith responded and routed the Khazars, but he himself was killed. 110AH 219 Maslama routed the Khazars near 728-9CE Bāb al-Abwāb in Jumādā II while he was en route to Talmīs (read: Tiflīs). 110AH 219 Maslama met the Khazars on his way ῾Abd Allāh 728-9CE back from Bāb al-Lān; they fought b. Usayd al-Kilābī until nightfall then Maslama returned. 112AH 220 The son of the khāqān sieged 730-1CE Ardabīl, so al-Jarrāḥ responded. He was martyred in Ramaḍān. The Khazars overpowered Azerbaijan, reaching as far as al-Mawṣil. When Ardabīl fell, the Khazars took captives and killed many. 112AH 221 Sa῾īd b. ῾Amr al-Ḥarashī fought the 730-1CE Khazars, who fled. Sa῾īd informed Hishām b. ῾Abd al-Malik. 113AH 222 Maslama fought Ḥayzān and killed 731-2CE all of them, then made peace with the people of S-w-rān (read: Sharwān?), Masqaṭ, and the Laks. He fought the Khazars at Ghazāla and defeated them, while the khāqān fled. 114AH 223 Marwān b. Muḥammad, as governor 732-3CE of Armenia and Azerbaijan, raided against the Slavs (Saqāliba). 117AH 225 Marwān b. Muḥammad sent 735-6CE expeditions into the Caucasus (jabal al-Qabq): one attacked the Alans and took fortresses, while the other brought the Tūmān Shāh under his rule. Marwān sent him to Hishām b. ῾Abd al-Malik, who sent him back to his kingdom.

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Appendix 2 Accounts of the Fires in Naxčawan

Armenian Syriac Greek Arabic

Vardan Bar Hebraeus Arewelc‘i 13th c. Michael Chron1234 Syrian

Michael 12th c. Syrian

Asołik 11th c.

Dasxuranc‘i Agapius 10th c. Drasxanakertc‘i

T‘ovma

al-Ya῾qūbī Dionysius of Theophanes 9th c. Tellmaḥre al-Balādhurī

Khalīfa

Łewond 8th c. Vahan Theophilus Gołt‘nec‘i

Italics: no longer extant Double arrows: connected accounts with uncertain provenance.

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