Venezia Arti ISSN [ebook] 2385-2720 Vol. 27 – Num. 27 – Dicembre 2018 ISSN [print] 0394-4298 Krikor (Grigor) Balakian’s Ruins of Ani A Surprising Source for Armenian Architecture Christina Maranci (Tufts University, Medford (MA), USA) Abstract Krikor (Grigor) Balakian’s 1910 work, The Ruins of Ani (Ngarakrut‘iwn Anii Aweragnerun Badgerazart), documents the visit of the Armenian Catholicos Matt‘ēos Izmirlean (1845-1910) to Ani in 1909. Largely neglected by historians of architecture, The Ruins of Ani nevertheless offers an extraordinary account of the city and its monuments. After considering Balakian’s sources and scholarly perspectives, this paper explores his report on the buildings and the archaeological museum of Ani, highlighting discrepancies from the known record. Balakian’s often surprising remarks require careful scrutiny and cross-checking; at the same time, they highlight the value of any eyewitness source on Ani composed during the period of Russian control. Summary 1 Introduction. – 2 Balakian’s Sources and Historiographical Context. – 3 Balakian versus the Known Archaeological Record of Ani. – 4 Conclusion. Keywords Ani. Krikor (Grigor) Balakian. Armenian. Historiography. Archaeology. For Osman Kavala Յաղագս Եղբաւր մերոյ` որ ի գերութեան եւ ի չար ծառայութեան` զՏէր աղաչեսցուք 1 Introduction and history, corpora of epigraphy, archaeological reports, and exhibition catalogues (cf. Gechyan Situated on the modern closed border between 2006 and Yazıcı 2017b). Many conferences and the Turkish and Armenian Republics, in the workshops have focused on Ani; the virtualani. Akhurean (Turk. Arpaçay) river valley, Ani is a org website, moreover, offers a comprehensive place of astonishing natural and architectural sense of the city and posts periodic condition beauty. While access to the site was restricted reports on its monuments.1 Recent scholarship for much of the twentieth century, Ani has long on Ani has explored issues of cultural heritage, been known as a rare intact, uninhabited me- as well as the period of Russian control of the dieval city. In 2016, UNESCO entered Ani onto city (1878-1918), when the site was excavated (cf. its World Heritage List, but that was just a few Watenpaugh 2014, Pravilova 2016). weeks before the attempted coup d’état of July Such close and sustained attention to Ani 15. As of this writing, future plans for the pres- makes the relative neglect of Krikor Balakian’s ervation of Ani are unclear. 1910 work, The Ruins of Ani, all the more surpris- With its rich array of medieval monuments, ing. Originally published in Western Armenian many dating from the tenth to thirteenth centu- in Constantinople by the Y. Mattʿēosean Press ries, Ani forms a central subject in the history as Ngarakrutʿiwn Anii Aweragnerun Badgerazart and historiography of Armenian architecture. (Description of the Ruins of Ani, Illustrated), it Two recent bibliographies on the city include is a 90-page account of the two-day visit of the thousands of titles devoted to the site, including Armenian Catholicos Mattʿēos Izmirlean (1845- travel accounts, critical studies of architecture 1910) to Ani in 1909. Balakian (1875-1934) was 1 For example, Cowe 2001; Symposium, Monuments and Memory: Reconsidering the Meaning of Material Culture, Con- structed Pasts and Aftermaths of Histories of Mass Violence (Columbia University, 20 February 2015) organized by Peter Balakian and Rachel Goshgarian. DOI 10.30687/VA/2385-2720/2018/27/004 Submission 2018-07-04 | © 2018 | Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution alone 67 e-ISSN 2385-2720 Venezia Arti, 27, 2018, 67-80 ISSN 0394-4298 at the time a 34-year-old priest; he later became in, the known archaeological record of Ani. The known as a church leader and author of Arme- specialist will be surprised, for example, to learn nian Golgotha, a memoir of the Armenian Geno- of Latin inscriptions in the Ani museum, masons’ cide. He is the granduncle of the poet Peter Bala- marks at the church of Tigran Honentsʿ, and the kian, whose forthcoming translation of Ruins of existence of an undamaged, complete model of Ani is eagerly awaited.2 the church of Gagkashēn. Whether or not we are Ruins of Ani was not, to my knowledge, re- able to refute or confirm these remarks, they issued after its initial publication, and judging highlight the importance of pursuing every from the scarcity of copies available, its print- known source on Ani from before the destruc- run was modest. Nevertheless, it has earned tive events of the twentieth century. They also increasing attention in recent years. It has ap- suggest that even after centuries of interest in peared in Turkish translation (Usta, Hazaryan Ani, surprises still await the researcher.3 2015) and was featured in a major essay in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Histori- ans (Watenpaugh 2014). Tracing the history of 2 Balakian’s Sources Ani from the Middle Ages through the periods of and Historiographical Context Ottoman, Russian, Armenian, and modern Turk- ish rule, Watenpaugh situated Balakian’s work, and the pilgrimage of the Catholicos, within the Balakian’s text provides the reader with a gen- period of the city’s rediscovery at the turn of eral account of Ani, first considering its history, the nineteenth century. Along with the European then its topography and urban plan followed by travellers who went to Ani, Watenpaugh notes, his own eyewitness observations of the site, con- so too did Armenians from the Ottoman Empire, cluding with an account of the scholarship on for whom Ani was a painful sign of prior (and Armenian architecture (and on Ani’s monuments lost) glory. These travellers, and the excavations in particular). For his historical account of Ani, of Nikolai Marr (1865-1934), brought the dead Balakian drew from the three-volume History of city to life again, as processions wound their way Armenia by Mikʿayēl Chʿamchʿeantsʿ, first pub- through the city, open-air cauldrons bubbled for lished in 1784 but republished multiple times in communal feasts, and museum visitors feasted the nineteenth century (Chʿamchʿeantsʿ 1784- their eyes on unearthed antiquities. As Ekate- 86). For the inscriptions of Ani, Balakian used rina Pravilova has shown, this narrative offers the work of the bishop Sargis Jalaleantsʿ (1842), only one view of the Russian period of Ani, which with some omissions and spelling mistakes.4 also characterized by conflicts between Marr For the architecture and topography of Ani, and the Armenian institutions that supported Balakian drew from a range of European sourc- him (Pravilova 2016). Nevertheless, it is wrench- es, above all Henry F.B. Lynch (1901), but also ing to contemplate in light of the Genocide of Charles Texier (1842-52), Marie-Felicité Brosset the Ottoman Armenians only a few years later, (1860), Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1717), Eu- and the annexation of the Kars region by the gène Boré (1843), and William Hamilton (1842). Republic of Turkey. Among Armenian writers, he consulted the Other than Watenpaugh’s essay, Balakian’s works of Ghevond Alishan (1881) and Hovhannēs Ruins of Ani is virtually unstudied among spe- Shahkhatʿunyantsʿ (1842), as well as the pictori- cialists of Ani. Yet Ruins should be studied both al albums of Garabed Basmadjian (1904) and Ar- for what it reveals about the early historiography shag Fetvajian (1866-1947). Balakian presented of Armenian art and architecture, and, equally his account of Ani as an update to these works important, for what it adds to, and challenges in light of the discoveries made during the exca- 2 For Peter Balakian’s own engagement with Ani, see for example Balakian 2013. 3 Obviously, any claim of ‘surprising’ information depends on the knowledge level of the writer. I have sought out as many sources as possible – textual, visual, and oral – in order to verify Balakian’s claims, from early travel accounts, to the archaeological reports and catalogues, to the most recent explorations of the city by Sezai Yazıcı and Vedat Akçayöz. The main sources used are listed in the bibliography. 4 For transcriptions of Ani’s epigraphy see Orbeli 1966. 68 Maranci. Krikor (Grigor) Balakian’s Ruins of Ani e-ISSN 2385-2720 Venezia Arti, 27, 2018, 67-80 ISSN 0394-4298 vations by Marr and the architectural analyses art. Armenian artists, he writes, “were always of Tʿoros Tʿoramanyan.5 cautious about the representation of human be- Balakian’s commentary on the monuments ings” (Balakian 1910, 78).9 Their presence in Ar- of Ani, and on art more generally, follows con- menian art, for Balakian, arose alongside cul- temporary scholarly trends in the European tural contact with Byzantium and Europe; when literature. For Balakian, the monuments of Ani Persian and Arabic contacts were stronger, on are works of Armenian genius հանճար, thus the other hand, ornamental and vegetal forms reflecting the perceptions of monuments as ex- become dominant (75, 78). Balakian regarded pressions of nation (Balakian 1910) (ԺԱ). Along the lavish fresco program of the Tigran Honentsʿ with Lynch and Texier, Balakian viewed Armeni- church at Ani, and the freestanding, larger-than- an architecture as originative and creative, de- life statue of the Bagratid King Gagik (discussed parting from Karl Schaase’s view that it derived below) as exceptional: the former the result of from Byzantine, European, or Persian tradition Byzantine and European influence, and the lat- (Schnaase 1844, 248-76; see also Maranci 2001 ter lacking refinement (78).10 and Azatyan 2012). As is well known, however, figural representa- Like many of his contemporaries, Balakian tion is commonplace in medieval Armenian ar- was also interested in the relationship between chitecture, whether in two or three dimensions. medieval Armenian and Gothic architecture, Within Ani itself, there is almost no church drawing heavily on the available literature. standing which does not preserve some kind of He grouped Ani Cathedral among the great interior figural painting – with more ‘discovered’ expressions of Gothic architecture: San Mar- every year.