Armenia: Kingdom of Eternity is a collection of photographs illustrating the natural beauty, architecture, and art of one of the world's most remarkable civilizations. Armenia is a land of great beauty and mystery. It is also one of the earliest homes of humanity, with a human presence dating back over 1.2 million years. This book offers glimpses of its elegant and ancient culture.
This work chronicles the history of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, highlighting the contributions of various rulers and the challenges they faced, including invasions by Turks and other forces. It recounts the legacy of notable kings like Léon and Thoros, their military endeavors, and the eventual decline of the kingdom due to external pressures and internal strife. The narrative emphasizes the importance of faith, governance, and the impact of historical events on the Armenian people. The text serves as both a historical account and a moral lesson on the virtues of leadership and the consequences of moral decay.
"Published for the celebrations of the fifth centenary of the printing of the first book in Armenian in Venice (1512), this volume offers a rich, fascinating chronological survey, presenting over 200 works from the leading museums and libraries of Armenia and Europe, and including some extremely rare manuscripts and miniatures (loaned exceptionally for the exhibition in Venice). Together, they document the great achievements of the Armenian civilisation in the spiritual, artistic, architectural, economic and intellectual sectors. The ancient stelae with engraved cross, the miniatures with bright colours, the sacred architecture and precious reliquaries preserved for centuries at the Holy See of the Apostolic Armenian Church at Echmiadzin will lead the visitor in his discovery of the civilisation of this great people from the early days of Christianity to the end of the 19th century. The book places a great emphasis on the long and fruitful contacts between the Armenians and other cultures in Europe and the Far East. In particular, it illustrates the special and centuries-old relationship with Venice through a series of historic documents, manuscripts and works of art, describing how the presence of the Armenians in the lagoon began and developed, and their political, economic and cultural contacts with the city. In the last section, thanks to a series of rare manuscripts, the book takes a look at Armenian science, theology, philosophy, historiography and literature. A special section is dedicated to Armenian printing, which dates back to 1512. The finest editions from the presses dotted throughout the Armenian colonies around the world are presented here. In this special chapter, particular emphasis is accorded to the glorious Armenian printing tradition in Venice, which reached its greatest heights thanks to the hard work and enlightened dedication of the Mechitarist Fathers."--Publisher's website.
The History of the Armenian priest Łewond is an important source for the history of early Islamic rule and the only contemporary chronicle of second/eighth-century caliphal rule in Armenia. This volume presents a diplomatic edition and new English translation of Łewond's text, which describes events that took place during the century and a half following the Prophet Muḥammad's death in AH 11/632 CE. The authors address Łewond's account as a work of caliphal history, written in Armenian, from within the Caliphate. As such, this book provides a critical reading of the Caliphate from one of its most significant provinces. Reading notes clarify many aspects of the period covered to make the text understandable to students and specialists alike. Extensive commentary elucidates Łewond's narrative objectives and situates his History in a broader Near Eastern historiographical context by bringing the text into new conversations with a constellation of Arabic, Greek, and Syriac works that cover the same period. The book thus stresses the multiplicity of voices operating in the Caliphate in this pivotal period of Near Eastern history.
This unique study bridges the history of the Crusades with the history of Armenian nationalism and Christianity. To the Crusaders, Armenian Christians presented the only reliable allies in Anatolia and Asia Minor, and were pivotal in the founding of the Crusader principalities of Edessa, Antioch, Jerusalem and Tripoli. The Anatolian kingdom of Cilicia was founded by the Roupenian dynasty (mid 10th to late 11th century), and grew under the collective rule of the Hetumian dynasty (late 12th to mid 14th century). After confrontations with Byzantium, the Seljuks and the Mongols, the Second Crusade led to the crowning of the first Cilician king despite opposition from Byzantium. Following the Third Crusade, power shifted in Cilicia to the Lusignans of Cyprus (mid to late 14th century), culminating in the final collapse of the kingdom at the hands of the Egyptian Mamluks.
In The Apocalypse of Empire, Stephen J. Shoemaker argues that earliest Islam was a movement driven by urgent eschatological belief that focused on the conquest, or liberation, of the biblical Holy Land and situates this belief within a broader cultural environment of apocalyptic anticipation. Shoemaker looks to the Qur'an's fervent representation of the imminent end of the world and the importance Muhammad and his earliest followers placed on imperial expansion. Offering important contemporary context for the imperial eschatology that seems to have fueled the rise of Islam, he surveys the political eschatologies of early Byzantine Christianity, Judaism, and Sasanian Zoroastrianism at the advent of Islam and argues that they often relate imperial ambition to beliefs about the end of the world. Moreover, he contends, formative Islam's embrace of this broader religious trend of Mediterranean late antiquity provides invaluable evidence for understanding the beginnings of the religion at a time when sources are generally scarce and often highly problematic. Scholarship on apocalyptic literature in early Judaism and Christianity frequently maintains that the genre is decidedly anti-imperial in its very nature. While it may be that early Jewish apocalyptic literature frequently displays this tendency, Shoemaker demonstrates that this quality is not characteristic of apocalypticism at all times and in all places. In the late antique Mediterranean as in the European Middle Ages, apocalypticism was regularly associated with ideas of imperial expansion and triumph, which expected the culmination of history to arrive through the universal dominion of a divinely chosen world empire. This imperial apocalypticism not only affords an invaluable backdrop for understanding the rise of Islam but also reveals an important transition within the history of Western doctrine during late antiquity.
Ties to the homeland have always been a central focus of global diaspora and migration studies. How and why do the descendants of migrants maintain their attachment to the ancestral homeland? To what extent do emotional ties bind second and later generations of migrants to that place? Tsypylma Darieva examines various actors, channels and sites of transnational Armenian engagement that generate new pathways of diasporic ›roots‹ mobility. Drawing on long-term ethnographic observations in Armenia and in the USA, she examines transnational flows of people, money and ideas to show the social and political significance that roots mobility acquires when the mythical ›homeland‹ becomes a real place.
