Kars - Ani guide

Near the Armenian border, Kars is about 30 km from the ancient capital of Armenia, Ani.

Earliest History

Bronze and Iron Age settlements have been excavated on the site, have Uruatian buildings. It is re-used traditional masonry walls in the citadel and the remains of what is likely to be a Zoroastrian fire temple. Ani is the first mention of Armenian chronicler of the 5th Century AD as a strong castle built on a hill and a Kamsarakan possession of the dynasty.

In the middle of the 7th Century Armenia was invaded and conquered by the Arabs. The ethnic composition of the population is little changed by this invasion, but it destroyed the existing power structures and paved the way for the subsequent emergence of new ruling dynasties. By the end of the 9th Century Armenia was again the most of their former independence - but was divided into many kingdoms and principalities. The two most powerful Armenian kingdoms were those of Artzruni dynasty, is based, around Lake Van, and the Bagratid dynasty ruled most of north-eastern Armenia, and finally would have their capital in Ani.

The Bagratids bought the castle of Ani and his land near the Kamsarakans, and in the year 971 of the Bagratid King Ashot III transferred its capital city of Kars to Ani. At that time Ani was probably little more than a fortress of the city built around the Citadel Hill. King Ashot new city wall built in the narrowest point of the terrain below and a little north of the citadel (may have been older earthen ramparts along the same route). The city grew so fast that the much larger outer walls to the north were up to the year 989th The ruins that are still outside these walls show that even they do not enclose an area large enough to cover the whole population.

Ani has become a major hub for traders caravans and the city controlled trade routes between Byzantium, Persia, Syria and Central Asia. Merchants and craftsmen flocked to Armenia Ani from the older cities, accompanied by a flow of population from rural areas of Armenia. In 992 of the Armenian Katholikosat moved its headquarters to Ani: at the beginning of the 11th Century, there were 12 bishops, 40 priests and 500 monks in the city. Up to 11 Century the population of Ani was well over 100 000, perhaps as high as 200 000, and whose wealth and fame was such that it was well known as a "city of a thousand churches and a".

After King Gagik I died in 1020 his two sons quarrelled and fought over, should succeed him. The oldest son, Hovhannes-Sembat, won control of Ani. His younger brother, Ashot, controlled Bagratid other parts of the kingdom. Hovhannes had supported the ruler of Georgia in this king's expansionist war against the Byzantine Empire, and he feared that the Byzantines would now attack the weakened Bagratid Kingdom. To try and avoid this, he made the Byzantine Emperor Basil the heir to his dominions.

Ani under Byzantine rule

King Hovhannes died in 1041, and the then Byzantine emperor Michael IV claimed sovereignty over Ani. Hovhannes died childless, so people in Ani, the son of Ashot, Gagik II, as his successor. A Byzantine army to capture Ani was in the 1042nd (Armenian chronicler speak of Byzantine losses of more than 20000 men, but Byzantine chronicler silent about the whole event). Pro-Byzantine Armenians in the city Gagik persuaded to go to Constantinople to sign a peace treaty, on the arrival there Gagik was imprisoned. The Byzantines Ani attacked again and again, they were defeated, but in 1045 the urban population, realising that they leaderless and surrounded by enemies, Ani decided to waive the Byzantines. King Gagik II was a palace in Constantinople and the city of Caesarea (modern Kayseri) as compensation. After the Turkish invasion of the Byzantine Empire, was assassinated in the Greek castle in the possession of Cybistra in northern Cilicia. Constantine, the son of Rupen, one of Gagik generals, as was later the founder of the separate Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia.

Ani captured by Turks

Raiding parties of the Turks from Central Asia, began to reach Armenia and Byzantine Anatolia in the second half of the eleventh century. The Byzantine Empire was not successfully stop the advance of the Turkish Seljuk armies, which are constantly growing in size and confidential. In the summer of 1064 a large Turkish Seljuk Ani army attacked, and after a siege
about 25 days they captured the city.
In the year 1071,
in the Battle of Manzikert, the Turkish army won a decisive victory over a combined Byzantine and Armenian force and the Byzantine Emperor Romanus Diogenese was captured. It was now nothing to protect Armenia and a large part of the Byzantine Empire, by the waves of the Turkish invasions.

Ani under Georgian rule

In 1072 the Turks Ani sold in the Kurdish Shaddadid dynasty, maintained a precarious hold of ANI until the end of the 12th Century (they lose several times to the Georgians or internal rebellions by the city is still almost exclusively Armenian population). In the year 1200 the Georgian Queen Tamara Ani caught and Mkhargrdzeli gave it to the family, whose territory finally resembled that the Bagratid range in size. Under her reign Ani back much of its former prosperity - several of the churches date from this period, as are many of the towers in the city wall. The region was conquered and occupied by the Mongols in 1237, but
after the usual killing
Looting and a degree of stability and the rule Mkhargrdzeli dynasty continue Ani, only now as vassals of the Mongols, instead of the Georgians. However, by the 1330s they had lost control over the city on a series of Turkish dynasties, including the realm of black Hammel (Black Sheep Clan), from their capital Ani.

The decline and death of Ani

The mass exodus of the population had begun with the Mongol invasions. By the middle of the 14th Century Ani had stopped a commercial city and the remaining trade routes now gone further to the south. Tamerlane acquired Ani in the 1380s, but his death in the realm of black mutton control. Until then Ani was on the brink of collapse as a city - the realm of the Black mutton transferred their capital Yerevan (Armenia Katholikosat did the same in 1441) and a large part of the city remaining population abandoned. It is a myth (still increasing in many travel guides via Turkey) that the city was abandoned after an earthquake in the 1319th

Ani was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1579. A small town remained within its walls at least until the middle of the 17th Century and a European traveller in the early 17th Century, the existence of 200 churches in Ani and the immediate neighbourhood. The final demise of the Ani was accompanied by the degradation of the rural population of the region was over-run by Kurdish nomadic tribes, would be Rob and murder. The survival of any form of permanent life, regardless of whether Christian or Muslim, was ultimately unsustainable. The church was in Kizkale in use by monks at least until 1735, so that the final and complete responsibility of the site is probably the mid-18th Century. Until the beginning of the 19th Century Ani was empty of people.