The present study investigates the Armenian, Georgian and Caucasian Albanian Christian communities in the Holy Land during the Byzantine and the Early Islamic periods. Monks and pilgrims of Caucasian origin played an active role in the multi-ethnic community of the Holy Land and established their own monastic centers, churches and scriptoria already in the formative age of the national churches of Armenia, Georgia (Kartli, or Iberia), and Caucasian Albania (Ałuank).1
Christianity arrived to the Caucasian lands quite early, long before the official conversion in the early years of the fourth century,2 and became one of the determinative factors in the creation of national identity. The Christianization of the region was a long process, which extended over several hundred years, especially in the remote districts, far removed from the large cities and fertile valleys. The traditions of the Armenian, Georgian and Albanian Churches preserve a history of two waves of Christianization: the first is strongly associated with Jerusalem and the disciples of Christ himself, and the second, with the national ‘Illuminators’ and royal conversions.3
All three Caucasian Churches, especially the dominant Armenian and Georgian, oscillated between the Syrian and Greek traditions for a long time. The geopolitical position of the region made the church hierarchs highly dependent on the contemporary state of play in the great conflicts of the Sassanian and Byzantine empires. Nevertheless, the creation of the national ecclesiastical institutions, and the use of the local languages for liturgical needs, transformed the Caucasian churches into a formative and uniting force for the people of Armenia and Georgia, and to some extent also for Albania.4 It was also a period of Christological controversies, which had considerable influence on the history of the Holy Land and of the Caucasian region.5
The earliest historical reports of Armenian and Georgian monastic presence in the Holy Land date already to the fifth century
The first archaeological evidence relating to the Caucasian communities was discovered in the last third of 19th century. It is worth mentioning the report of the discovery of a chapel near the Mamilla Pool in Jerusalem in 1846, with an Armenian inscription: “Christ, have a mercy on the spiritual parents of Sarkis vardapet”.7 According to the report, the structure was immediately covered.8 No trace of graphic documentation of this chapel has been found to date.
The proper “Armenian archaeology” of the Holy Land was born in 1871, when the Russian Church carried out construction works in Jerusalem, at the top of the Mount of Olives. In 1932, the first inscription that mentions Iberians (Georgians) was unearthed in the grounds of the
The present study aims at establishing the place of Caucasian Christian communities in ancient Palestine through synthesis of all the existing literary and archaeological evidence related to them. It seems important to understand the interrelations between them and their influence on the national churches of the Caucasus, starting with the Christianization of Armenia, Georgia and Albania in the early fourth century, and ending with the beginning of the Crusades (1099). Geographically, this investigation includes the area of the Holy Land in its traditional borders: i.e., the territory of modern Israel, Palestinian Authority, Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.
The integrated study of the communities seems to have special importance: Armenians, Georgians, and Albanians are the only national Christian groups in multiethnic Byzantine Palestine, archaeologically distinguishable from the Grecophone majority of the monastic population in the country. The study concentrates on comprehensive analysis of the accumulated data, as well as the detection, characterization and comparison of the tendencies in the development of the Caucasian communities of the Holy Land. Certain specific broad subjects will be raised: the relations between the Caucasian Christian communities of the Holy Land themselves, and their structural and individual interactions with the Jerusalemite Church; the complex identity of the communities’ members as reflected in the archaeological finds – architectural patterns, material culture, burial customs, linguistic preferences etc.; and the influence of the national communities of the Holy Land on the development of the Christian tradition in their home countries.
The basis of this book is the revised version of my PhD dissertation, submitted in 2016 to the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I am deeply grateful to my mentors at the Hebrew University – Joseph Patrich of the Institute of Archaeology, Michael Stone and Constantine Lerner of the Department of Armenian Studies, for their patient guidance and for their most valuable lessons in scholarly behavior.
This study benefited from the support and valuable advice of a great number of friends and colleagues. First and foremost, I am indebted to Leah Di Segni of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University for her generous help and consultations, and to Fr. Pakrad (Berjekian) of the Armenian St. James Brotherhood of Jerusalem for his indispensable assistance. Sincere gratitude should be extended to Doron Ben Ami, Jon Seligman and Daniel Ein-Mor of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Michael Shenkar and Anna Belfur-Cohen of the Hebrew University, Leonid Beliaev of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Avrutis of the University of Haifa, Erekle Koridze, Leila Pantskhava and Akaki Gogichaisvili of the Georgian National Museum, and Zaza Skhirtladze of the Tbilisi State University. I deeply regret that my gratitude cannot be expressed to the late David Amit and Yoram Tsafrir, who accepted the idea of this study with great enthusiasm and were so encouraging.
Thanks are also due to the librarians of the Institute of Archaeology of Hebrew University, Ronit Shavit-Hivroni, Miriam Popovici and the late Zvi Schneider, and to Leonid Rankov of the Israel Antiquities Authority library for their help and advice. The most valuable assistance in the study of the mandatory excavations in Jerusalem was provided by Deborah Ben Ami and Alegre Savariego of the National Treasures Department of the
I am particularly grateful to the clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem for their kind permission to examine the antiquities preserved in the large grounds of their property on the Mount of Olives: Abbess Elizaveta (Schmelts) and the sisters of the Russian Monastery of St. Maria Magdalena, Abbess Moisseia (Bubnova) of the Russian Monastery of Ascension, and the head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission Fr. Roman (Krasovsky).
My sincere thanks are due to institutions and individuals who allowed me to publish their photographs and plans of their excavations: to Clara Amit, Nicky Davidov, Jon Seligman, Yotam Tepper and Yael Barschak of Israel Antiquities Authority, Fr. Daniel Chrupcała and Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Hannah M. Cotton, A. and N. Graicer of Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, Hilel Geva and Israel Exploration Society, Joseph Patrich, Michael E. Stone and Michael Schenkar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Kirill Vach and the Indrik Editorials, Moscow, and the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
The original plans were prepared by Sveta Matskevich, and the maps by Mitia Frumin; the English editing was done by Smadar Gabrieli. The research was made possible thanks to the financial support of the David Gita and Michael Hoffman Memorial Scholarship in Archaeology, awarded by the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2014 and 2016. I am also grateful for Gulbenkian Foundation for Armenian Studies and for the Faculty of Humanities of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for providing me with a means for study trips to Armenia and Georgia.
My cordial thanks to them and to all those, whose assistance, advice and consultation contributed to this work. Last, but not least, I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers of this manuscript draft, whose valuable comments and observations help to improve the text.
The term ‘Caucasian’ was chosen here to serve as common definition for three neighbouring nations – Armenians, Georgians and Albanians – whose main cultural centers of the discussed period florished in the Southern Caucasian region. The objective national and geopolitical reality wasn’t limited to geographic borders of the Caucasus and was even more complex than a modern ‘Caucasian knot’. It included countless tribes and nationalities forming the population of the ancient kingdoms, with their expanding and shrinking borders, numbered spoken languages and vast territories, extended from the Caucasian ridge to Eastern Anatolia and the northern regions of Mesopotamia, united by the dominion of local dynasties or conquered and divided by foreign rulers.
The traditional date for the Christianization of the Armenian Kingdom is the year 301; however, the later date of 314 seems to have a historical basis: see Ananian 1961; Thomson 1988–89. Three dates were proposed for the conversion of Kartli: 320, 326 or 337: see Toumanoff 1963, pp. 83–84; Lordkipanidze and Mouskhelishvili 1988, pp. 49–52; Kiladze et al. 2007. Albania was converted sometime during the first third of the fourth century: Trever 1959; Papuashvili 1970; Bais 2001.
For discussion see Seibt 2006, Haas 2008, Karaulashvili 2012, 2016 and the comprehensive bibliography therein.
Tarchnishvili 2001, Garsoïan 2004, Rapp and Crego 2012, and the extensive bibliography therein.
Garsoïan 1999; Rapp 2007.
All three national alphabets of Armenians, Georgian and Albanians were created ex nihilo in the fifth century, shortly after the conversion to Christianity, and were modeled on the Greek alphabet. The conversion generated an urgent need for translation of the Holy Scriptures and liturgical texts into the native languages. For an up to date discussion on the creation of Caucasian alphabets, see Seibt and Preiser-Kapeller 2011. The oldest examples of erkatagir in Armenia are the monumental inscriptions in the St. Sarkis basilica in Tekor (modern Turkey), dated possibly to ca. 490, and in St. Hripsime church in Vagharshapat, dated to 618. The oldest examples of asomtavruli are monumental inscriptions in the Sioni basilica at Bolnisi, Georgia, dated to 493–494. The Albanian inscriptions discovered in Mingechaur, Azerbaijan, are dated to 610. The fact that the some of the oldest dated Armenian and Georgian inscriptions and the unique Albanian manuscripts were found in the Holy Land, at such a considerable distance from the motherland, encourages the assumption that the ancient scripts were created in Palestine itself, possibly, by educated monks: see Seibt 2011; Codoñer 2014.
Vardapet – priestly title, unique for the Armenian church hierarchy, liter. “master of spiritual practices”, “doctor”.
Sawalaneants’ 1931, p. 1040.