Criticism of Armenian historiography

The criticism of Armenian historiography refers mainly to historical distortions and related claims in Armenian history by foreign and several domestic scholars as well.
Forgeries
As outlined by Armenian author Robert Bedrosian, among classical Armenian sources, The History of Taron attributed to the otherwise unknown Yovhannes Mamikonian, is a peculiar work. Bedrosian notes, that The History of Taron, despite its name, is not a history, but rather a relatively short "historical" romance in five parts. It appeared in Cilicia in the form of a letter, preserved as The Letter of Love and Concord between the Emperor Constantine the Great and St Silvester, the Supreme Pope, and the King of Armenia Trdat and St Gregory the Illuminator in the Year of the Lord 316.
An associated forgery was made by the Patriarch of Constantinople Photios I. He was ultimately exiled to a monastery in Armenia and during the seven years spent there he tried everything to regain his power. The situation improved thanks to Photios' genealogical forgery that convinced the Byzantine emperor Basil I that both of them belonged to the same Armenian royal family of Trdat (Tiridates). The document also included a prophecy foretelling Basil's greatness. The forgery was made to look old and was written in Armenian.
The holder of the chair in Armenian studies at Harvard University, Robert Thomson asserted that Moses of Chorene, whom Armenian historians had claimed as a fifth-century author, was actually an eighth-century writer with a clear political agenda that served his dynastic master. Armenian author A. O. Sarkissian in On the Authenticity of Moses of Khoren's History specifies: "In the seventies of the last century Alfred von Gutschmid brought to bear all the weight of his scholarship and concluded that the History was written not in the years 460-480 (as he once had supposed), but between the years 634 and 642. His most weighty argument was confirmed by Moses of Khoren's anachronistic passages, such as his reference to the division of Armenia Major into four provinces (which division took place in 536), and his reference to the Persian advance in Bithynia (which point the Persians first reached in 609)".
The questions arise even about when to celebrate Armenian independence. Some insist on May 28, others nostalgically remember November 29, and the majority are poised to celebrate independence on September 23, the most recent date. Edmond Azadian, Agop Hacikyan and Edward Franchuk in History on the move write, that there is confusion even in Armenia itself: "In 1999 May 28 was celebrated with great fanfare, whereas no similar enthusiasm has been shown thus far for the date that the present government itself declared independence. Most certainly everything will fall into place as the confusion clears up and historic facts replace demagoguery and emotions".
Other issues

Scholar Ronald Grigor Suny writes that the nationalist thrust of Soviet Armenian historiography extended into a fierce critique of foreign historians who attempted to question sacred assumptions in the canonical version of Armenian history.
Prof. Turkkaya Ataov in An Armenian Falsification mentions a book titled The Massacre of Armenians by certain Ismail Ra’in, printed by Emir Kebir Publishing House in Tehran. It presents the 1871 painting The Apotheosis of War by Vasily Vereshchagin as "the skulls of Armenians massacred in the year 1917". Pastuszka notes, that those were the peripheries of Tigran's empire and the reasons for such unlikely place become clear if we consider the modern history of those lands.<ref name="wp"/>

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu