Battle of Manazkert (August 26, 1071)

The battle of Manazkert (Մանազկերտ, usually spelled Manzikert in Western literature) was a decisive moment in the history of the Byzantine Empire. The defeat of its army at the hands of the Seljuk Turks undermined Byzantine authority in Armenia and marked the beginning of imperial decadence that would lead to the disappearance of Byzantium in 1453.
 
The Byzantine policy in the first half of the eleventh century had taken advantage of the division of Armenia into various feudal kingdoms, and exerted political pressure to acquire territories without violence. In 1021 King Hovhannes Senekerim of Vaspurakan exchanged his kingdom for territories in Cappadocia, where he moved with dozens of thousands of his subjects. In 1045 Gagik II Bagratuni was retained in Constantinople and forced to give up the kingdom of Ani to the empire. This misguided policy delivered Armenia in the hands of Byzantium, but at the same time opened the door for the invasions of the Seljuk Turks, who plundered the country and occupied and ravaged Ani in 1064. A year later, King Gaguik I of Kars, unable to confront the Turkish invasions, gave his kingdom to Byzantium in exchange of territories. The military incompetence of emperors Constantine IX (1042-1055) and Constantine X (1059-1067) could not be offset by the brief reign of Isaac I (1057-1059) and the Byzantine army was left in disarray. The occupation of Ani by the Seljuks, led by Alp Arslan, was followed by the rest of Armenia in 1067, and the invaders followed with the conquest of Caesarea.


 
Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes took power in 1068, and despite his military setback, Alp Arslan sought and signed a peace treaty with Byzantium in 1069 to focus on the Fatimid kingdom in Egypt as its main enemy. In February 1071 the Seljuk leader agreed to renew the treaty. However, this had been a distraction, as Romanos led a large army into Armenia to recover lost territories.
 
The Byzantine army, totaling from 40,000 to 70,000 men, reached Theodosiopolis (Karin, Erzerum) in June 1071 and continued the march towards Lake Van. The emperor expected to retake Manazkert and the nearby fortress of Khlat. Unknown to him, Alp Arslan had returned from the siege of Aleppo and was following the movements of the Byzantine army with an army of 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers.
 
Romanos split his forces in half, ordering his general Joseph Tarchaniotes to occupy Khlat, while the emperor marched to Manazkert. Khlat was not taken, and it is unknown what happened to the army sent off. The emperor easily captured Manazkert on August 23, but the Seljuk army was in the surroundings of the city, and the Byzantine cavalry and left wing were defeated or forced to retreat in engagements on August 23-24.
 
The main battle was held on August 26, 1071. The emperor wanted to settle the eastern question with a decisive military victory. The Byzantine army gathered itself into a proper battle formation and marched on the Turkish positions. The Seljuk archers attacked the Byzantines as they drew closer, but the arrow attacks were held off and Alp Arslan’s camp was captured. However, the Seljuks avoided battle and the emperor was forced to order a withdrawal when night fell. The Seljuks seized the opportunity and attacked. The right and left wings of the army were routed, and the rear, commanded by co-emperor and Romanos IV’s rival Andronikos Doukas, marched back to the camp outside Manazkert instead of covering the emperor’s retreat and later fled. The remnants of the Byzantine center were encircled and taken prisoner by the Seljuks, including the emperor.
 
Romanos IV agreed upon concessions: the surrender of Antioch, Edessa, Hierapolis, and Manazkert, a ransom of 1.5 million gold pieces plus an annual sum of 360,000 gold pieces, and a marriage alliance between Arslan’s son and Romanos’ daughter. The emperor was released a week later and sent to Constantinople with an escort of two emirs and one hundred Mamluks. His rule was in serious trouble. In 1072 he was deposed, blinded, and exiled to the island of Proti, where he would soon die.
 
The balance of power between Byzantium and the Seljuks did not change in the short-term, although the ensuing civil war within the empire did, to the advantage of the Seljuks, who reached Asia Minor and established their capital in Nicea (1077). Byzantium never recovered Armenia, and from that time on, its borders moved continuously towards the west. British historian Steven Runciman noted: “The Battle of Manzikert was the most decisive disaster in Byzantine history. The Byzantines themselves had no illusions about it. Again and again their historians refer to that dreadful day.”

Death of St. Nerses Shnorhali (August 13, 1173)

One of the saints of the Armenian and the universal Church, Nerses Shnorhali, is also one of the most revered names in the Armenian Christian tradition. He was known with the appellative of Shnorhali (“Graceful”) due to his multiple talents: he was theologian, poet, musicologist, composer, and historian, and excelled in all those endeavors.

Nerses Klayetsi was born in the castle of Tzovk, in the district of Tluk, in the Armenian Mesopotamia (the area around the city of Edesa or Urfa) in 1102. He belonged to the princely Pahlavuni family. His great-grandfather was Grigor Pahlavuni or Magistros (990-1058), a famous writer, scholar, and public official.

After the early death of his father, Prince Apirat Pahlavuni, Nerses and his older brother Grigor were placed under the guardianship of their maternal great uncle, Catholicos Grigor II Martyrophile (1066-1105), who placed them in the monastery at Fhoughri. Later, Grigor’s successor, Barsegh (1105-1113) sent them to the school of the monastery of Karmir Vank, headed by Bishop Stepanos Manouk, a highly regarded scholar and theologian.

Nerses’ brother Grigor became Catholicos at the age of 21, in 1113. Nerses was ordained a celibate priest in 1119 and consecrated a bishop at the age of 35, in 1137. He was one of the best educated men of his time.

He assisted Catholicos Grigor III in moving the Catholicosate to Dzovk, on the property of their father, in 1125. This move was brief, as in 1151 the Catholicosate moved its headquarters to the fortress of Hromkla, near the Euphrates River (Nerses’ surname “Klayetsi” was derived from the name of the fortress). In 1165 hostilities broke out between Toros II, Prince of Cilicia, and one of the strongest princes of the country, Oshin of Lambron. Grigor III sent his brother to mediate.

On his way to the mediation, Nerses met Byzantine governor Alexios and discussed the strained relations between the Armenian and Greek churches since the Greek Orthodox Church had declared that the Armenian Church and the Jacobite Church were heretics in 1140. This discussion impressed the Byzantine governor to the point that he urged the Armenian bishop to write an exposition of the Armenian faith. Nerses stressed in his letter that, as both the Armenian and Greek churches accepted the statements of the first Council of Ephesus (431), there was no clear reason for them not to be in agreement, and did not make any polemical statements about the later Council of Chalcedon and its Confession.

On Nerses’ return from his successful mediation effort and the death of his brother shortly thereafter, he was made Catholicos of the Armenian Church. He convened a council with emissaries selected by Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenos to discuss how they might be able to reunite the two churches (1171). The terms the emperor offered were, however, unacceptable to both Nerses and the Armenian Church, and the negotiations collapsed.

Nerses Shnorhali passed away on August 13, 1173 and was buried in the fortress of Hromkla. The Armenian Church celebrates him as a saint on October 13, during the feast of the Holy Translators, while the Catholic Church also celebrates him, but on August 13.

His prolific literary output included long poems like Lament of Edesa (1145-1146), Jesus the Son (1152), and others, such as the cosmological poem About the Sky and Its Ornaments. He refined and completed the Sharaknots (collection of liturgical hymns) and the Divine Liturgy, enriching it with his own songs, whose number amounts to more than a hundred. One of his best sharakans is the well-known Morning of Light (Առաւօտ լուսոյ, Aravod luso). He also composed some 300 riddles, extracted from Armenian folklore. His Universal Epistle, written in 1166 and addressed to the entire Armenian people, was particularly influential in Armenian medieval thought.

Birth of Stepan Lianozov (August 9, 1872)

John Reed, the American Communist militant who witnessed the October Revolution that would give birth to the Union Soviet, called Stepan Lianozov the “Russian Rockefeller.” Both Lianozov and Rockefeller competed for the oil of Baku in the early twentieth century, at the time when Armenians like Lianozov had an important share in its production and exploitation.

Stepan Lianozov (Lianosian) was born on August 9, 1872 in Moscow. His father, Gevorg Lianozov (1835-1906), descended from an Armenian family that had been deported from Eastern Armenia by Iranian Shah Abbas III at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He was a dominant name in the production of caviar from the Caspian Sea, and would inherit the interests in the oil of Baku that his brother, also called Stepan, had built since 1872.

Gevorg Lianozov’s son Stepan graduated from high school and in 1894 entered the School of Natural Sciences of the University of Moscow. He changed his career and graduated from the School of Law four years later. He worked for two years as an assistant to a magistrate in the court chamber of Moscow.

In 1901 Stepan left to his brothers Martin and Levon the caviar business and entered the growing and lucrative field of oil to assist his father.

After the death of his father, Stepan Lianozov founded the oil company G. M. Lianozov and Sons in St. Petersburg (1907), with a statutory capital of 2 million rubles. He transformed the family business into a corporative activity, attracting big investors, and engaging the biggest players in Baku: the Nobels, the Rothschilds, and the Shell Company. Between 1907 and 1910, G. M. Lianozov and Sons multiplied its production almost nine times.

The company owned oil fields, as well as subsidiaries in Baku that produced kerosene and refined petroleum, a pipeline in the Caspian shore, and others. Lianozov was elected member of the Baku City Council and the Baku Stock Exchange council.

On July 28, 1912 the Russian Main Oil Union, also called Oil, was founded in London. It united three Armenian and one Russian oil companies, several big Russian banks and representatives of British business, with a founding capital of 2.5 million sterling pounds. Stepan Lianozov became director-manager of the new company, which soon bought twelve big oil companies (including Mantashov and Co., Mirzoyev Brothers and Co., A. S. Melikov and Co., and Aramazd), and became the third biggest oil company in the world, after Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell. 

Oil rigs around a pool of crude in Baku around 1900. 

G. M. Lianozov and Sons paid 18% to its shareholders in 1913. It had representative companies in Great Britain (British Lianosoff Wite Oil Company), France (La Lianosoff Français), and Germany (Deutsche Lianozoff Mineralöl Import Act.Ges). 

In the spring of 1914 Lianozov and the Mantashov brothers (sons of the late Armenian oil magnate Alexander Mantashov or Mantashiants) made a big investment in the movie company Biochrome, founded by Sergei Prokudin-Gorski. The headquarters of the company were in Moscow, in one of the houses of the Lianozovs, which would become the offices of the Ministry of Cinematography after the Russian Revolution. The company filmed several movies until 1918, when the movie sets were burned by a fire: “No Exit,” “The God of Revenge,” “The Eternal Tale of Life.” 

Lianozov’s business activities continued successfully after the beginning of World War I, but the Russian Revolution ruined the oil magnates of Baku. Unlike many other businessmen, Stepan Lianozov actively entered politics and participated in the civil war that followed. After migrating to Finland, in May 1919 he participated in a meeting organized by the counterrevolutionary forces (the Whites), which decided to create the Northwest Republic with center on the north of current Estonia. Lianozov was designated head of government, and took the positions of Prime Minister, Minister of Finances, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. General Nikolai Yudenich, who had been one of the main Russian commanders in the Caucasian front, and was one of the military leaders of the counterrevolutionary movement, together with Generals Kolchak and Denikin, took the position of Minister of War and commander in chief of the Northwest Army. 

One of the first measures by Lianozov was to recognize the independence of Estonia on August 11, 1919, followed by the recognition of Latvia (September 3) and Finlandia (September 23). He also issued rubles of the Northwest Republic, signed by Yudenich and himself.

In October 1919 Yudenich headed an attack against St. Petersburg. However, the White offensive failed to occupy the capital of Soviet Russia, and, as a result, the Northwest Republic self-dissolved on December 5, 1919 and Lianozov moved to Paris.

In 1920 Stepan Lianozov founded TorgProm (Russian Trade-Industrial and Financial Union), together with the brothers Poghos and Abraham Ghukasian, and some Russian emigré businessmen, to protect the interests of Russian businessmen in Francia. He worked as a film producer in 1925, which became his main source of income for several years. Meanwhile, in 1926 he was the representative for France of the Russian Congress Abroad. This organization published its own newspaper from 1925 to 1940, called Renaissance.

Stepan Lianozov passed away on August 10, 1951 in Paris and was buried in the cemetery of Passy. He left one son, called Nikolai.

Death of Hamo Ohanjanian (July 31, 1947)

Ohanjanian was a prominent member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in the first half of the twentieth century and also served as Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia.

He was born in Akhalkalak (Javakhk, nowadays Georgia) in 1873. After his elementary studies in his birthplace, he moved to Tiflis, where he graduated from the Russian lyceum. He entered medical school in Moscow (1892), where he joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and because of his participation in student agitation, he was left out of the university. He returned to Tiflis, and in 1899 he continued his studies in Lausanne (Switzerland), which he finished in 1902. He returned to Tiflis in 1902, where he became a leading figure of the party, and in 1905 was elected a member of the Eastern Bureau of the A.R.F. He would coordinate the popular action that opposed the confiscation of the properties of the Armenian Church in 1903 and he established relations with Russian and Georgian revolutionaries during the revolutionary movements of Russia in 1905-1907. He played an important role in the crucial A.R.F. Fourth General Assembly (Vienna, 1907), where he helped preserve the unity of the party by stopping extreme-left and extreme-right wing dissension.

In 1908 the Czarist government launched a persecution against revolutionary parties, including the A.R.F. Ohanjanian, together with 160 party members, was arrested. He was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia during the infamous “Trial of the Tashnagtsutiun” in 1912. Roubina Areshian, one of the organizers of the failed attempt against Sultan Abdul Hamid in 1905, followed him there and married him.

In 1915 Ohanjanian was set free thanks to the intercession of Catholicos Kevork V and Caucasus viceroy Ilarion Vorontsov-Dashkov. He returned to Tiflis and assisted the volunteer battalions as a physician, as well as the refugees from Western Armenia.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he departed to Petrograd and Kharkov to exhort Armenians to bring their help to the refugees. In May 1918 he participated in the battle of Gharakilise, where his elder son (born from his first marriage to Olga Vavileva) was killed.

After the birth of Armenia, Ohanjanian became a member of the Delegation of the Republic presided by Avetis Aharonian to participate in the Peace Conference in Europe. He remained in the West until the beginning of 1920. In October 1919 he was elected member of the A.R.F. Bureau during its Ninth General Assembly held in Yerevan.

He returned to the Armenian capital in January 1920 as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the cabinet of Alexander Khatisian. Following the failed Bolshevik uprising of May 1, 1920, Khatisian resigned, and Ohanjanian was charged with forming a new government on May 5, 1920. It was called the Bureau-Government, because all of its members were members of the A.R.F. Bureau.

Ohanjanian’s premiership coincided with the most crucial period of the Republic of Armenia, which would practically lead to its demise. The Treaty of Sevres was signed on August 10, 1920, but the following Armeno-Turkish war, started in September, ended with the defeat of the Armenian army. Ohanjanian resigned on November 23, 1920. Simon Vratzian would become the fourth and last prime minister, and ten days later the Soviet regime was established.

Ohanjanian, with other A.R.F. leaders, was imprisoned in January 1921 during the wave of terror that followed the Sovietization. The prisoners were saved by the popular rebellion of February 1921. After the end of the rebellion in April 1921, Ohanjanian moved to Zangezur and then to Iran. In the end, he settled in Egypt, where he would live until his death.

Besides his political activities as a party member, Ohanjanian, well-aware of the importance of language and culture for the preservation and development of the Armenian identity in the Diaspora, became a founding member of the Hamazkayin Cultural Association in 1928 and its chairman for the next 18 years. He also provided important support for the establishment of the Armenian Lyceum of Beirut in 1930.

The former prime minister of the Republic of Armenia passed away on July 31, 1947 in Cairo, where he was buried.

The Expedition of Khanasor (July 25, 1897)

The Armenian massacres of 1895-1896 ordered by Sultan Abdul Hamid II were executed with the active participation of Kurdish tribes. This extended also to the aftermath of the self-defense of Van in early June 1896, organized by the three Armenian parties (Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Armenakan, and Hunchakian). The fight ended after a truce brokered by the British consul, Major W. H. Williams, who guaranteed the safe passage to Persia of some 1,000 people who had participated in the self-defense. However, the retreating group, badly armed, was attacked by the Kurdish Mazrik tribe. More than 300 young people, headed by Bedo (A.R.F.), Mgrdich Avedisian (Armenakan), and Mardik (Hunchakian) on their way to Persia, were killed by the Kurdish bandits.

Less than ten days after the massacre, on June 18, 1896, a regional assembly of the A.R.F. decided to take punitive measures against the Kurdish groups that had become a tool in the hands of the Turkish government, and particularly against the Mazrik tribe.

There were discrepancies about the feasibility of such a strike. However, these were overcome after the fall of 1896, when a regional assembly of Tiflis passed a resolution that approved the expedition. Afterwards, Nigol Tuman, one of the A.R.F. military chiefs and a main proponent of the attack, went to Baku and secured the necessary financial means.

The group was composed of 235 foot combatants and 40 horsemen. The expedition group was commanded by Sarkis Mehrabian (he would be later known as Vartan of Khanasor), with Hovsep Arghutian and Nigol Tuman as his assistants.

The Mazrik tribe settled in the plain of Khanasor, surrounded by hills. The group crossed the Persian-Turkish border near Salmast on the night of July 24, 1897, passed through the Araul mountain and surrounded the plain from all sides.

Some 250 tents were spread in the plain. The attack started at daybreak. The Kurdish tribe practically lost most of its male members; some estimates claim between 1,200 and 1,500 casualties. Women and children, however, were spared, following the directives of Nigol Tuman. Sharaf Bek, the Kurdish chief, took advantage of the circumstance and escaped, wearing female clothing.

The Armenian force suffered 19 casualties, including Aristakes Zorian (Garo), the brother of Rostom (Stepan Zorian), one of the founders of the A.R.F.

Neighbor Kurds and Turkish regular forces came over. In order to avoid being surrounded, the military council of the expedition decided to leave the plain and to fall back to the mountain. The enemy was unable to stop the organized retreat of the Armenian fedayees, who fought the whole day in the mountain and in the night, when the Kurds stopped the attack, crossed the border back to Persia, and later returned to the Caucasus.

The expedition of Khanasor, besides its military success, was also a moral success, as it showed that Armenians had the necessary spirit to fight back against the Kurds and stop their attacks. The song composed by one of its participants, Dervish Toros (Kalust Aloyan), summarized that spirit in its first stanza:

Hail fell over the plain of Khanasor / The fedayees of the A.R.F. took revenge in the valley...

Death of Yeghia Demirjibashian (July 19, 1908)

Yeghia Demirjibashian was born in Khasgiugh (Haskoy), a suburb of Constantinople, on May 8, 1851. He completed his education at the local Nersesian and Nubar-Shahnazarian schools, and graduated with distinction. From early youth he was a solitary person and an avid reader, with an encyclopedic mind. He was principally captivated by books that represented the sadder aspects of life, its vanity, and the reality of death, which seemed to suit his melancholic disposition.

He worked for a while at the Printing Office of the government, and as a secretary of the administrative assembly of the ministry of Public Works, but he quit his job with the intention of going to Paris. Family situation shook his delicate psyche and his physical health, and the project failed. He was in love with a young lady who had decided to marry a wealthy man. Out of desperation, he attempted to commit suicide in 1874, but failed. Deeply concerned about his condition, his family found the means to send him to Marseilles with the advice to studying economics. Instead, he spent his time reading voraciously and even trying to publish a newspaper in French, Le Moniteur littéraire et financier de Marseille.

He returned to Constantinople in 1876 and became involved in the dispute over the grammar and spelling rules of Modern Armenian that his classmate Minas Cheraz (1852-1929) had suggested, and that ultimately met the rejection of the Armenian Education Council.

In 1879 he began publication of the Philosophical Dictionary, with the aim of introducing a critical spirit and freedom of thought into literature. He published critical articles and book reviews in the periodical Masis from 1880. He also launched two newspapers, Kragan yev imasdasiragan sharjum (1883) and Yergrakunt (1884); while the first was filled with his own articles, the second had contributors such as Krikor Zohrab, Reteos Berberian (another of his classmates), and Yervant Odian. Both papers ceased publication in 1888. He also briefly edited other publications. Besides the Philosophical Dictionary, his only other books would be two bilingual dictionaries, Armenian-French (1894) and French-Armenian (1896).

By 1889 Demirjibashian’s health started to deteriorate, and he sank into despondency. His main desire became to die and to attain Nirvana, to which he frequently referred in his writings. The pessimistic mood that engulfed him was aggravated by the loss of his mother in 1890, following the death of his young brother. His father had passed away years before. He continued his work as teacher and editor until 1893, when he attempted suicide again, but a boatman saved him from the sea. He frequently changed his place of residence, driven by a persecution complex. In 1895, during one of those moves, he rang the bell of a house in Pera. The landlady, a Hungarian woman called Mrs. Ellen Nisen, took pity on him, gave him a room in her house, and eventually became his guardian angel, as Demirjibashian himself recognized more than once. The financial support of an aunt allowed him to travel to Geneva, Vienna, and Budapest in 1897, but this did not help his situation. He returned to the hospitality of Mrs. Nisen, who compassionately took care of him. After a year spent in the National Hospital (1901-1902), the illness practically confined him to his home, and then, to his bed. In the end, on July 19, 1908, he hanged himself during his hostess’ absence with a scarf that she had given to him as a present.

A talented but eccentric figure, Demirjibashian reflected his psychological turmoil in his writings. His artistic sensitivity produced moments of deep emotion, but his poetry was not balanced enough to become a finished product. He would leave hundreds of poems, but not a single literary work finished. Several collections of his poetry were published posthumously. The library of the Armenian Cultural Foundation in Arlington, Massachusetts, carries his name.

Death of Yervant Ter-Minasian (July 12, 1974)

Yervant Ter-Minasian had a short and eventful ecclesiastic career (he left the Church at the age of 31), when he was already an important name in Armenian scholarship. He would still be active for the next six decades and leave a prolific legacy.

He was born in the village of Harich, now in the province of Shirak (Republic of Armenia), on November 19, 1879, into a family of priests. He graduated from the school of the local monastery in 1892 and entered the Kevorkian Seminary of Holy Etchmiadzin. After his graduation in 1900, Catholicos Mgrdich Khrimian sent him to Germany, where he studied theology and ancient languages at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig with famous theologian Adolf Harnack among other professors. He defended his dissertation in 1904 with a study of the relations between the Armenian and Syriac Churches, published in German in the same year, which became the cornerstone of this field.

Back in Etchmiadzin, Ter-Minasian was consecrated celibate priest (vartabed) in 1905 and taught at the Kevorkian Seminary, becoming also the director of the printing house of the Holy See. He published a revised version of his doctoral dissertation in Armenian (1908), as well as half a dozen books, including several textbooks, between 1906 and 1909. An ongoing polemics between conservative and liberal members of the congregation about reform in the Armenian Church ended with an article by the young vartabed, published in the monthly Ararat of the Catholicosate, being publicly burned by order of the locum tenens, Archbishop Kevork Surenian (later Catholicos Kevork V), in 1909. This polemics led him to leave the Church in February 1910. He would later marry and have five children. Nevertheless, his relations with the Holy See soon returned to normalcy. In 1944 he even declined an offer from Catholicos Kevork VI to return to the Church and become a bishop.

Ter-Minasian devoted himself to his pedagogical vocation. He taught in schools at Alexandropol (Gumri, 1910-1917) and Tiflis (1918-1919). In late 1919 he was entrusted by the government of the Republic of Armenia to become one of the organizers of the University of Yerevan, and was a professor there in 1920. After the fall of the independent republic, he became scientific secretary of the Scientific Institute of Etchmiadzin (1921-1922) and then principal of the school of second degree of Vagharshapat (1922-1928) and teacher until 1930.

Ter-Minasian’s past both as a former ecclesiastic and as researcher in ecclesiastic history was not politically correct in the Soviet regime. He took as many precautions as he could to avoid unpleasant surprises: after 1930, when he moved to Yerevan, he earned his living as one of the most authoritative experts of the German language in the country. Furthermore, he would be one of the foremost translators and editors of Marxist classics (Marx, Engels, Lenin) from German and Russian. He initially taught at the Pedagogical Technical School (1930-31) and the Agricultural Institute (1940-1947) as German teacher and chair of the foreign language department. He also taught at Yerevan State University with the same positions from 1943-1948.

In 1945 Ter-Minasian was invited by the Academy of Sciences to deliver a lecture on “The Armenian Literature of the Golden Age,” which was published as a booklet in 1946. The word vosgetar (ոսկեդար, “Golden Age”), commonly used to describe Armenian literature of the fifth century A.D., became a pretext for political attacks, and the almost seventy-year-old scholar was fired from his position at the university in 1948.

Two years later, he was able to take a part-time job as a teacher at the Institute of Foreign Languages, and in 1951 he got a position as senior researcher in the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences. He became head of the section of dictionary writing in the same institute from 1955-1970.

Ter-Minasian left an important work in the field of bilingual dictionaries, but most importantly as a scholar of Armenian-Syriac relations, the origin of Christian sects, the doctrinal position of the Armenian Church in the 5th-7th centuries, and other related issues. He also prepared the critical edition of Yeghishe’s On Vartan and the War of the Armenians (the history of the war of Vartanantz), as well as its translation into Modern Armenian.

In his last years, Ter-Minasian wrote his memoirs, which remained unpublished until 2005. He passed away on July 12, 1974, at the age of 95.