Note 22 — Chapter XVIII · ANI, AND THE ARMENIAN KINGDOM OF THE MIDDLE AGES

Ashot III., A.D. 951–977.But it was under the next two reigns that the brilliancy of the dynasty attained the culminating point. Upon the death of Abas his son Ashot assumed the government; and it was perhaps due to a combination of domestic dissensions and war with his neighbours that for ten years he remained an uncrowned king. On the part of the Mussulmans, an Arab emir, whom the historians name Hamdun, and who may perhaps be identified with the powerful adversary of the Cæsars in Mesopotamia, Seif-ed-Daula of the Hamdanid family, made incursions into the southerly provinces of Armenia, and even threatened the dominions of Ashot. The signal victory of the Armenian monarch (A.D. 960)22 appears to have gratified the caliph and his masters the Buwayhids, a petty dynasty which had arisen in Persia, and into whose hands had fallen Baghdad (945). The same event may have been instrumental in consolidating the power of Ashot at home. In the year 961 he was anointed king at Ani, in the presence and with the consent of the great nobles. The rulers of the neighbouring states, Mussulman and Christian, signified their goodwill by sending valuable presents. His suzerain at Baghdad bestowed upon him a royal crown, addressing him as Shah-i-Armen or Armenian shah. But we must impute to this sovereign a new division of authority, and a consequent reduction of the resisting powers of the Armenian nation in face of foreign aggression. By investing his brother Mushegh with royal prerogatives at Kars, he added yet another to the number of kinglets whose mutual jealousies prepared the way for the passage of the Seljuk Turks towards the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. His successor continued and even developed this baneful policy, adding to the kings of Kars the kings of Lori, in the mountains which border Armenia upon the north. This latter Bagratid dynasty struggled on into the thirteenth century; but the kings of Kars made over their realm to the Cæsar Constantine the Tenth after the capture of Ani by the Seljuks under Alp Arslan.