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Climate, Ecology and Power in the Armenian highlands, 7th-11th century

Draft for the 23rd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, Belgrade, 22-27 August 2016 (Round
Table Food, environment and landscape in Byzantium)
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Institute for Medieval Research/Division of Byzantine Research, Austrian
Academy of Sciences
Email: Johannes.Preiser-Kapeller@oeaw.ac.at
Website: https://oeaw.academia.edu/JohannesPreiserKapeller

The realm of Greater Armenia (Mec Hayk) was periphery to both the Roman and Persian
respectively Arab Empire, but in the centre of struggles between the Great powers since the
first century BCE. The Armenian highlands are characterised by a fragmentation of landscape
by various mountain ranges and larger alluvial plains around rivers and lakes, which were of
central economic importance, but also often show a delicate ecological balance with regard to
temperatures, precipitation and evaporation [6; 24; 26]. These topographical parameters also
fostered a fragmentation of political power among a number of aristocratic houses competing
for power and prestige, which could also be enhanced by ties of patronage to an exterior
superior imperial power. Especially this internal framework of political power allowed
Byzantium, Persia or later the Caliphate to exert their influence within Armenia or even to
divide it into spheres of interest. Yet it did not only restrict the chances of collective action of
the Armenian aristocracy, but also the stability of foreign domination; just as the Armenian
kings (up to 428 CE), also the representatives installed by the imperial overlords were not
able to enforce universal allegiance to the suzerain. The decentralized character of power
equally permitted the adaptation to the separation between various rulers and spheres of
interest of the neighbouring empires and the existence of multiple layers of authority and
loyalty [19; 20].
One central region of historical Armenia is the area around Lake Van (at an altitude of 1719
m above sea level); while one of the largest water bodies in the entire Near East (with 3740
km), its alkaline water (pH-value of 9.8) makes it unsuitable for any agricultural use. Various
mountain ranges fragment its environs in a series of smaller plains, which amount to only 15
% of the area around the Lake. One of the largest of these to the east of the Lake around the
ancient and modern city of Van is characterised by a tenuous balance of precipitation,
evaporation and temperature. From an early period onwards, when the Lake Van area became
the core region of the Kingdom of Urartu between the 9th and 7th cent. BCE, larger
installations of artificial irrigation were built in order to exploit the full agricultural potential
of the area, such as the still visible, 54 km long Semiramis- or Menua-Canal which was also

(re-)used in the medieval and modern period. Until before World War I, these installations
irrigated the so-called (today abandoned) Garden City to the East of the ancient and medieval
fortress of Van with up to 35.000 inhabitants [6; 13; 16; 35].
Due to its specific ecology, Lake Van also constitutes one of the most important archives of
paleo-climatic and paleo-environmental conditions in the Near East, which has been used for
various studies the latest PaleoVan-project ranging back to 500,000 years BP. On the basis
of the concentrations of pollen, charcoal and isotopes, reconstructions of past conditions of
temperature and precipitation as well as of land cover and human impact were created,
especially for the ancient period, where palynological data indicates the increase of cultivation
in the time of emergence of the Kingdom of Urartu, but also during the 1st century BCE in the
period of Armenian predominance in the region under King Tigran the Great [12; 33].
In addition, these archives of nature can be combined with archives of society, as the
Swiss pioneer of climate history Christian Pfister has called them, such as written and
archaeological/monumental evidence [18]. For Byzantine studies, most important in this
regard is the pioneering work of Ioannis Telelis, who in two massive volumes in 2004 not
only provided the first systematic survey of meteorological information in Byzantine and
other sources for the medieval Eastern Mediterranean, but in several articles has outlined the
methodological basis for a combination of the archives of society and of nature [27; 28]. The
findings of Telelis were also used by Michael McCormick and his team for their
Geodatabase of Historical Evidence on Roman and Post-Roman Climate (covering the
period 100 BCE-800 CE), by John Haldon et alii for an article on the Climate and
Environment of Byzantine Anatolia and by Elena Xoplaki et alii in their study on The
Medieval Climate Anomaly and Byzantium; yet also these more recent studies do not
provide additional data for the Armenian highlands beyond the findings of Telelis [5; 14; 34].
Thus, I have systematically surveyed the classical Armenian historiography especially for the
period from the 5th to the 11th century CE for meteorological and other extreme events. So
far, I was able to identify 53 years with such phenomena between 500 and 1150 CE and to
verify these by comparisons with other sources from neighbouring regions respectively proxydata; of these 53 events, 36 were not included in the catalogue of Telelis.

Similarly as for the Byzantine-Arab borderland, where recent studies especially on the basis
of palynological evidence have highlighted a decline of land cultivation in areas around proxy
sites (such as the Nar Gl in Cappadocia) from the late 7th century onwards with can be
connected to the effects of Arab raids and changes in the survival strategies of local

population [1; 5; 8], by using our data, we can identify the turn from the 7th to the 8th and the
8th century as a period of a decline of human activity around Lake Van both in terms of
agriculture and building activity [29; 30] (see fig. 1 and 3). This accords with our information
on the impact of frequent rebellions against Arab rule and the reduction of the number of
noble houses in Armenia in general, but also converges with a change of climatic conditions
around Lake Van towards more humid, but also cooler conditions (see fig. 2); for the year
698, for instance, the chronicler Samuel of Ani even reports that the lake was entirely frozen
up (for which very low temperatures were necessary due to the salinity of its water) [23; 27,
nr. 240]. The destruction of Armenian aristocratic rule in various areas allowed for the
emergence of new Muslim centres of power, also in core areas such as the Araxes valley or
around Lake Van. But also various noble houses of Armenia, depending on their strategic
position and their policies of confrontation or cooperation with Arab power, were able to
profit from the disappearance of former competitors and to enlarge their dominions into new
focal points of princedoms. Again, the Lake Van area, in the medieval Armenian geography
the region of Vaspurakan, is an illustrative case. While in the 4th century, not less than 14
different noble houses ruled over portions of the province, especially from the 7th century
onwards the vicissitudes of warfare contributed to a disappearance of most of them. From
their relative peripheral (and thus better protected) ancient domain around modern-day
Bakale (medieval Hadamakert in the Armenian district of Abag), the distinguished, but not
too powerful noble house of Arcruni benefited from this process and expanded its territories
especially in the 8th to 9th centuries towards the more fertile plains around Lake Van and
towards the Araxes. The Arcruni princedom at the beginning of the 10th century (in 908) with
Muslim consent would even rise to royalty in competition with the earlier established
Armenian Kingdom of the Bagratuni in the north. Its establishment was accompanied by a
process of increasing land development and building activity, as environmental, monumental
and historiographic evidence confirm and as is paralleled by similar developments in
Cappadocia and the Byzantine frontier lands, where the end of continuous Arab raids and
improving climatic conditions both fostered a re-expansion of land cultivation [22] (see fig. 1
and 3). Focal points of Armenian monumental building in that period can be found to the East
and South of Lake Van, while at the northern and western shores the Arcruni had to share
control with a number of Muslim Emirates. The most important monument of this period and
also part of the UNESCO-world cultural heritage is the Church of the Holy Cross on the
island of Atamar in Lake Van, erected under King Gagik Arcruni (904/908-ca. 943) and in its
frieze both praising the kings power and ancestry and the abundance of nature [10].

The period of wealth clearly ended in the 11th century, as a dramatic decrease of the number
of monumental buildings and the concentration of charcoal in the sediments of Lake Van (as a
proxy for human activity) indicates (see fig. 1 and 3); oxygen isotope data also hints at a
significant change towards more arid conditions (see fig. 2). Furthermore, a combination of
increasing threat from Turkmen nomadic groups, who defeated the army of the Arcruni in
1017, diplomatic pressure from Byzantium and internal precariousness of his position
motivated King Yovhannes-Senekerim in 1022/1023 to hand over his kingdom to Emperor
Basil II in return for new domains in Cappadocia, into which now an exodus of reportedly
14,000 families took place; this would have been a considerable reduction of the demographic
potential (of maybe up to 250,000 people [35, p. 15-19]) of the Lake Van area (and in accord
with our proxy data) [4, p. 137-141; 6, p. 28-30; 25; 31, p. 307-308; 32, p. 370-371].
Vaspurakan became a military province (a Katepanate) of the Byzantine Empire, which,
however, was also not able to defend the region against the increasing Seljuk advance
especially from the 1040s onwards [11, p. 145-177; 25]. Any collapse of defences here would
open up the core regions of Byzantine Anatolia to invaders, as it did for the Seljuks, who
advanced mainly through a corridor north of Lake Van and through the valley of the Araxesriver. Tovma Arcruni continuatus reports: When news of the kings [Senekerim of
Vaspurakan and Gagik II Bagratuni of Ani] departure from Armenia and the Roman control
[of that country] reached the camp of the impious, bloodthirsty, ferocious race of Elim, then
the ruler of the Elimites [= the Seljuks], who was called Sultan Tullup [Torl], launched a
cavalry attack like an eagle swooping on flocks of birds. Reaching the metropolis of Ani, he
besieged it; having captured it, he put [the inhabitants] to the sword. The Seljuk conquest of
Ani actually took place in 1064, that is after the death of Sultan Torl (in 1063), but the
causal chain of events indicated by the author becomes clear [31, p. 308; 32, p. 371]. At the
same time, the region was very much suitable for the nomadic lifestyle of core elements of the
Seljuk retinue, as A. C. S. Peacock has demonstrated. Accordingly, Emperor Romanos IV
Diogenes tried to get hold of the cities of Manzikert and Akhlat to the north of Lake Van in
order to regain control over this corridor in summer 1071 [11, p. 145-177; 15; 17].
The Vaspurakan data thus seems to confirm the scenario of a climate-induced Collapse of
the Eastern Mediterranean recently developed by Ronnie Ellenblum; according to his
interpretation (and earlier work of Richard Bulliet) a change towards more arid and colder
conditions in large areas of the Near East and Central Asia contributed to the destabilisation
of regimes in the core agricultural regions and an increasing mobility of nomad groups from
the Steppe which brought about the breakdown of polities, the advance of the Seljuks and

finally also favoured the success of the First Crusade [2; 3]. In a recent paper, I tried to
evaluate this scenario on the basis of a large number of proxy evidence for climatic and
agricultural conditions across the Near East (with a focus on Byzantium). It becomes evident
that despite a general cold trend, we detect pronounced differences in the climatic and
agricultural trajectories for different regions of the Near East and especially also within the
Byzantine Empire in the 11th century. Besides other sources, pollen data indicates a continued
agro-economic growth in Anatolia and Greece in most regions. Therefore, we cannot accept a
scenario of general climate-caused collapse of Byzantium, but may assume a contribution
of environmental factors to also otherwise crisis prone socio-political and military conditions
[21; cf. also 9 and 34]. For Armenia, of course, the impacts of this crisis were long lasting and
dramatic.

To contribute to this debate with new data and new concepts on the interplay of environment
and human societies is also one aim of my study on Vaspurakan which is part of the larger
project Digitising Patterns of Power (DPP) - Peripherical Mountains in the Medieval World
which is funded at the Division for Byzantine Research/Institute for Medieval Research of the
Austrian Academy of Sciences (PI: Mihailo Popovi; http://dpp.oeaw.ac.at/). By a
comparison of four regions (the Eastern Alps, the Moravia-Thaya regions at the AustrianCzech border, historical Macedonia and Southern Armenia), an even more general analysis of
these entanglements between nature and men in the medieval period is intended.

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Figures:

Fig. 1: Number of larger building projects in the Lake Van region and charcoal index for core samples
from sediments in Lake Van (Turkey) as proxy for human activity, 6 th15th cent. AD [from: 21; data:
29 resp. 33]

Fig. 2: Oxygen isotopes index for core samples from sediments in Lake Van (Turkey), 4501450 AD
[from 21; data: 33]

Fig. 3: Locations of larger building projects in the Lake Van region in four periods, 6th12th cent. AD
[maps: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, 2015; data: 29]