I. Lost-but-found

The Ruins of Ani Lost-but-found

From the second half of the 19th century up to 1921, corresponding to the period during which the ruins of Ani were largely within the boundaries of the Russian Empire, a veritable explosion of representations of its splendor started circulating globally in an accelerating manner. Thanks to the patriotic photographs of Ohannes Kurkdjian, travelogue depictions by the likes of Jaroslav Tkadlec and Leo (Arakel Babakhanyan), and most crucially the excavations led by Nikolai Marr, the ruins of Ani found new life.

Emerging modes of representation, such as photography and film, combined with technological practices characteristic of modernity, such as the postal service and the railway, served as vehicles through which images of the ruins of Ani were disseminated beyond strictly scholarly and patriotic circles, thus constituting a genuinely popular source of obsession with ruins (ruinlust). At the heart of this fascination was a profound sense of loss – historical, civilizational, and national.

Highlights from This Period

F. Minas Bzhshkeants was a Catholic Mekhitarist Armenian priest who made significant contributions as a scholar and an educator. He was born in Trabizon at the southeastern shores of the Black Sea in 1777. Ordained as a priest of the Mekhitarist order in 1804 in the island of San Lazzaro, Venice, Bzhshkeants was sent back to Trabizon and later to Constantinople. In 1825, he settled in Crimea, acting as spiritual leader of the peninsula’s Catholic Armenians for about two decades, while continuing to engage in educational and scholarly activities. F. Bzhshkeants passed away in Venice in 1851. — Minas Bzhshkeants

Born in Kyurin, Vilayet of Sebaste, Ottoman Empire, Ohannes Kurkdjian settled in Tiflis (Tbilisi) and Yerevan. In the late 1870s, after Ani became part of the Russian Empire, Kurdkjain visited the ruined city and was the first to photograph it, assisted by Aram Vruyr. Around 1880, Ohannes published an album of his photographs in French and in Armenian (rather than in Russian), titled <em>Ruines d’Arménie Ani</em> (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). This album contains some forty stereoscopic pairs of photographs. Allegedly, the Russian authorities banned the circulation of this album, suspecting that it fanned nationalist hopes among Armenians. Some of these photographs were reprinted in London’s The Graphic on September 26, 1885. They were also included in the “Vue de Caucase” series shortly after, apparently sold for a more touristic use. Soon after photographing Ani, Kurkdjian left the Russian Empire, lived in Europe and eventually settled on the Island of Java, current-day Indonesia, where he created a highly successful and long-lived photographic studio. — Ohannes Kurkdjian

Aram Vruyr, from Constantinople by birth, made a name for himself as a theater director and actor in Tiflis (Tbilisi), especially with the works of Western Armenian playwright and satirist Hagop Baronian. He also developed an interest in photography and was an apprentice to Ohannes Kurkdjian. Later, Aram Vruyr served as a photographer during Nikolai Marr’s excavations in Ani from 1904 to 1917 and assisted in the discovery of the Church of St. Gregory (Gagkashen). Ara Vruyr, the oldest son of Aram Vruyr, was also a photographer of monuments. But his younger brother, Artashes Vruyr, made a greater contribution as a photographer of various archeological expeditions, including with Marr in Ani. In 1964, Artashes Vruyr published the memoir <em>Անիում (In Ani)</em> in Soviet Armenia, which included photographs, and was republished in a supplemented form in 1979. The photographs by Aram and Artashes Vruyr appeared in various forms and contexts, ranging from scholarly publications, e.g., the <em>Ani Series</em> published by Marr, to popular ones such as stereographs and postcards. While continuing to be driven by the desire to protect Armenian national heritage, the images taken by the Vruyrs played an important role in shaping the Soviet reception of this heritage. — The Vruyrs

In addition to publishing the <em>Ani Series</em> and lecturing within and beyond the Russian Empire, Nikolai Marr and his colleagues issued bilingual postcards, which popularized the discoveries made during the excavations in Ani and helped raise funds for them. With these postcards, images of the ruined city started circulating even more easily. They allowed senders to scribble personal notes, thereby embedding the postcards’ visual and textual content within varied yet singular social contexts. Taken by the Vruyrs in many cases, the photographs of these postcards strive to capture detail with precision, in the spirit of scholarship. Being meticulously staged, and including people, they also exude entertaining qualities crucial in captivating their senders and receivers. Designed to travel far and wide thanks to the modern postal service, these postcards, carrying layered indexical value, helped generate a highly personalized global memory of the ruins of Ani. — Ani Postcards

Two guestbooks kept in Ani during Nikolai Marr’s excavations have reached us. One of them bears the handwritten title in Armenian: <em>Տպավորությունների Մատյան Անիի Պատմա-Հնագիտական Հուշարձանները Այցելողների 1901-1912 թթ</em> [Book of Impressions of the Visitors of Ani’s Historico-Archeological Monuments]. The second guestbook has a Russian title: <em>Книга записи впечатлений посетителей города Ани</em> [Notebook of the Impressions of the Visitors of the City of Ani], and contains later entries. While much of the cultural production from Ani is of the highly official, serenely scholarly and artistically refined kind, the guestbooks kept at the site open a unique window into the global vernacular afterlives generated by its ruins. These guestbooks contain entries in various languages and drawings from people of diverse walks of life – local Armenians, including students, diaspora Armenians writing in broken Armenian or in another language, and non-Armenian visitors. Inscribing expectations and emotional states conditioned by perceptions and education, their at once highly personal and public notes straddle epigraphic, epistolary and poetic genres. They frequently overflow into grandiosity, taking the form of a melancholic meditation on the Armenian as well as universally human condition. — Ani Guestbooks

The Armenian periodical <em>Khatabala</em>, appearing in Tiflis (Tbilisi) with interruptions during the first three decades of the 20th century, like its Azerbaijani analogue <em>Mollah Nasreddin</em>, was an important outlet of social and political grievances, transcending, oftentimes, narrow ethnic concerns. <em>Khatabala</em>’s caricatures periodically turned to ruins as motif and theme, and at times explicitly engaged with the ruined city of Ani to raise incisive questions about social mores, cultural shifts, and political processes. In doing so, the periodical’s treatment of Ani markedly differs from the admiration that it tended to generate otherwise. — Ani Caricatures

Sergey Merkurov was born in Alexandropol (Gyumri) in a Greek-Armenian family. He studied in Kiev, in Switzerland with the sculptor Adolf Meyer, and in Germany, before joining the August Rodin studio in Paris. In 1907, he returned to Armenia, upon the request of the Armenian Apostolic Church, to take the death mask of Catholicos Mkrtich Khrimian. It is probably during this period that he visited Ani. Having settled in the Soviet Union, Merkurov became an outstanding monumentalist sculptor, giving his works philosophical depth, as in the statues of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Lev Tolstoi, while continuing to produce post-mortem masks of remarkable people such as Lenin. His cousin George Gourdjieff (c. 1866-1877-1949) was an influential spiritual teacher and composer who visited Ani in his youth and was inspired by the ruined city. — Sergey Merkurov

Jaroslav Tkadlec was born in Vienna, trained in engineering and lived in Prague, becoming the head of the Prague Steamship Company in 1916. He travelled extensively across Europe, Asia and Africa, and took numerous photographs on the road. In 1894, he was in the Caucasus, traversing the Georgian Military Road which connected Vladikavkaz to Tiflis (Tbilisi). He went further south, passing through the ruins of Ani and visiting Mount Ararat, Nakhijevan, and Lake Sevan. Tkadlec’s photographs exhibit a precise and somewhat detached fascination with landscape, treating people less as ethnographic types and more as in dialogue with their natural environment. — Jaroslav Tkadlec

This photograph captures many prominent participants of the archeological expeditions in Ani led by Nikolai Marr. From left to right: first row: P. Knyagnitski, Ashkharbek Kalantar, Yu. Strume, Yu. Smirnov; second row: Nikoghayos Adonts, V. Beridze, Nikolai Marr, A. Andronikov, Aram Vruyr, Joseph (Hovsep) Orbeli. — Ani, 1912

Gevorg Bashinjaghian (1857-1925) was born in the Georgian town of Sighnaghi in the Kakheti province. From 1878 to 1883, he studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Bashinjaghian traveled extensively in the Caucasus and Europe, settled in Tiflis and exhibited work across the Russian Empire. From 1899 to 1901, he lived in Paris, where he continued painting. Bashinjaghian began working on a series of works depicting the ruins of Ani towards the end of the 19th century. — Gevorg Bashinjaghian

Arshak Fetvadjian (1866-1947) produced remarkably vivid watercolor paintings of the ruins of Ani at the turn of the 20th century. In the 1910s, a small booklet of these watercolors was published in Vienna. From Trabizond by birth and educated in Constantinople, Fetvadjian participated in the Ani excavations led by Nikolai Marr. Having worked and exhibited in Vienna and St. Petersburg, Fetvadjian was an important Armenian painter of his generation, designing the currency and postage stamps of the First Republic of Armenia. His prolific output also encompassed other Armenian medieval monuments such as the Church of St. Sargis (also known as the Tekor Basilica) in the Kars region. From 1922 until his passing, he lived in Boston, in a somewhat isolated environment. — Arshak Fetvadjian

<em>Ani, La Città dalle Mille Chiese</em> (Ani, The City of Thousand Churches, 4:55 min, 1911) is to our knowledge the first film shot in the ruined capital. It was directed by the Italian Giovanni Vitrotti (1882-1966) and produced by the Società Anonima Ambrosio in Turin. Remarkable for its sharp quality and staging, with shots of men meandering in and posing with the ruins, this silent film was part of a travelogue series and is an example of the intertwining of commercial interest and Orientalist fascination with the emerging film-form. — The First Film of Ani

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Timeline

5th-8th centuries
The region of Shirak, where Ani is located, was part of the royal Armenian Arshakuni dynasty's holdings. After the demise of the Arshakuni kingdom in 428, it passed to one of the dynasty's offshoots, the Kamsarakan family. Kamsarakans ruled the area until 771-772, when they too had to leave it after the challenging circumstances of anti-Arab rebellions, selling the province to the Armenian Bagratid dynasty.
884/885
Bagratid Armenian kingdom was established; historians often refer to the period of prosperity that followed as Armenia's Silver Age.
961
Ashot III the Merciful (r. 952-977) moved the capital of the Bagratid Kingdom to Ani; this act served as an impetus for a protracted phase of development for the city.
964
King Ashot III the Merciful built the first set of walls around Ani.
978
King Smbat II the Conqueror (r. 977-989) completed a second ring of walls for the city, making it more secure for the accumulation of riches. Ani flourished, reaching a population of 100,000 and earning the moniker the City of One Thousand and One Churches.
989-1020
King Gagik I ruled the Bagratid kingdom. He commissioned the construction of the Church of St. Gregory at Ani, also known as Gagkashen, imitating the famous 7th-century Zvartnots Cathedral.
992-1045
Ani was the center of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
1000
The Cathedral of Ani was completed by the renowned architect Trdat, who also repaired the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople after the 989 earthquake.
1045
King Gagik II (r. 1041/2-1045) handed over Ani to the Byzantine Empire.
1064
Ani was devastated by the Seljuks led by Alp Arslan, followed by an earthquake.
1065
King Gagik-Abbas handed to the Byzantine Empire the Bagratid Kingdom of Vananda, with Kars as its center, which was soon overtaken by Turkic forces. The Armenian kingdom of Lori, with fortresses in Tavush and Mtsnaberd, retained some form of independence until the 13th century.
1071
Seljuk army defeated Byzantine forces at the Battle of Manzikert. As an indirect result, Ani came under the control of various Muslim rulers.
1072-1198
Shaddadids ruled Ani: Minuchihr was emir of Ani until 1110 and showed some degree of tolerance towards Armenians; his son Abul-Aswar less so, hoisting a crescent on the Ani Cathedral.
1124
David Bagrationi, King of Georgia, captured Ani, forced Abul-Aswar out, put a cross back on the Ani Cathedral and left the city to the Armenian Orbelian family. Feeling unable to defend the city, the Orbelians soon negotiated its handover to Fadlun, son of Abul-Aswar.
1131
Another devastating earthquake struck the region.
1161
Georgians captured Ani for the second time, possibly supported by an internal revolt; this time the city was handed over to the Armenian Mkhargrdzeli (Zakarian) dynasty.
1164
Ani was surrendered to the Azerbaijani emir Eldiguz, who handed it over to Fadlun's brother Shahanshah.
1174
Georgians took Ani for the third time, but two years later returned it to Shahanshah.
1198
Ani was taken by the Zakarian brothers, Zakare and Ivane, ending the Shaddadid control of the city for good.
1198-1236
Ani was under Georgian sovereignty, ruled by the Zakarians. During this period, it prospered once again, as evidenced by the building of the Church of St. Gregory of Tigran Honents (named after its wealthy patron) and the city's successful resistance to Muslim incursions.
1236-1304
Mongols sacked Ani, leading to an exodus of the population from the city to Crimea, Poland, Italy, and other destinations. The city continued its existence under Mongol rule, although its life was marked by unrest and deteriorating conditions.
c. 1394
Tamerlane laid waste to the region, including Ani.
early 17th century
Persian Shah Abbas forced Armenians from the Araxes River Valley to settle in Isfahan, further weakening Armenian presence in the region.
17th century
Armenian intellectuals and men of religion, Simeon Lehatsi (1584-1639) and Eremia Chelebi Kyumurjian (1637-1695), wrote about the ruins of Ani in their travelogues.