Armenian Reporter - 17/11/2007
Arts and culture section
Maps: An inch from paradise
Armenia and its neighbors over the millennia, A cartographic exploration and adventure
by Gregory Lima
*
Under review
* Rouben Galichian, Historic Maps of Armenia: The Cartographic
Heritage. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004. 238 pages, 28 x 31 cm. Also
published by Printinfo in Armenian and Russian in 2005.
* Rouben Galichian, Countries South of the Caucasus in Medieval
Mapping. Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. In English, with an Armenian
translation of the complete text in an accompanying booklet. London:
Gomidas Institute and Yerevan: Printinfo Art Books, 2007, 208+92
pages, 28 x 22 cm. Distributed by Garod Books: info@garodbooks.com
*
In the oldest description of the world to survive the tumult of the
barbarians of every age -- the most ancient map yet discovered -- a
clay tablet dating from the sixth century BCE -- the known world is
divided into three parts, of which one part is Armenia.
At the center of this map is Babylon. Above Babylon, to the east is
Assyria, and between Babylon and Assyria, above, is Armenia. The map
includes the Armenian mountains that are the source of the River
Euphrates, which is shown flowing down through Babylon into the
marshlands and into the Persian Gulf. The record shows seven cities.
One of these primeval cities is in Armenia.
This is the map at the start of an adventure in history that is
Rouben Galichian's sober, scholarly, readable Historic Maps of Armenia
-- as handsome and absorbing a coffee-table book as you could want as
your own.
In studying the maps the old adage comes to mind that the shortest
pencil is more reliable than the longest memory. Jot it down if it
must be remembered -- but remember where you jotted it down -- and
pray that where you have put it is still standing tomorrow. Over time,
only a part of our written records manage to survive, but of those
that do some are priceless. Authentic maps that have survived are a
vital fragment of the human heritage, part of the recovered record
made with pointed rocks, styli, pencils, or pens that over the
millennia have preserved the memory of humankind.
Rouben Galichian has had a lifelong passion for maps, collecting
maps and consulting map repositories the world over for the
cartographic heritage of the earth as measured and depicted over
successive ages. "They constitute vital and intricate elements at the
heart of serious history, science, and international trade," he
explained. Within his studies of more than 30 years, he has focused
with a particularly sharp eye on the region of which Armenia is a
part.
His latest publication, Countries South of the Caucasus in Medieval
Maps: Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, was recently launched in the
main hall of Yerevan's hallowed repository of manuscripts, the
Matenadaran, where we sat over an open copy of the book. Seven maps
from its collection are included.
The stated purpose of this latest publication is to acquaint
interested readers with historical records of the region as the
European Union steadily expands its borders eastward to include some
of the ex-Soviet Union countries and possibly Turkey, with over 97
percent of territory in what is geographically known as Asia Minor.
Should Turkey succeed in joining, the European Union on its
southeast will share common borders with Syria, Iraq, Iran,
Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia.
It is timely, he said, to acquaint the general public in Europe and
elsewhere with the region as revealed in the maps that have survived
the ages. They tell a story often more wonderful in terms of fantasies
than many of us may realize. At the same time, on a factual basis, the
maps give a historical account that is at sharp variance with the
official histories of certain so-called academics and historians.
Rouben Galichian draws three major conclusions from this extensive
collection of maps coming from the medieval Latin Christian,
Byzantine, Islamic, Syriac, and Armenian traditions that he brought
together from relevant manuscripts in the world's libraries and
museums:
1. In antiquity, before what is called the Common Era, the country
now known as Georgia included the territories then known as
Colchis-Imeritia-Abkhazia, Kartli-Iberia, and Mingrelia. The union of
these territories during the eleventh to twelfth centuries created
what we know as Georgia. The name Georgia appears on maps of the
thirteenth century, and Georgia now occupies more or less the same
territory as it did during the middle ages.
2. In medieval times the territory occupied by today's Republic of
Azerbaijan was called Albania (Aran in Persian, and Aghvank in
Armenian). This Caucasian Albania was a Christian country. It became
Christian in the fourth century, in the same general period as
Armenia, and for centuries was well represented as one of the
brotherhood of Christian communities in Jerusalem. It disappeared over
the ninth to tenth centuries. Much later the territories were divided
into the khanates of Daghestan, Derbend, Shirwan, Talish, and others.
"As a result of political scheming, the name 'Azerbaijan,' which for
over two millennia belonged to the northwestern Iranian province
across the river Araks was given this territory. This occurred in
1918," he said. Today's Azerbaijan occupies the territory of Albania
with additional adjoining areas. The renaming of the old Albania as
Azerbaijan, Galchian said, "was a ploy by the Pan-Turkic movements to
unite the areas from Turkey to Central Asia as a continuous belt of
Turkic-speaking tribes and separate the real Azerbaijan from Iran."
3. The geographical location of Armenia has always been shown as
being south of Georgia and Albania. It extended across the Araks River
southwestward, past Lake Van, and as far as the Armenian Plateau or
Highlands extends. "This is where the indigenous Armenians lived in
the first millennium before the Common Era until 1915. Armenia lost
its independence in the eleventh century and Western Armenia was
successively ruled by the Seljuks, Mongols, and Ottomans, who in 1915
ethnically cleansed the territory of its indigenous people." The
result was that Armenia, which for some 2,600 years occupied the
territory of the Armenian plateau, is now wedged between Iran, Turkey,
Georgia, and Azerbaijan, occupying about 10 percent of what
historically was known as Armenia.
* Like a stamp collection
Galichian provides a wealth of data that is an invitation to further
studies relating to maps and to the cultural developments of the
periods in which the maps were made. Like stamps, maps may be
interesting in themselves as artwork, but they were made to provide
specific information. Again like stamps they were meant to be put to
use. In the case of maps the use was to depict the world in whole or
in part as it was known by geographers, merchants, travelers,
fabulists, and sometimes as dreamed up by theologians.
Maps in very olden times were usually simple in design: if you want
to go from here to there, follow this line and pass this and that.
There could be rivers to cross or mountains to climb. Then more
complicated maps were created that could include a wider variety of
information. Climate zones were traced as five successive lateral
bands, with the hottest on the bottom, south, with scorching sun, and
two zones north where you were lucky if it wasn't as dark as night and
you didn't freeze to death. Geographical studies and cartography
peaked in the ancient Greek period with Ptolemy, who lived between 90
and 168 C.E. His Geographia was in use in Europe until the end of the
16th century.
Galichian tells us in the medieval period, from the sixth century
on, the main focus of the map makers was on religious cartography. The
Church Fathers who sought to direct what information was available to
the population were not concerned with maps that might get you to
India; they were more interested in getting you to heaven. Geographic
exactness had to give way to the interpretation of the world according
to scripture.
In medieval Christian cartography, the world was depicted as a disk
surrounded by the seas, with Jerusalem at the center and Eden at the
eastern edge. They included Armenia, sometimes with the main Armenian
rivers, the Euphrates, Tigris, and Araks, and almost always Mount
Ararat with Noah's Ark on top.
Sometimes on the maps that show paradise on earth, the cartographer
may slightly push Armenia to the side to make room for a drawing of
Adam and Eve. In one such map Armenia surrounds, or at most is located
an inch from paradise. Adam and Eve are depicted so close that had
their children remained put, they could have applied for Armenian
citizenship.
* Ask enough questions
On still another map, what an inch it was! All the entrances to the
Garden are blocked by armed angels, and just living in the
neighborhood and having an Armenian bloodline was not likely to alone
have been good enough to let you through the pearly gates.
Perhaps you could travel on the best of those maps, but it would not
have been easy. Still, with a good sense of direction, and as an old
Persian proverb has it, "If you ask enough questions you can get to
China."
Meanwhile, on the portolan sea charts used for navigational purposes
and generally showing only coastal towns, if they included the area of
Asia Minor, then Armenia and the Armenian highland and some of its
cities are shown, even though Armenia had no access to open seas.
Galichian suggests that the name Armenia was known to the Genoan and
Catalan portolan makers through Armenian merchants who plied their
trade all over Europe and parts of Asia as well.
Regarding Armenians and trade in Asia, my own research indicates the
existence of a small Armenian-controlled merchant navy in the Indian
Ocean and Persian Gulf prior to the coming of the European sea powers.
The Armenian vessels involved a large gamble as they were imperiled by
Persian Gulf pirates that the later European warships were far
better-armed to handle.
By the 10th century Islamic geographers began to create maps with no
religious restrictions, and in their attempts to depict the world they
left out religious and mythological content. Galichian reprints the
10th-century geographer Istakhri's map of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and
Aran (Albania).
The Islamic maps of the region show both Armenia Major and Armenia
Minor. In a commentary on one such 14th-century map, the geographer al
Mustowfi declares, "There are two Armenias, Armenia Major and Armenia
Minor. Armenia Minor was not under Persian rule. Armenia Major was
under the rule of the Persian king and paid annual taxes to Persia
equal to 3 Toumans per mustache." If elsewhere at tax time people
might seek clever accountants, this can make you think in Armenia
Major it could probably have been a very busy time for barbers with
sharp razors.
More seriously, every family must pay taxes to defend their land's
way of life, but it is fair only when for every moustache the three
toumans is not a disguised form of slavery but an affordable and just
price. Was it so? These are the kind of questions that can arise in
this study that may prompt you into enquiries further afield. And then
there are place names, some of which may have special resonance for
the reader. For this reviewer Galichian's discussion on the placement
of the Caspian Gates on a series of maps had a particular personal
interest.
* The fortified watermelon patch
Behind the Caspian Gates was a little-known wall built by the captured
Roman Army of the Emperor Valerian. It emerged from the Caspian Sea
and went on beyond the pass in the mountains of the gates to some
undetermined length. It was a massive protection against the
incursions of the Turkic tribes. Long ago I had visited, studied, and
written about this almost unknown wall. Like the Wall of China it
failed to halt the invaders, and in this case was forgotten, many of
its huge, Roman-style red bricks recycled elsewhere in the
countryside, the remains remembered by the local Turkoman tribal
people as the Red Snake. One day with the archaeologist David
Stronach, we found the terminus of what was once a great if futile
wall. It ended in what had become a very large, elevated watermelon
patch. It was a significant archaeological discovery. Sometimes proud
works fall to lizards prancing on broken stones, and sometimes a whole
era of history can end with watermelons. (See Gregory Lima, "The
Fortified Watermelon Patch," The Flame, 1979.)
Returning from memories to Galichian's books, Islamic manuscripts
and maps over the centuries detail towns and cities attributed to
Armenia. In these maps the cities of Van, Arjesh, Vostan, Bitlis,
Khlat, Manazkert, and Erzerum are all in Armenia. "These details are
also given in the first geography manuscript prepared by the Ottoman
geographer Ketib Chelebi," Galichian said. "In the Ottoman maps and
books the name of Armenia appears in the area of Van to Erzerum up to
the middle of the 19th century. Then the name diminishes and finally
disappears to be replaced in later maps by 'Eastern Anatolia,'
literally meaning 'east of east'." To my mind all that east of east
means is that it is that place that is further on if you go that way.
One of the maps in the Armenian language of fundamental importance
that had been unknown is a 1691 manuscript map that lay unacknowledged
for three centuries in Italy in the Library of the University of
Bologna. Done with pens and watercolors, it is made up of many sheets
glued on canvas and it shows Armenian churches, monasteries, and
sanctuaries in the Ottoman Empire. It was made in Constantinople by
the Armenian scholar Eremia Celebi Keomicurean. It is now the subject
of a monograph published in 2000 in Italian by the University of
Bologna Armenian language and history professor Gabriella Uluhogian.
Through toponymic and philological analysis of Armenian places of
worship, she was able to put together the institutional and
territorial structure of Armenia in that period.
What Rouben Galichian has achieved in these two volumes is to stir
the dusty archives the world over to bring into our hands a rare
treat: millennia of primary historical sources that do more than
augment what we may already know. The information in these historical
maps adds knowledge to the most learned among us, usually in
interesting and unsuspected ways. Maps have never been more
fascinating than when Rouben Galichian shows you what he has found in
the British Library, Oxford or Cambridge, Berlin, Paris, in the
Vatican or the Matenadaran, and with scholarly restraint helps you to
understand and appreciate what you see.
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