Hasan-Jalalyan

With the surrender of Ani in 1045 and Kars in 1064, the final independent Armenian state in historic Armenia, the Bagratuni kingdom, was dissolved and incorporated into the domains of the Byzantine Empire. However, despite foreign domination of the region, which became more pronounced after the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, Armenians in eastern Armenia were able to maintain autonomy in the two mountainous strongholds in Syunik and Lori and in the principality of Khachen.[14] From the early to mid-12th century, combined Georgian and Armenian armies were successful in pushing the Turkic groups out of eastern Armenia, thereby establishing a period of relative peace and prosperity until the appearance of the Mongols in 1236.[15]

Khachen had once been a part of Syunik until numerous Turkic invasions severed it from the rest of the kingdom. The reign of the Hasan-Jalalyan family was concentrated around the Terter and the Khachenaget rivers. Hasan-Jalal's birth date is unknown․ His reign began in 1214 and ended with his death sometime between 1261 and 1262 in Qazvin. His domain encompassed both Artsakh and the surrounding Armenian regions.[10] When his father Vakhtank died in 1214, Hasan-Jalal inherited his lands and took up residence in a castle at Akana in Jraberd.[16] He was addressed with the titles tagavor (king; Armenian: թագավոր) or inknakal (autocrat or absolute ruler; ինքնակալ) but took the official title of "King of Artsakh and Balk" when he married the daughter of the final king of Dizak-Balk.[17] The medieval Armenian historian Kirakos Gandzaketsi extolled Hasan-Jalal in his work History of Armenia, showering him with praise for his piety and devotion to Christianity:

He was...a pious and God-loving man, mild and meek, merciful, and a lover of the poor, striving in prayers and entreaties like one who lived in the desert. He performed matins and vespers unhindered, no matter where he might be, like a monk; and in memory of the Resurrection of our Savior, he spent Sunday without sleeping, in a standing vigil. He was very fond of the priests, a lover of knowledge, and a reader of the divine Gospels.[18]

The Gandzasar monastery in present-day Martakert, which went on to serve as the family sepulcher and religious See, was completed in 1240.

A further testament to this devotion included Hasan-Jalal's commissioning of the Gandzasar Monastery. Construction of the monastery began in 1216 and lasted until 1238. On July 22, 1240, amid great celebration during Vardavar (Feast of the Transfiguration) celebrations and in the presence of nearly 700 priests including Nerses, the Catholicos of Albania, the church was consecrated. The monastery went on to become the residence and sepulcher of the family as well as the residence of the catholicos; beginning in the fifteenth century, the family monopolized control over the seat of Catholicos itself, which would thereon pass down from uncle to nephew. Hasan-Jalal's son Hovhannes VII is considered to be the first to have established this practice when he became the Catholicos whereas his nephew, also named Hovhannes, became the second.[19]

Despite his Christian faith, Muslim influence in the region had pervaded and influenced the culture and customs of the Christians living in Georgia and Armenia, especially after the Seljuk Turks invaded the Caucasus. Byzantine art scholar Anthony Eastmond, for example, notes that "many of the outward manifestations of [Hasan-Jalal's] rule were presented through Islamic customs and titles, most notably in his depiction on his principal foundation of Gandzasar."[20] The image of Hasan-Jalal on the drum of Gandzasar's dome has him sitting cross-legged, which Eastmond remarks was a "predominant device for depicting power at the Seljuq court."[21] Hasan-Jalal's name also betrayed Muslim influence: as was the fashion of the time, many Armenians adopted Arabic patronymics (kunya) that lost any "connection with original Armenian names," the Russian orientalist Vladimir Minorsky noted.[22] Hasan-Jalal's Armenian name was Haykaz but the Arabic words in his name, in fact, described his person: thus, Hasan meant handsome; Jalal, grand; Dawla, wealth and governance.[23]

Gandzasar served as a scriptorium, and was where the first completed Haysmavurk (Synaxarion), a calendar collection of short lives of saints and accounts of important religious events, was completed in Armenia. Medieval chroniclers attributed the production of the new and better organized Haysmavurk to Hasan-Jalal, who asked Father Israel (Ter-Israel), a disciple of an important Armenian medieval philosopher and Artsakh native known as Vanakan Vardapet, to undertake the work. The Haysmavurk was further developed by Kirakos Gandzaketsi. Ever since the Haysmavurk ordered by Hasan-Jalal became known as "Synaxarion of Ter-Israel"; it was mass printed in Constantinople in 1834.[24]

The remains of Hasan-Jalal's fortress of Khokhanaberd, as seen from Gandzasar, are on the mountain on the left.

In 1236, the Ilkhanate Mongol armies invaded the Caucasus. Prior to them entering Khachen, Hasan Jalal and his people were able to take refuge at Ishkhanberd (located directly south of Gandzasar; also known by its Persian name of Khokhanaberd). Given its formidable location atop a mountain, the Mongols chose not to besiege the fortress and sued for negotiations with Hasan-Jalal: they exchanged his loyalty and military service to the Mongol Empire in return for some of the immediate lands adjacent to Khachen that they had conquered.[18] In 1240–1242, Hasan Jalal struck coins of common Mongol types in Khachen on the mints of "Qarabāgh" (in Khokhanaberd) and "Lajīn" (in Havkakhaghats berd).[25]

Feeling the need to preserve his power, Hasan-Jalal twice undertook a journey to Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol empire, where he was able to obtain special autonomy rights and privileges for himself and the people under his domain from the ruling khan.[10] Despite this arrangement, the Mongols viewed many of the people of the region with contempt and taxed them excessively. Arghun Khan, the regional Mongol ostikan at the time, placed so many restrictions against Armenians that it prompted Hasan-Jalal in 1256 to travel to the capital once more to protest against the encroachments upon Catholicos Nerses. In response, Batu Khan drafted a document "guaranteeing freedom for Lord Nerses, Katolikos of Albania, for all his properties and goods, that he be free and untaxed and allowed to travel freely everywhere in the dioceses under his authority, and that no one disobey what he said."[26] Hasan-Jalal also attempted to strengthen his alliances with the Mongols by having his daughter Rhuzukan marry Bora Noyan, the son of a Mongol leader.[27] Relations between Armenians and Mongols deteriorated, however, and the document issued by the khan failed to safeguard Hasan-Jalal's rights.[27]

Finally, in 1260, Hasan-Jalal decided to ally himself with the forces of the Georgian king David Narin, who was leading an insurrection against Mongol rule. He was captured several times by the Mongols yet his family was able to free him by paying a ransom. The insurrection eventually failed and on the orders of Arghun Khan, Hasan-Jalal was arrested once more and taken to Qazvin, (now in Iran). According to Kirakos Ganzaketsi, Rhuzukan appealed to the Hulagu Khan's wife Doquz Khatun, to pressure Arghun to free her father. Upon learning of this, however, Arghun Khan had Hasan-Jalal tortured and finally executed.[10][28] Hasan Jalal's son Atabek sent several of his men to Iran to retrieve his father's dismembered body, which had been tossed into a well. After it was brought back, the body was given a funeral and buried at Gandzasar monastery.[28]

During the Turko-Persian wars of the seventeenth century and eighteenth century, the meliks fiercely resisted and fought back against incursions made by both sides. In the last quarter of the 18th century, they aided the invading imperial Russian armies to help clear the region of both the Turks and Persians. The Hasan-Jalalyans were one of the most prominent of the melik families that took up the cause to liberate the region from foreign control; the foremost among them being Catholicos Yesayi Hasan-Jalalyan (? - 1728).[31] In 1677, Armenian Catholicos Hakob of Julfa had held a secret meeting with the meliks of Karabakh, proposing that a delegation journey to Europe to garner support for the liberation of the region.[32] In 1711, Yesayi, accompanying Israel Ori, traveled to Russia to gather support for the formation of an Armenian army under Peter the Great. Ori, however, died on the way, and Yesayi soon took over as the lead figure of the movement. He continued negotiations with Peter, and in a letter sent to him in 1718, promised the support of a 10–12,000-man Armenian army as well as support from neighboring Georgian forces.[31] His entreaties continued until 1724, when the Treaty of Constantinople (1724) was signed by Peter the Great that gave the Muslim-populated regions in eastern Transcaucasia to Russia and Christian-populated western regions to the Turks. Both had just finished conquering swaths of Safavid territory comprising large parts of the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia while the Safavid realm was disintegrating in a civil war.[33] Russian interest in the Caucasus soon waned after Peter's death in 1725 as its leaders pulled their forces back across the Terek River.[34] The territories gained by Russia in the North and South Caucasus were ceded back to Iran (now led by Nader Shah) per the treaties of Resht and Ganja of 1732 and 1735, respectively.

While the Ottomans temporarily gained the Christian regions of the disintegrating Safavid realm, Yesai was blamed for this failure by some of the leaders of the Armenian army as they were forced to fend for themselves against the Turkish invasions.

From the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, several cadet branches of the Hasan-Jalalyans were established, including the Melik-Atabekyan family, who became the last rulers of the principality of Jraberd. Allahverdi II Hasan-Jalalyan, who died in 1813, was the final melik of Khachen when the Russian Empire gained control of the region in 1805 during the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813.[29] In 1828, following the end of the second Russo-Persian War and the cession of Persia's last territories in the South Caucasus to Russia according to the Treaty of Turkmenchay, the Russians dissolved the Catholicosate of Albania, although a member of the Hasan-Jalalyan family, Balthasar, became Primate of Artsakh, which was tantamount of the position of Catholicos of Albania in all but name.[35]