The Battle of Avarayr (451)

Causes of the Battle of Avarayr

After the partition of 387, eastern Armenia fell within the Sasanian sphere, and in 428 the Persian court abolished the Armenian monarchy altogether. A Persian official called a marzpan now governed the country. Local power, however, stayed with the great noble houses, the nakharars, who kept their lands, their cavalry and a strong sense of their own rights. On paper Armenia was a province, but in practice it was a partly self-governing society.

The Sasanian state was closely bound to Zoroastrianism, and its ruling class saw religious unity as a guarantee of political loyalty. To Persian officials, Christian Armenia, which shared a faith with the rival Roman Empire, looked like a weak point on a sensitive frontier. Pressure to conform grew steadily through the first half of the fifth century.

In 449 King Yazdegerd II sent an edict ordering the Armenian nobility to give up Christianity and accept Zoroastrian worship. A council of clergy and nobles met at Artashat and replied that they would obey the king in all worldly matters but would not surrender their faith. Their answer, recorded by the historian Yeghishe, states that no one can move them from their belief, neither angels nor men, neither fire nor sword.

The uprising of 450

Some Armenian nobles were summoned to the Persian court and pressured into conforming outwardly, and in 450 resistance broke out into open revolt. Vardan Mamikonian took charge of the Armenian forces. He was head of the family that traditionally held the office of sparapet, or commander in chief. The rebels defended churches, dismantled the Zoroastrian fire temples the authorities had set up, and appealed for help to the Roman Empire and to neighbouring Caucasian rulers.

No help came. The Eastern Roman Empire was busy with its own frontiers and unwilling to start a war with Persia, so it sent no military support. Some Armenian nobles, led by Vasak of Syunik, chose to come to terms with the Persian court, believing that open war would destroy the country. Their decision split the nobility and left Vardan with fewer troops.

Yeghishe presents Vasak as a traitor, and later tradition followed him, but modern historians take a more careful view of the split. The pro-Persian party argued that Armenia could keep its faith through negotiation without risking annihilation, and the eventual settlement suggests their reasoning was not absurd. Looking at both positions helps students see the conflict as a real political dilemma, more complicated than a simple story of loyalty and betrayal.

The battle on the plain

The armies met on 26 May 451 on the plain of Avarayr in the province of Vaspurakan, near the river Tghmut. Yeghishe gives about sixty-six thousand men for the Armenian force and more than two hundred thousand for the Persian army, along with war elephants and the elite Immortals. These figures come from Yeghishe's own narrative, not from any independent count. Robert Thomson's scholarly translation also supports reading them as literary-historical claims. Ancient and medieval troop numbers are often inflated, so no one knows the exact balance of numbers between the two armies.

Before the fighting the priest Ghevond addressed the troops, and Vardan is recorded as telling them that conscious death is immortality. The Armenians attacked in the morning and pressed the Persian centre hard, and for a time the outcome hung in the balance. In the end the Sasanian army's reserves, and above all its elephants, turned the battle. Vardan was killed together with eight other named commanders and a large part of his force.

The Persians held the field, but they had lost heavily and could not follow up quickly. The surviving Armenian nobles and clergy withdrew into the mountains and kept up a guerrilla resistance for decades. What began as a single battle became a long war of attrition that the Sasanian administration could not end.

• Date: 26 May 451, on the plain of Avarayr in Vaspurakan
• Armenian commander: Vardan Mamikonian, sparapet of Armenia
• Persian commander: Mushkan Niusalavurt, under King Yazdegerd II
• Outcome: Persian victory on the field, followed by decades of resistance

Consequences and the Treaty of Nvarsak

Resistance flared again in 481 under Vahan Mamikonian, a nephew of Vardan. This time the Sasanian state was distracted by war on its eastern frontier and by instability at home. After several years of fighting, the Persian king Balash opened negotiations. The result was the Treaty of Nvarsak of 484. It guaranteed Armenians the free practice of Christianity, ended attempts at forced conversion, and restored some of the noble houses' rights.

Soon afterwards Vahan Mamikonian was appointed marzpan of Armenia, so the country was now governed by an Armenian instead of a Persian official. The treaty did not bring back the monarchy, but it secured what the war of 451 had been fought for. In practical terms, Avarayr and the campaigns that followed it succeeded.

Nvarsak was not a peace signed straight after Avarayr. It was the political settlement of the same long conflict. It gave legal protection to the cause the Vardanants movement had fought for, freedom of Christian worship, and restored part of the noble houses' autonomy.

The Armenian Church later canonised Vardan and his companions, and their feast day, Vardanants, is held on the Thursday before Great Lent, usually in February. It is still a major commemoration, marked with church services, school programmes and public ceremonies, and Armenian boys have been named Vardan ever since.

Avarayr in Armenian memory

The main source for the battle is Yeghishe's History of Vardan and the Armenian War, traditionally dated to the fifth century (some scholars place it later) and one of the masterpieces of classical Armenian literature. Yeghishe wrote to explain what the events meant, not to produce a neutral report, so his speeches and figures should be read with that purpose in mind. Even so, he records the political arguments of both sides in unusual detail.

Thanks to Yeghishe, Avarayr became the central image of principled resistance in Armenian culture. Painters, composers and poets have returned to it again and again, and the phrase about conscious death being immortality is quoted far beyond the classroom. The equestrian statue of Vardan Mamikonian in Yerevan is one of the best-known monuments in the city.

For students, Avarayr is a clear case study in how to judge success in history. On the battlefield alone, it was a defeat. Measured by the goal it was fought for, it was the start of a victory that took thirty-three years to complete.