Bagratid Armenia

Bagratid Armenia was the independent Armenian state founded by Ashot I of the Bagratuni dynasty in the 880s, after nearly two centuries of Arab rule over Greater Armenia under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates. Both of the great powers of the region were too busy to crush the Armenians and preferred a buffer state on their frontier, so Ashot rose as the leading figure of the movement to dislodge the Arabs: the Abbasid caliph recognised him as prince of princes in 862 and as king in 884 or 885. The kingdom stood alongside other Armenian principalities of the period, among them Taron, Vaspurakan, Kars, Khachen and Syunik. Its court moved between Bagaran, Shirakavan and Kars before Ani, chosen by Ashot III, grew into a thriving commercial and cultural centre on the trade road to Trebizond, where architecture, literature and the Armenian Apostolic Church flourished and the money in use was Byzantine and Arab. In the early eleventh century the Byzantine emperor Basil II annexed parts of the south west, Hovhannes-Smbat ceded lands in 1022 and promised that his kingdom would pass to Byzantium, but his successor Gagik II refused to hand over Ani and resisted until Byzantine forces took the city in 1045.