Concerning Four Kings From the Land of ‘Deep Ravines, Dense Forests and Dark Thickets’

Abstract

Between the end of the eighth and the end of the tenth century four princely houses, of both Armenian and Georgian origin, rose on the territory of the ancient kingdom of Caucasian (or Caspian) Albania, or adjacent thereto, all pretending to the title of the lords of Albania. The four kings of whom we shall speak here all belong to a single Armenian house. In Armenian, the rulers of the renewed Albanian polities were designated with the terms that in the Arsacid kingdom of Armenia (66 bce–428 ce) had denoted dynastic rulers and the heads of noble patriarchal families. The claim to the Albanian throne indicates the enduring prestige enjoyed by that Christian kingdom,which had disappeared since c. 510 ce, across the linguistic and the confessional frontiers of the South Caucasus. The name Albania (and its corresponding Armenian and Georgian toponyms) acquired a new meaning in the course of the tenth century to which our story mainly pertains: indeed, since the middle of the ninth century, the Islamic colonisation of the valley of the river Kur had hampered every prospect of joining both its banks under the sceptre of a Christian prince and of thereby restoring the Albanian kingdom within its former boundaries. The new lords of Albania could only pretend to control small portions of its territory split up by the Kur’s broad course; consequently, each faced the necessity of creating new military and economical axes for his domain. The tenth-century Armenian author of the History of the Albanians assumes this fragmentation of the region by narrating twice of the ‘renovation’ of a kingdom in Albania, first on the left bank of the Kur (in 893/4), then on its right bank (c. 968). This renovation, however, had also, according to this author, an antecedent in the person of Sahl Sǝmbatean who in 837/8 had received princely authority from the Caliph’s hands, in recognition of his military feats, to rule over both banks of the Kur ‘in a kingly manner.’ The heroic figure of this prince who – as the History of the Albanians maintains – had once succeeded in reuniting both banks of the main river