Kirakos Gandzakets‘i, as a Mongol Prisoner

Abstract

Armenian Historian Kirakos Gandzakets‘i was captured by Mongol noyan Molar during the first wave of Mongol conquest of the Caucasus. He was in captivity for about a year. This gave him a certain understanding of the history and religion of the Mongols as well as some knowledge of Mongolian.On Molar’s orders, Kirakos was taken to serve the Mongols’ secretarial needs, writing and reading letters.In this paper I argue that the Armenian source of Kirakos Gandzakets‘i is a first-hand history on the early Mongols in the Caucasus, and the Mongolian vocabulary that Kirakos gives in his work ranks among the earliest Mongolian glossaries in non-Mongol sources.