Amaras Monastery () is an

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

monastery near the village of

Sos SOS is a Morse code distress signal (), used internationally, originally established for maritime use. In formal notation SOS is written with an overscore line (), to indicate that the Morse code equivalents for the individual letters of "SOS" a ...

, in the region of

Nagorno-Karabakh Nagorno-Karabakh (, ; ) is a region in Azerbaijan, covering the southeastern stretch of the Lesser Caucasus mountain range. Part of the greater region of Karabakh, it spans the area between Lower Karabakh and Syunik Province, Syunik. Its ter ...

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

. It was a prominent religious and educational center in medieval Armenia.

denies the monastery's Armenian Apostolic heritage, instead falsely referring to it as " Caucasian Albanian".

History

4th–5th centuries

According to medieval chroniclers Faustus Byuzand and Movses Kaghankatvatsi, St. Gregory the Illuminator, the patron saint and evangelizer of Armenia, founded the Amaras Monastery at the start of the fourth century. Amaras was the burial place of St. Gregory the Illuminator's grandson, St. Grigoris (died in 338). A tomb built for his remains survives under the apse of the nineteenth-century Church of St. Grigoris. At the beginning of the fifth century

Mesrop Mashtots Mesrop Mashtots (; , ' 362February 17, 440 AD) was an Armenians, Armenian Linguistics, linguist, composer, Christian theology, theologian, Politician, statesman, and Hymnology, hymnologist. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic C ...

, the inventor of the

Armenian alphabet The Armenian alphabet (, or , ) or, more broadly, the Armenian script, is an alphabetic writing system developed for Armenian and occasionally used to write other languages. It is one of the three historical alphabets of the South Caucasu ...

, established in Amaras the first school in Artsakh that used his script.

Destruction and restoration (13th–19th centuries)

The monastery was plundered in the thirteenth century by the

Mongols Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China ( Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family o ...

, destroyed in 1387 during

Timur Timur, also known as Tamerlane (1320s17/18 February 1405), was a Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire in and around modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia, becoming the first ruler of the Timurid dynasty. An undefeat ...

's invasion, and demolished again in the sixteenth century. It underwent radical restructuring in the second quarter of the seventeenth century when the surviving defensive walls were constructed. Amaras was later abandoned, and in the first half of the nineteenth century the monastery was used as a frontier fortress by Russian imperial troops. The

Armenian Apostolic Church The Armenian Apostolic Church () is the Autocephaly, autocephalous national church of Armenia. Part of Oriental Orthodoxy, it is one of the most ancient Christianity, Christian churches. The Armenian Apostolic Church, like the Armenian Catholic ...

reclaimed the monastery in 1848. The monastery's church appears to have been severely damaged during the period of military occupation, to the extent that a new church had to be constructed on the site of the old one. This new church, dedicated to St. Grigoris, was built in 1858 and paid for by the Armenians of the city of

Shushi Shusha (, ) or Shushi () is a city in Azerbaijan, in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Situated at an altitude of 1,400–1,800 metres (4,600–5,900 ft) in the Karabakh mountains, the city was a mountain resort in the Soviet Union, Soviet ...

. During the 2023 Nagorno-Karabakh clashes the monastery was reported to fall under Azerbaijani control on 20 September 2023.

Tomb of St. Grigoris

St. Grigoris was originally buried at the eastern end of the now-vanished St. Gregory Church. Archeologists think that the eastern entrance of the tomb, which is unusual for traditional church architecture, is based on the

Church of the Holy Sepulchre The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, is a fourth-century church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, Old City of Jerusalem. The church is the seat of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchat ...

in Jerusalem. In 489 Vachagan III the Pious, king of Caucasian Albania, renovated Amaras, restoring the church and constructing a new chapel for the remains of St. Grigoris. In later centuries, a church was built over this chapel-tomb. Under the altar of the St. Grigoris church is a tomb chamber, reached at its western end by twin flights of steps. A blocked passage at its eastern end indicates that there was originally an entrance from that direction as well. The barrel-vaulted tomb chamber is 1.9 m wide, 3.75 m long, and 3.5 m high. The upper half of the structure originally projected 1.5 to 2 m above ground level, but it is now entirely underground. Carved details date it stylistically to the 5th century.M. Hasratyan, "Amaras", Yerevan 1990.

Gallery

Grigoris mausoleum Artsakh Sos 03.jpg, Sarcophagus of St. Grigoris in the funeral crypt Վանական համալիր «Ամարաս» 7 (31).jpg, Protective walls Վանական համալիր «Ամարաս» 7 (27).jpg, Courtyard Amaras (12).JPG, Monastery vaults Amaras 19.JPG, Church of St. Grigoris interior

References

External links

Amaras Monastery, official site

About Amaras Monastery
{{authority control, state=expanded Armenian Apostolic monasteries in Azerbaijan Christian monasteries established in the 4th century 4th-century churches Khojavend District Martuni Province