Ashot II Bagratuni () was the presiding prince of

Armenia Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia (country), Georgia to the north and Azerbaijan to ...

in 685–690, when the country was contested between the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the ...

and the

Umayyad Caliphate The Umayyad Caliphate or Umayyad Empire (, ; ) was the second caliphate established after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the Rashidun caliphs, was also a member o ...

. Ashot Bagratuni's father was named Biurat or Smbat. Ashot became presiding prince of Armenia in 685, when his predecessor,

Grigor I Mamikonian Grigor I Mamikonian () was the presiding prince of Armenia in 662–685, when the country was under Arab domination. Grigor had been taken prisoner by the Arab governor of Syria, Mu'awiya, along with other Armenian nobles in 654/55, and was kept ...

, was killed fighting against a

Khazar The Khazars ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a nomadic Turkic people who, in the late 6th century CE, established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, an ...

invasion. Ashot managed to repel the invaders. At about the same time, however, as the

was preoccupied by

civil war A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...

, the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

emperor

Justinian II Justinian II (; ; 668/69 – 4 November 711), nicknamed "the Slit-Nosed" (), was the last Byzantine emperor of the Heraclian dynasty, reigning from 685 to 695 and again from 705 to 711. Like his namesake, Justinian I, Justinian II was an ambitio ...

launched an invasion of Armenia; as the Byzantines considered Ashot as too independent and too powerful, they set up a rival presiding prince of their own,

Nerses Kamsarakan Nerseh or Nerses Kamsarakan () was the presiding prince of Armenia in 689–691, backed by the Byzantine Empire. Armenia had been under the suzerainty of the Arab caliphate since the mid-650s, with the exception of a brief period of Byzantine rule ...

. When the Arabs invaded Armenia in turn in 690 to re-establish their control over the country, Ashot confronted them in battle and defeated them, but in the subsequent pursuit he outpaced the main force of his army, and was heavily wounded. The rest of the army caught up and carried him away, only for him to die of his wounds at his residence at Dariunq. Kamsarakan remained as the sole presiding prince until his death in 691; he was succeeded by

Smbat VI Bagratuni Smbat VI Bagratuni (ca. 670 – 726) was a member of the Bagratuni family who was presiding prince of Armenia with interruptions from 691 to the 710s. During his reign, he frequently shifted alliances between the Byzantines, who gave him the title ...

(of a different branch of the family than Ashot) who betrayed the Byzantines and defected to the Arabs in 693, when the Umayyads, victorious in their civil war, invaded Armenia once more.

References

Sources

* * {{S-end 690 deaths 7th-century Christians 7th-century Armenian people 7th-century monarchs in Asia 7th-century people from the Umayyad Caliphate Armenian Christians Ashot 02 Princes of Armenia Vassal rulers of the Umayyad Caliphate Monarchs killed in action People of the Arab–Byzantine wars