THE ARCHITECT
Toramanian worked with a thousand and one forms of deprivation, for a great and sacred cause, without any expectation of financial gain. During his work, he was faced with an unpleasant incident which left disastrous consequences.
The architect was a very sensitive person; he would become emotional at every single little thing and he found each unpleasant situation very hard to accept. His important, great work frequently required digging around the monuments; he did not allow himself to do anything illegal but also did not want to request permission each time.
Marr was Ani’s lord and master. He had strictly forbidden the removal of even a single stone from Ani. He left objects found in Ani in their place, even though this was against the Imperial law. He thought that excavated objects should stay in Ani: the place they belong to. The imperial law ordered that any archeological valuable found within the borders of the country should be centralized in the empire’s capital city.
The architect had taken on the task of measuring Ani’s walls. In one place, in order to measure the correct height of the wall, it was necessary to remove a few spadesful of soil. This was communicated to Marr with embellishments, alleging that Toramanian was excavating.
Marr was very polite and restrained; he rarely expressed his anger – but when he had an outburst, you had to drop everything and run.
The misinformation made the scientist livid. Toramanian, wounded by Marr’s absurd anger, dropped the metrology of the wall once and for all. And so, we lost that very important component of the metrology of Ani’s urban design.
THE IRON PATRIARCH IN ANI
The visit of the Catholicos of All Armenians, Mateos B to Ani can be considered one of the most important pages in the history of the city of ruins.
After the overthrow of the Red Sultan, the Iron Patriarch, liberated from the harsh claws of exile, festively entered Constantinople, having already been elected the Catholicos of All Armenians by the nation. In St. Petersburg, he visited the Russian Emperor and traveled towards Ejmiatsin, to accept the throne of the Illuminator. However, just like his predecessors, the All Armenian Catholicos deemed it his sacred duty to first visit Ani, the capital of the Armenian princedom, despite its uninhabited condition, and then go to Holy Ejmiatsin.
Ani was awaiting its honorable guest.
A large number of people, from villages and settlements near and far, had gathered in front of Ani’s northern walls.
A big board had been attached to the wall with “Welcome” written in red letters. Salt and bread had been placed on a table in front of the walls. Professor Marr and his workers and laborers were there.
At about 1 o’clock on 25 June 1909, His Holiness arrived in Ani together with his entourage. A large crowd, which had gathered from different villages along the way, followed him and joined the procession.
His Holiness stepped out of the carriage near the northern walls and approached the table where Professor Marr served salt and bread to him and, standing in front of the northern fortifications of the historic city the professor delivered the following speech:
Your Holiness,
Deign and accept with love this salt and bread that I present to you with reverence.
On this site, almost nine centuries after the first noble and precious pontifical visit, I call on you to speak publicly in front of this ruined and vacant building.
May the early arrival of the one chosen by the Armenian nation, the anointment of whom was approved by the Russian Emperor, be welcome by the will of God and may your sweet arrival that gives hope, inspires and advises be welcome for our monuments that are being forgotten. Here is a place, where it is always fitting to think about the virtues of the world’s great people, about the proverb “Alas, my past glories”; however, in this fleeting material life, the splendid material testimonials of their creative souls remain and fill the general knowledge treasury of humanity and the knowledge repositories of Hayk’s children, your spiritual children, with precious gems of eternal truth after being excavated and coming to life through knowledge. I am not preaching this, not at all, but confessing and testifying. There is no need for a translator or interpreter for that skillful wisdom here.
As you will soon see with your own eyes, Ani’s breathless stones – crowded, multiliscript and multilingual – are more beautiful than breathing, living doctors of earning.
And supreme Ani, visual Ani, viewable Ani exists, as a result of the dead physical Ani.
The fact that you overcame all difficulties and decided to visit this former capital city, currently deceased and deserted, strengthens our hope that Ani exists not only in our minds but also in our reality.
May your visit be Welcome.
Long live his Holiness.
In front of the walls of the capital city the old classical language of the Armenian world was heard, the beautiful melody of which was merging with the immense structures of the city’s fortifications, giving them a more noble and glorious aspect.
His Holiness replied to Professor Marr by saying,
“Yes, dear professor, these ruins that are silently standing here remind the Armenian man about its glorious and happy past… they remind us of those times when Armenian life was also victorious and perfect.
You, dear professor, who has dedicated all of your energy and love to these ruins, are rendering an immense service to science with your excavations. With your excavations you reveal the complete picture of the past glorious life of a nation, unfortunate and exiled. You show the Armenian nation the glorious past of its ancestors.
I dreamt of seeing these ruins my entire life and I saw them, and in this moment I am happy.
Continue your fecund and fertile work, honest Marr.”
His Holiness was emotional; he was standing in front of the empty ruins of the capital city…
Afterwards, His Holiness, accompanied by professor Marr visited Ani’s antiques repository and stone repository and then the Mother temple (cathedral); Prkich; Gregory the Illuminator; Arakeltos; Gagkashen, and other monuments…
The next day His Holiness bid farewell to the residents of Ani and left for Khoshavank.
PHENOMENA
Hovsep Orbeli was one of the great scientist’s exemplary and beloved apprentices. He worked tirelessly and actively in Ani city under the leadership of his respected teacher and expanded his mind and knowledge in the broad sphere of those studies and researches. The colorful images of the multilingual remnants of the material culture and the parchment pages of the history of the sacred city were being stamped on his mind and into his soul.
The future great scientist worked in Ani’s archaeological depository, totally absorbed. This structure, built by Ashot Voghormats, is an antiquity in itself. It is perched on the right edge of the Akhuryan gorge and with its tall and wide windows looks down at the turbid waters of the river that winds and coils like a snake in the deep, sinuous gorge.
It is nightfall. The silence is heartbreaking; only the dull sound of the flow of the river can be heard from the abyssal gorge. While there, in the corner of the columned depository hall stands the statue of Gagik I, the great king of the Bagratuni dynasty with the symbol of Christianity on his chest, in a posture of exaltation, his hands extended horizontally, wearing the long royal coat, the edges of which cover his feet. The statue was found in 1906 during the excavations of the magnificent church of St. Grigor in Gagakashen.
In this historical environment, when a person is absorbed in deep thoughts and vivid fantasies, the mist envelopes everything at nightfall, and objects become even more mysterious. There are moments when profound and luminous images concerning life, faces and objects in the milieu appear before a person’s eyes.
And so, engrossed in deep thoughts – thoughts that take him into the depths of centuries … thoughts where blazing emotions are born and boil… the young scientist raised his head… The statue of Gagik, the wise king of the Armenian world, swathed in mist in the dusk, fused in his glance… like a magical dream, born in the silence of the mysterious evening, that glorious statue from the 10th century came to life… Gagik moved… And with noble and powerful steps, befitting a king, he moves forward… Young Orbeli got goosebumps…
Who can measure the immensity of those deep images of thoughts and emotions born in that mysterious silence?… Deadly flashes coursed through his body… His heart was beating fast… A cold sweat had covered his forehead… With its overwhelming weight that brutal nightmare stood in front of him, like an actual image…
…His eyes dimmed… and he collapsed to the ground…
Similar phenomena have also occurred to others in that magical city of ruins, where the mysteries of centuries have accumulated.
***
It is nighttime.
Moonlight engulfs the sleeping capital city’s streets and ruined buildings which are scattered under the rock piles of the magical city, bent under the heavy weight of history’s ill fate.
Not even a whisper.
The city is silent, loaded with dark mysteries. Only the dull sound of the Akhuryan river can be heard from the deep gorge, which, like a grieving witness, wails over the past glory and power of the doomed city…
The ruins of the citadel stand here and there on top of a hill to the southwest of the ancient city. In the mysterious silence of the night, their faint contours are visible under the moonlight.
There is a small chapel with its dome intact, perched on the southern slope of the hill. And here, dominating the city with their commanding position at the center of the hill, are the ruins of the palace hall in the citadel. Here is the sixth century church from the Kamsarakan period.
In the distance, perched on top of one of the ruins the owl screeches, like a harbinger of disaster, as if alerting the dead city of the horror of pending catastrophes.
And at that mysterious moment of time, when it was silent as a graveyard, a young man, deep in thought, silently walked through Marr Street, which stretched to the citadel. He was walking absentmindedly, preoccupied with various questions related to mysterious scenes of the historical past… the events and faces from the distant past swirled like living images in those thoughts …
And suddenly… supernatural powers are still living in the ruins of the magical city, deep gorges and dark caverns… He heard the clip clop of galloping horses, which stomped over the street cobbles with their unrestrained blows… The young man turned his head back and froze in place, thunderstruck… A dream?… or reality…
A group of solders riding enormous horses with foaming mouths passed swiftly like an unrestrained storm in front of the young man, who stood frozen, stunned and horrified… They were wearing historical military uniforms. Their metal shields, sword hilts, sturdy armor and helmets flashed in the moonlight … The riders’ red, royal capes were flapping with the motion of the horses…
The young man was in shock… That was the fruit of weighty thoughts and a vivid imagination…
And by the time he came to, that enchanting dream had disappeared in the blink of an eye and blended into the gloomy darkness…
That was professor Marr’s honorable apprentice Levon Kalantar.
YEARS LATER
Years passed…
I was already an adolescent and the incomprehensible was slowly becoming clearer and comprehensible, in as much as a child who had grown up in that historic environment could comprehend.
In 1913-14, I was already quite familiar with Ani’s history: I often listened intently to professor Marr’s, architect Toramanian’s, H. Orbeli’s and my father’s explanations provided to the visitors about this or that monument and the numerous objects kept in the depository. Armed with this information, I have frequently had the opportunity to escort Ani’s visitors to the monuments and provide them with brief facts.
Professor Marr, T. Toramanian, H. Orbeli and my father accompanied and provided explanations to special visitors only. The burden of accompanying the other visitors lay on the rest of the people of Ani, including myself.
A stranger would have had trouble exploring without a leader through the piles of rocks, holes and mounds of the ruined city.
I was acquainted with all of Ani’s territory and trails, through which I had walked countless times as a child. I escorted numerous visitors with great pleasure and it was deeply satisfying when older women and men attentively listened to me and asked various questions.
I would talk about the founder of Ani city, the Great Prince Ashot Bagratuni. I would explain that in the distant past, Ani had been a fortress for the Kamsarakan princes, and tell them why the Armenian king Gagik I wore a turban on his head. I would explain where they brought Ani’s drinking water from and show them the clay water pipes. I would explain when the Ashotyan and Smbatyan walls had been constructed; how the Bagatuni’s had been the royal crowning knights during the reign of the Arshakunis; how, during emigration one wave of the people of Ani had gone to the Crimea, taking the door of Ani’s Mother cathedral as a memento, and how I had seen it in 1905, located in the Armenian Church in the city of Theodosia in the Crimea; and about Vahram Pahlavuni, Queen Katranide, architect Drtad, the Bagratuni kings and other distinguished people. I spoke about national traditions, about the Church of the Shepherd, Aytsemnik’s bravery and many other things concerning the city of ruins.
I would accompany them and present Ani’s famed monuments: The Mother Cathedral, with its magnificent location; the round church of St. Gregory of Gagkashen; Arakelots with its cruciform-arched exonarthex; the Manuche; Tigran Honents Church with its numerous beautiful murals and, on its exterior, various animals set among scrolling vegetation; Apughamrents; Savior; the cozy Kusants church perched on enormous cliffs on the slopes of the Akhuryan gorge; the ruins of the citadel; the sixth century church of the Kamsarakans; the ruins of Queen Katranide’s tomb; the ruins of the bridge over the Akhuryan…
I would take the curious visitors to the beautiful caverns dug into the pumice masses in Igadzor and Tsaghkotsadzor; and the Tigran Honents family tombs located in the caverns where, from a small grave, a small girl’s dress, maiden’s belt and bodice woven with gold thread were found. I showed them the northern ramparts of the city with their massive towers and powerful gates and the enormous trench built with curved stones in front of the ramparts, which the people of Ani filled with water when there was danger. I escorted those who were interested through the wide and narrow passages of underground Ani, where eternal, dense darkness prevailed and the passages branched out like labyrinths. And during those excursions and explanations, my soul would fill with pride when displaying the beautiful works of our constructors and ingenious ancestors.
DIFFICULT NIGHTS
The wandering, invisible spirit in Ani’s ruins…
Night had fallen and lain on the ruined city and covered it with dark wisdom… But mysterious nights can give birth to everything in the human imagination… Every movement, every whisper turns into horrifying scenes in those magical ruins buried in great mystery…
Old Kyasso recalled in awe how recently, an invisible Spirit wandered around the ruined city at night and how it was washed with light from the sky. He assured us that he had twice seen how the light moved, together with the invisible spirit, from the ruined tower towards Arakelots… He was relating this, seated in the kitchen with his inseparable pipe in his hand. The servants of the Reverend Father had surrounded him and listened to the mysterious story about the invisible Spirit in horror…
It was a difficult night…
Everyone was in their home. I was still sitting on our threshold when I hear the trembling sound of the old water bearer.
“The Pir… The Pir…” (Yezidi spiritual caste)
And he silently pulled me by the arm and we went up to the roof of the barn and were looking towards the direction of Arakelots in the dark.
And truly, the mysterious light was slowly shifting and moving forward…
I got confused… A shiver swept through my body… this nightmarish, unpleasant vision was oppressing me; my body was covered in a cold sweat… I immediately approached the old man and sensed that he too was trembling.
The lips of the terrified water bearer were whispering a prayer, the words of which were incomprehensible to me…
Ani’s Spirit was wandering around the city of ruins…
Fear had taken over both the servants of the Reverend Father and the residents of Igadzor…
A couple of worrying days later, the mystery was solved. “Ani’s Spirit” was young professor Orbeli.
He was decoding and collecting the stone inscriptions of Ani city. The time had come to study the inscriptions inside the dome of Arakelots church and the only convenient way to decode them easily and correctly was to work at night under lamp light. At night, the light from a lamp lights up the lithographed stone wall at an angle and the inscriptions come to life before your eyes.
The work had been completed with the utmost care and it was ready for publication. Special fonts, on which the honorable professor had spent many sleepless nights, had even been designed and cast.
Inside the Academy’s printing house, the honorable Orbeli had personally set the content of Ani’s inscriptions using those new fonts together with their explanations.
The galley proofs had already been tightened, from which one sample had been printed out, for proofreading.
But… Alas…
The proofreading work had just begun when Hovsep Orbeli’s accomplishment, which had been achieved with blood and sweat, fell victim to a natural disaster.
One ill-fated night, the flood swept through, and carried off the academy’s printing house; everything was destroyed…
And the heartbroken professor was left with grief in his heart and the only un-edited version of Ani’s stone manuscript in his hand…
The painstaking achievements of all those dedicated people who had worked on studying the history and culture of the city of ruins were lost and destroyed by the ruthless blows of the unfortunate city’s inexorable destiny.
The above-mentioned ill-fated disaster was no exception.
Architect Toros Toramanian grieve until the last day of his life …
In 1913 he traveled to Vienna and gave the measurements he had studied and drawings regarding Armenian historical architecture and reconstruction of monuments, to the art history institute adjacent to Vienna University, for printing. It was a voluminous and important work which he had accomplished through much deprivation and painstaking, tireless labor.
And in 1914, when he was preparing to visit Vienna once again with new materials he had gathered, to sign a contract with the publisher, the First World War broke out; the roads were closed and the versatile architect could not travel to Vienna and his fertile work was left to the mercy of fate.
However, the great Armenian did not become despondent from that heavy blow. He ignored everything and once again continued his sacred work, making great sacrifices.
And then, the second blow came in 1918… The barbaric Turkish army invaded western Armenia. Toramanian, already heavily burdened with his family, barely managed to transport them, and a part of his precious accomplishments, to Gharakilisa (present-day Kirovakan). And during the fierce and unequal battle at the approach to Gharakilisa, he was forced to leave everything and barely escaped with his family, to Tbilisi.
Everything calmed down.
This time he received the third cruel blow. It is very difficult when a person loses all he has gained, which he has achieved through much privation and exhausting work, for a great cause.
A substantial collection of negatives of historical monuments which he had photographed, had been broken to pieces and some of the drawings and manuscripts had been stolen. The yet-unpublished second volume of “Tekor’s Temple” was also amongst those lost manuscripts.
The blows were ruthlessly and cruelly hammering the storm-beaten forehead of the unfortunate professor, one after another. His warm soul had blended, fermented with the ingenious architectural structures of our creative ancestors with all its essence, and he was going to breath with their noble breath and endure with the endurance of their beautiful and strong bodies…
His enthusiastic devoted will was indestructible and his energy was invincible. Yet again we see him with his pen and paper in his hand and with his measuring tools.
Eminent Toramanian was still hoping for the return of the collection of works which he had handed over in Vienna. However…
In 1926 he received the fourth cruel blow…
With the efforts of the Soviet Ambassador to Vienna, the architect’s works were returned to Armenia. Four hundred drawings were missing from the collection…
But the resolute will and endless vigor of the architect once against motivated him to carry on his sacred work, and only stopped – when the heart of the great Armenian itself stopped beating…
***
Funded by himself and without any sponsors, over the years Aram Vruyr, that devoted, impoverished actor of the Armenian stage, had photographed and amassed a voluminous collection on Ani and its surrounding monuments. His sincere and honest love towards our great cultural history had driven him to carry out that work.
After Turkey’s constitution in 1908, Aram Vruyr travels to Constantinople in 1909, together with an Armenian theatrical group, and takes his entire collection of photo negatives with him. Things work out in such a way that he travels to Tbilisi, leaving his collection of negatives in Constantinople, on the condition that he will return soon. However, A. Vruyr never manages to return to Constantinople.
In 1914, the St. Petersburg Imperial University provides travel costs to Aram Vruyr so that he can return his collection of negatives from Constantinople and hand them over the academy. He was preparing to leave, but the 1914 war once again hindered his departure and that valuable and rich collection of negatives of Ani was irrevocably lost.
Similarly, all of the collected materials, to which many people had contributed during Ani’s excavations, were completely lost in 1918…
“…All of the handwritten and printed materials, diaries, photo negatives, drawings were lost in the train between Armavir and Baku; an entire wagon addressed to be processed in the Tbilisi Archaeological Museum, writes N. Marr” (Н. Я. Марр, «Ани», էջ-XI. Москва-Ленинград, 1934 г.)
This was the cruel destiny of the ill-fated city.
TWO UNPLEASANT AND PAINFUL INCIDENTS
The sculpted segments that had fallen off Ani’s beautiful buildings: stones, columns, chapiters, stones with inscriptions, cornices, etc. which could be seen in a neglected state every step of the way, worried professor Marr greatly. There were so many of those fallen fragments that it was impossible to shelter even a fraction of them in the repository.
The largest building standing in the capital city was the Mother Cathedral and it was decided to turn it into a stone repository where they could store several hundred fragments.
One day Hovsep Orbeli addressed Father Mikayel on behalf of Marr and requested the keys to the Cathedral. That unexpected announcement came as a heavy blow for Father Mikayel. He turned pale and his lips started to tremble with emotion.
“Ask the Lord”, said Father Mikayel barely containing his anger and continued, “The key to the Mother Cathedral belongs to the Armenian nation.” And he silently left for his cell, leaning on his cane. Father Mikayel did not leave his apartment that day … I had never seen him so upset: handing over the keys meant handing over the building.
It became very unpleasant after that… National emotions became enflamed, and aggressive and rebuking articles addressed to the honorable scientist were printed in the Armenian periodical press in Tbilisi.
Professor Marr was forced to publish an article in response, in the same daily in Tbilisi.
In the end it ensued that the key to the Cathedral remained with Father Mikayel and a large number of valuable architectural fragments, some of which belonged to the Cathedral itself, stayed out in the open air, without shelter.
However, the caring hand did not stop worrying: Marr subsequently constructed a new building which was called the stone depository; a large number of architectural fragments, inscriptions and sculptured stones were placed here.
Two large inscriptions, which had become dislocated on falling, were placed on the right and left sides (external) of the stone depository: a) the inscription of Georgian Catholicos, Epiphane in Georgian, and another inscription in Arabic (Yarlik).
In 1912, the Prkich church was renovated. Many fragments were also collected and placed in that church; the entrance of the church was reinforced with a wooden door and a lock. All of these measures were considered to be preparatory steps.
