From the time of the partition to the succession of the Pakradoonian
dynasty there was not in name an Armenian kingdom; but it must not
be supposed that there was not an Armenian nation. No matter how its
neighbor nations changed, that country was always called Armenia,
and the people held to their Armenian ways and feelings. The national
feeling was as strong as before, and above all the feeling of church
unity was very intense. No one will ever understand Armenian history,
or indeed any Oriental history at all, who does not realize that
religious questions come first, and political questions second. The
Armenian church was, it is true, a Christian church; but it was the
Armenian Christian church, not the Greek church, and the Syrian and
African churches had their separate creeds and preferences, and the
Greek church, which was the official church of the Greek Empire, was
always trying to root out their "heresies" and make them Greek. That
was one reason why the Mohammedans conquered those countries so
easily. The Africans would rather be ruled by the Mohammedans than
by the Greek church, the Syrians were angry because the Greek church
wanted to take away their own church and give them the Greek. But the
Armenians would not take either the Greek or the Mohammedan or the
Zoroastrian; they wanted their own. So they were persecuted terribly
by the Greek Christians and the Persian fire-worshipers alike. Just
as before the partition, each country invaded the other's part of
Armenia whenever they got into war; and whichever won, the Armenians
were the losers. When the Greeks won, they tortured the Armenians;
when the Persians won, they tortured the Armenians; later, when the
Mohammedans won, they also tortured the Armenians. The mediaeval
history of Armenia is that of a battle-ground between contending
races--Greeks, Persians, Scythians, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks,
Mongols, and so on. Millions of its people were slain; millions died
of famine and disease; millions of its women were forced to embrace
Mohammedanism and become the wives and mothers of Mohammedans,--half
the blood of those who are called Turks at this day is Armenian;
millions of its boys were forced into the Turkish service, so that
many of the best-known names in Turkish history, and in the Turkey
of to-day, are Armenian names. Yet through all these calamities and
decimations Armenia has kept its national life and national religion.
From 390 to 640 the history of both sections of Armenia is little
more than an account of religious persecutions and their results;
the persecutors on the one side were Christians, and on the other
side Zoroastrians, but the results to the Armenians were much the
same. The Persian atrocities, however, were on the larger scale,
and the outcome was a chronic state of revolt, which will be alluded
to in the sketch of Vartan the defender. But the rise of the Saracen
power changed Armenia's greatest foe from the Persian to the Arab,
from the fire-worshipers to the Mohammedans. Persia was invaded by
the forces of the caliph Omar in 634, and about 640-2 the decisive
battle of Nehavend annihilated the last great Persian army, though
scattered places held out much longer. The Armenian highlands at once
resumed their independence, and their chiefs, with those of the western
section belonging to the Byzantine Empire, fought for their own hand
in lack of a true national chief whom all could look up to, but allied
themselves mainly with the Greek power against the barbarians; and
for two entire centuries, and more, Armenia was a furious and bloody
battle-ground between Greeks and Saracens, while internally in a state
of feudal anarchy. Then a prince of the family of Pakrad or Bagrat
(well-known to students of the last century's history in the form
of Bagration), of Jewish descent, as has already been mentioned,
which had obtained power over the central and northern parts of
Armenia, was recognized by the caliph as an independent monarch; and
thus founded the Pakradoonian dynasty, which lasted till Armenia's
independence was once more extinguished by the Byzantine Empire,--a
crime almost immediately punished by the overwhelming of Asia Minor
by the Seljuk Turks.