A HISTORY OF THE LAND OF ARTSAKH: Karabagh and Ganje, 1722-1827

by Archbishop Sergius Hasan-Jalaliants, Translated by Ka'ren V. Ketendjian. Edited with and Introduction by Robert H. Hewsen

Sergius (Sargis) Hasan-Jalaliants (r. 1794-1815. d. 1828) was the last Catholicos (supreme patriarch) of the church of Aghuank (Caucasian Albania), the region encompassing in his time the khanates of Karabagh and Ganje (ancient Artsakh and Utik) in Eastern Armenia. Picking up the history of this region essentiallhy from the end of the work of his grandfather's cousin, the catholicos Isaiah (Esai) Hasan-Jalaliants (r. 1702-1728), Sergius carries the story down to the final triumph of the Russians over the Persian Empire just over a century later.

Discovered by R.H. Hewsen in a manuscript in the library of the University of Tubingen, Germany in 1984, and here translated into English by K.V. Ketendjian, this is the first rendering of the test into any language. An important primary source for the period under consideration, and for the history of the region with which it is concerned, this work confirms the presence of the Armenians in Karabagh long before their supposed introduction by the Russians after their occupation of the region in the early nineteenth century.; it clarifies the distinction between the Armenian leaders Avan and Egan, details the relations between the Armenian meliks and the Russian Empire, records the melik wars, and reproduces the "Treaty Document" (Dashnagir), a kind of Armenian constitution, outlining the terms under which the Armenian leaders of the day opted to be governed under Russian protections.