East of the Turkish city of Kars lies a complex of lonely medieval churches. Octagonal towers, crumbling walls, and fallen columns lay scattered across vast grasslands. In the gorge that drops away to the Akhuryan River—which forms Turkey’s border with the modern state of Armenia—is an ancient bridge, broken in the middle.
These ruins are all that remain of Ani, the cosmopolitan capital of medieval Armenia, one of the earliest kingdoms to adopt Christianity as its state religion in the early A.D. 300s. The site of a fifth-century fortification, Ani was chosen to be Armenia’s capital in the 10th century. It became home to as many as 100,000 people, and was so richly endowed with sacred buildings that it came to be known as the “city of 1,001 churches.”
Its strategic position along trade routes between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea made it an attractive possession, condemning it to centuries of invasion—and eventually, a long period of abandonment.
Following its absorption into the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, Ani remained a distant memory until the early 1800s, when European travelers began to visit the site of the medieval city. The ruins of Ani were located on a geopolitical fault line at the edges of the Ottoman, Persian, and Russian Empires. Visiting the remains of the city was risky as political tensions were running high.
Nevertheless, some visitors carried out hasty surveys and aroused interest among scholars. In 1817 Scottish diplomat and traveler Robert Ker Porter passed through and recorded his impressions. While remaining vigilant in a place whose “gloomy ruins” were perfect hiding places for “sanguinary freebooters,” Ker Porter’s account transmitted his excitement: “On entering the city, I found the whole surface of the ground covered with broken capitals, highly ornamented friezes; and other remains of ancient magnificence.”
Some of the churches, he wrote, were more intact than others, but even they “are as solitary as all the others structures, on which time and devastation have left more heavy strokes.” (Historians are using lasers to unlock mysteries of Gothic cathedrals.)
In 1839 British Army captain Richard Wilbraham marveled at the solidity of Ani’s defenses and the presence of Christian iconography. “The sacred symbol of Christianity is introduced in various places,” he observed. “Huge blocks of blood-red stone, let into the masonry of the tower, form gigantic crosses, which have defied the hand of the destroying Moslem [sic].” Despite these glimmers of scholarly interest, time and weather continued to take their toll on Ani. Several more decades would pass before archaeologists arrived to carry out a formal survey.
The medieval kingdom of Armenia once extended far beyond the modern boundaries of today’s nation. In ancient times these lands came under the control of the Persians, then the Seleucids, the Parthians, and the Romans. But as these different empires rose and fell, Armenian identity prevailed. (This photographer is creating a new Armenian narrative.)
Christianity became a central part of Armenian history when it was still a young faith. The religion took hold and Christian Armenia existed alongside the Byzantines, the Sassanians, and then the Arab-Muslims.
In the 10th century the Bagratid dynasty rose to power in northern Armenia. King Ashot III (952-977) chose Ani as his royal capital. Between 977 and 989 his successor, Smabat II, constructed its double, northern walls, crowned with round towers. Trade routes making up the Silk Road shifted to pass through the city. Flush with wealth, the rulers started to build more churches. (See the enduring spirit of the Silk Road today.)