One Movses Dashkurantsi wrote a "history of the Caucasian Albanians" whose manuscripts survive in classical Armenian, the so-called Grabar. Why is Movses writing in Grabar?
James Howard-Johnston brought Movses to our attention (and maybe to Robert Hoyland's) in 1999 when he annotated the translation of an actual Armenian (hayk'), the historian we call Pseudo-Sebeos. Sebeos in turn gets a lot of press for writing an account of the Arabic incursions starting with a capsule-bio of Mahmet their prophet. Dowsett had done a translation of Movses long before; Robert Bedrosian, that legend, then raised up a lot of it for us in 2010.
Movses, it turns out, also transmitted an account. This account doesn't get quite as much press since it is buried in a mediaeval history, but within it is a lengthy biography of Juanshir the lord of Albania (aluank') over the 40s AH / 660s AD. This excerpt is considered contemporary, or near-enough, with his own reign. And there's a eulogy. In acrostic.
"Acrostic" means it follows the alphabet. That is... hardly easy to do, if translated from some other language. So the paean to Juanshir was composed in Armenian. Certainly the preceding biography was, as well. Which brings us back to - why. Weren't we just told that Juanshir was an "Albanian"? The "Albanians" in the northeast Caucasus had a script of their own which they used to copy Biblical lectionaries in. And a language of their own, which in the middle 1990s was ascertained to be Udi.
When I realised that the poem was an acrostic, which was... later than I care to admit, I decided that no, Juanshir was not an "Albanian". There might not even be such an animal - it just means "mountain man", just like it does for the Balkans. Juanshir just ruled Albanians. Those include (what has become) the Udi. But also those included (then) leftover Azeri Iranians, after the retreating Sasanians stranded them up there. 'Tis a mountainous place, the Caucasus; lots of ethnicities linger around.
Blah bladdity blah blah, today I am alerted to the latest by famous Iranian-historian Touraj Daryaee: "Armenia and Iran". Daryaee cites Zachary called the Rhetor, bishop of Mytilene. He means that miscellany in British Library Add MS 17202, which we've met last year for Aseneth.
Herein #12.7 is pertinent: that the Caucasia hosted several dialects in this nearby author's time, AG 866 (= AD 555). Which are named and situated!
An aside, pace Darayee. EW Brooks himself done tol' all us that alethio-Zachary covers only chapters 3-6 here; chapter 12 is someone else. Probably an "Amidene", as Brooks put it. Bad Touraj, bad! Call your source "Pseudo-". Moving on . . .
One language was spoken around Lake Sevan, "Sisagan". The other was spoken west of the Gelam highland. The former was partly Christian, partly still "heathen"; the latter was all Christian. The classical Grabar, which is the Christian Grabar, was certainly the latter. As for the Sevanian language, it is distinguished from "Arran" meaning, Albanian certainly meaning Udi. Daryaee considers Sevanian a para-Armenian.
Note firstly the persistent East / West divide in Armenian dialects to this day, rather (tragically) until the Young Turks' day. If it happens now, it happened then. I don't see reason to doubt Pseudo-Zachary of Amida nor (despite himself) Daryaee's interpretation of same. Do go read him.
Anyway, Juansher's homilists might have composed their works in that eastern Sevanian dialect. I have no real inkling of what it looked like nor, really, of any Armenian dialect. Movses later on lived in a Christian Armenian system where everyone was conversing in Grabar like so many twelfth-century Frenchmen and Germans talking in Latin. So even if his sources were Siunik', Movses would never be taken seriously if he'd transmitted them wholesale - see how Robert Burns is sometimes treated by English poets. And Movses was allll about being taken seriously as a literate Armenian.
So: I don't know. I hope someone who can into Armenian might produce a study on that.
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