Latest / The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History / Armenia's Forgotten Kingdom: Cilicia and the Crusader Alliance
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the Armenian highlands and the kingdoms that rose and fell there. But after the fall of the Bagratids around the middle of the 11th century, you get this incredible story of a new Armenian kingdom that emerges far from Mount Ararat, right down on the Mediterranean coast. Luna: You mean Cilician Armenia? I've heard the name but I don't know much about it. Lucas: Yeah, Cilician Armenia. It's a totally different setting — coastal, fertile, with Crusader castles and bustling ports. And it exists for about three hundred years, from the late 11th century into the late 14th. The founding goes back to a prince named Ruben, or Roupen, who was a relative of the last Bagratid king, Gagik II. After Gagik was betrayed and killed by Byzantine agents, Ruben fled into the Taurus Mountains and started gathering followers. Lucas: That was around 1080. The Byzantines had just lost a huge chunk of Anatolia to the Seljuks after Manzikert, so there was a power vacuum. Ruben's band of Armenian refugees and warriors took control of the fortress of Bardzrberd high in the mountains, and from there they started expanding into the Cilician plain. Luna: So it's a kingdom of refugees, basically. Lucas: Exactly. And what's remarkable is how quickly they adapted. By the time the First Crusade rolled through in 1097, the Rubenids were already a force. They allied with the Crusaders — the Franks — against their common enemies, the Seljuks and the Byzantines. That alliance was mutually beneficial: the Armenians supplied guides, food, and local knowledge, and the Crusaders helped legitimise the Armenian princes as kings. Lucas: The big moment comes in 1198, when Prince Levon II — often called Levon the Great — was crowned king by both a papal legate and the German emperor. That coronation at Tarsus was a huge deal. It meant Cilician Armenia was recognised as a proper kingdom by Western Christendom. Luna: Wait, so they were officially Catholic? Or Armenian Apostolic? Lucas: That's a great question, and it gets complicated. The Cilician kingdom was Armenian Apostolic by tradition, but the ruling dynasty — especially the Hetoumid family who succeeded the Rubenids — leaned heavily toward union with Rome. They wanted to secure Western military aid against the Mamluks, who were becoming a huge threat. So they negotiated church unions, accepted the pope's supremacy in some councils, but the common people and the clergy back at the mother church in Echmiadzin were deeply suspicious. It created a lasting tension between the Cilician and Eastern Armenian church hierarchies. Luna: So the kingdom was culturally split in a way. Lucas: Yes, but also incredibly rich. Cilicia became a centre of Armenian learning, art, and trade. The port of Ayas was a major terminus of the Silk Road; goods from Persia and India went through Armenian customs before being loaded onto Venetian and Genoese ships. The kingdom minted its own coins, some with both Armenian and French inscriptions. And the illuminated manuscripts produced in Cilician scriptoria — places like Skevra and Drazark — are among the most beautiful in the Armenian tradition. Luna: I've seen some of those illuminated manuscripts. They're stunning. That mix of Armenian and European styles. Lucas: The most famous scribe is probably Toros Roslin, who worked in the 13th century at the Hromkla scriptorium. He was active under Catholicos Gregory II, who was basically the political and spiritual leader of Cilician Armenia for decades. Roslin's gospels have this vibrant colour palette and naturalistic figures that show Byzantine, Crusader, and even Mongol influences — because the Mongols were also in the region by then, and the Armenians sometimes allied with them against the Mamluks. Lucas: But the alliance with the Mongols was risky. The Mamluks under Baibars and later Qalawun saw Cilician Armenia as a Crusader state, and they systematically attacked it. In 1266, the Mamluks sacked the capital, Sis, and killed thousands. King Levon III had to pay tribute and cede fortresses. That pattern continued for nearly a century: short periods of peace, then a new Mamluk invasion. Luna: How did they survive that long, then? Lucas: Partly through diplomacy and paying tribute, partly through their mountain fortresses — places like Barbaron, Vahka, and Anavarza were incredibly hard to take. And partly because they were useful to the Mamluks as a buffer against the Mongols. But eventually, the Mongols converted to Islam and the Mamluks grew stronger. In 1375, the Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Sha'ban captured Sis after a brutal siege. The last king, Levon V, was taken to Cairo, where he later died in exile. That was the end of Armenian sovereignty until the modern era. Lucas: But the legacy is huge. Cilician Armenia preserved Armenian culture during a dark age in the homeland. It produced law codes, histories, and art that influenced everything that came after. And it proved that Armenians could adapt and thrive in a completely new environment — a pattern we see throughout the diaspora later on. Luna: It's almost like a dress rehearsal for the diaspora communities that would emerge after the genocide. Lucas: Exactly. And it's a reminder that Armenian history isn't just one story in one place. It's a network of communities, each with their own survival strategies. Luna: Speaking of survival — this whole conversation has been ad-free, and that's something we're really intentional about. We don't run ads because we want the history to speak for itself. If you find value in that approach, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, that's the only way we keep it going. No sponsors, no interruptions — just the story. And we're grateful to everyone who chips in. Lucas: So back to Cilicia — one detail I love is that the last king, Levon V, was buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis in Paris. He had spent his final years at the French court, petitioning for a new crusade that never came. It's a poignant end: the king of a lost kingdom, sleeping among French royalty. Luna: That's beautifully sad. And it really ties together the threads of Armenian and European history. Lucas: It does. And that's one reason Cilician Armenia matters — it shows how interconnected the medieval world really was.