Originally Posted by
Eisberg
to Atabeg,Qarama,Karo and Vardan Sparapet-> once again those posts will be deletet, and dont start this discussion here again....
you should have done this in the beginning instead of attacking an other member.
Now on topic:
Ejmiatsin is the spiritual centre of Armenia and the seat of the Catholicos of All Armenians, the head of the Holy Armenian Apostolic Church.
Historically, the focal point of the city is the Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the oldest church in the world. It was originally built by Saint Gregory the Illuminator as a vaulted basilica in 301-303, when Armenia was the only country in the world the state religion of which was Christianity.
The city originated as Vardkesavan or Vardgesavan in the 4th or 3rd century BC. King Vagharsh (117-140) had the name changed to Vagharshapat (Armenian: Վաղարշապատ), which still persists as the official appellation of the city. The original name, as preserved by Byzantine historian, Procopius ("Persian Wars"), was Valashabad--"Valash/Balash city" (named after Balash/Valash/Valarsh, a Parthian prince of Armenia). The name evolved into its later form by the shift in the medial L into a Gh, which is common in Armenian language. Whence the name Vagharsh-abat/apat
Several decades later the city became the capital of Armenia and remained the country's most important city until the 4th century AD.
Zvartnots Cathedral is a ruined seventh century circular Armenian cathedral built by order of the Catholicos Nerses the Builder from 641-653. It is located about 15 kilometers west of Yerevan, at the edge of the town of Echmiadzin, in the Armenian province of Armavir.
Zvartnots was built at a time when much of Armenia was found under Byzantine control and during the early invasions of Armenia by the Muslim Arabs. Construction of the cathedral began in 642 under the guidance of Catholicos Nerses III (nicknamed Shinogh or the Builder), who built the majestic cathedral dedicated to St. Grigor at the place where a meeting between king Trdat III and Gregory the Illuminator was supposed to have taken place. According to the medieval Armenian historian Movses Kaghankatvatsi, the cathedral was consecrated in 653.[1] From 653 to 659, Nerses was in Tayk and the construction of the cathedral continued under Anastas Akarratsi. Following the Arab occupation of Dvin and the intensifying wars between the Byzantine and Arab armies on the former's eastern borders, Nerses transferred the patriarchal palace of the Catholicos from Dvin to Zvartnots.
Bana or Banak is a ruined medieval Christian cathedral in the Erzurum Province, northeastern Turkey, in what had formerly been a historical Armeno-Georgian marchland known to Armenians as Tayk and to Georgians as Tao.
Modeled after the Armenian cathedral of Zvartnots (near Yerevan, Armenia), Bana is a large tetraconch design, surrounded by a near-rotunda polygonal ambulatory and marked with a cylindrical drum. It was probably built by the Armenian catholicos Nerses III, the sponsor of Zvartnots, in the 7th century when the area was part of the Armenian principality of Tayk. After the area passed on to Georgian control in the 8th century (as part of Tao-Klarjeti), the church was reconstructed by the Georgian ruler Adarnase IV at some point between 881 and 923, and emerged in written records in the 11th century Georgian chronicles. Henceforth, it was used as a royal cathedral by the Georgian Bagratid dynasty until the Ottoman conquest of the area in the 16th century. The former cathedral was converted into a fortress by the Ottoman army during the Crimean War in the 1850s and was almost completely ruined during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78