Year 897 (DCCCXCVII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.
Year 898 (DCCCXCVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar.
Babai the Great was an early church father of the Church of the East. He set several of the foundational pillars of the Church, revived the monastic movement, and formulated its Christology in a systematic way. He served as a monastic visitor and coadjutor with Mar Aba as unofficial heads of the Church of the East after Catholicos Gregory until 628 AD, leaving a legacy of strong discipline and deep religious Orthodoxy. He is revered in the modern Assyrian Church of the East and Ancient Church of the East.
Gugark was the 13th province of the ancient kingdom of Armenia. It now comprises parts of northern Armenia, northeast Turkey, and southwest Georgia.
George I, of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the 2nd king (mepe) of the Kingdom of Georgia from 1014 until his death in 1027.
Abas was king of Bagratid Armenia from 928 to 953. He was a member of the Bagratid (Bagratuni) royal dynasty. He was the son of Smbat I and the brother of Ashot II the Iron, whom he succeeded. In contrast to the reign of his predecessors, Abas's reign was mostly peaceful, and he occupied himself with the reconstruction of the war-torn kingdom and the development of his capital at Kars.
Smbat I, sometimes Smbat A Martyr was the second king of the medieval Kingdom of Armenia of the Bagratuni dynasty, and son of Ashot I. He is the father of Ashot II and Abas I.
Baselios Marthoma Didymus I born C. T. Thomas was the primate of the Malankara Orthodox Church from 2005 to 2010. He was the 7th Catholicos of the East since the Catholicate of the East was established India and the 20th Malankara Metropolitan. He was the 7th Catholicos of East.
Gagik II was the last Armenian king of the Bagratuni dynasty, ruling in Ani from 1042 to 1045.
Hovhannes Draskhanakerttsi, also called John V the Historian, was Catholicos of Armenia from 897 to 925, and a noted chronicler and historian. He is known for his History of Armenia. He is also the author of a list of Armenian Catholicoi titled Shar Hayrapetatsʻn Hayotsʻ.
Catholicos Gevorg II of Garni was the Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church between 877 and 897. His contemporary Hovhannes Draskhanakerttsi described him as a honorable man who was selected from the Catholicos's household by Prince Ashot I of Armenia to succeed Patriarch Zakaria. Gevorg anointed and crowned Ashot I when he was declared King of Armenia in 884. Upon King Ashot's death, Gevorg went to Bagaran to preside over his funeral. Ashot's heir Smbat I, who had been away at war, missed his father's funeral and was very grieved. Catholicos Gevorg went to comfort King Smbat at Yerazgavors, where he would later also preside at his coronation. This enraged the sparapet Abas who is said to have spread false rumors about the Catholicos in an attempt to bring him down. Abas tried to convince a holy man named Mashtots from Sevanavank to join his conspiracy against the Catholicos and said he would name him Catholicos if it was successful. Mashtots wrote a long letter in response, rejecting the offer to rebel against the Catholicos and chided Abas for his attempt. Hovhannes Draskhanakerttsi reports at this point Abas was struck by an illness and died, as if by divine wrath, and the other conspirators repented to the Catholicos out of fear. Around this time Dvin was hit by an earthquake, as it had been during Patriarch Zakaria's time, but this time it destroyed the church of the Catholicosate, as well as many other buildings and people.
Bagratid Armenia was an independent Armenian state established by Ashot I of the Bagratuni dynasty in the early 880s following nearly two centuries of foreign domination of Greater Armenia under Arab Umayyad and Abbasid rule. With each of the two contemporary powers in the region—the Abbasids and Byzantines—too preoccupied to concentrate their forces on subjugating the region, and with the dissipation of several of the Armenian nakharar noble families, Ashot succeeded in asserting himself as the leading figure of a movement to dislodge the Arabs from Armenia.
Adarnase IV, or Adarnase II, was a Georgian monarch of the Bagrationi dynasty who reigned in the late 9th and early 10th centuries. The son of the Kouropalates David I of Iberia, he ruled as duke of Lower Tao from 881 to 923, king (mepe) of the Kingdom of the Iberians from 888 to 923 and Kouropalates of Iberia from 891 to 923, re-establishing the Georgian monarchy in 888, more than three centuries after the abolition of the Kingdom of Iberia by Sasanian Empire.
Holy Mother of God Cathedral of Avan is a ruined 6th-century church located in the Avan District of Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. It is the oldest surviving church inside Yerevan's city limits.
Sahak III, was the Catholicos of Armenia from 677 through 703. According to the historian Hovhannes Draskhanakerttsi Sahak III was alive in Damascus, where he had gone to discuss peace instead of making war, while a Muslim warrior Okbay was moving with his army through the area of Vanand when the people there massacred them. Okbay returned to the Caliph to raise a large army against Armenia and destroy its churches and kill the population. Sahak asked to be allowed to go to Okbay to dissuade him from doing so, but fell ill when he arrived in Kharan. He wrote a letter imploring Okbay to not carry out his plan. Before he died he asked to have the letter placed in his palm, so that when Okbay came to receive it he would be taking it from his dead hand and perhaps reconsider. It is said that when Okbay arrived Sahak's hand moved to extend the letter to Okbay, who was impressed and carried out Sahak's wishes and sent Sahak's body back to Armenia with a letter to its princes pardoning them. Armenia was saved through Sahak's death and he was greatly honored.
The Kingdom of Vaspurakan was a medieval Armenian kingdom centered on Lake Van, located in what is now eastern Turkey and northwestern Iran. It was named after Vaspurakan, a province of historic Greater Armenia. Ruled by the Artsruni dynasty, it competed and cooperated with the Bagratuni-ruled Kingdom of Armenia for a little over a century until its last king ceded the kingdom to the Byzantine Empire in 1021.
Drazark monastery is a destroyed monastic complex of Armenian Apostolic Church in Adana province of modern Turkey, which lies about 40 km. northwest of the city of Sis – historical capital of Cilician Armenia, at one of inaccessible slopes of Cilician Taurus range.
Sahak Sevada was ruler of Gardman between 895–940 and father-in-law of King Ashot II of Armenia. He was the son of Grigol Hamam and brother of Atrnerseh, ruler of Hereti. His possessions covered Parisos, a district of Artsakh, as well as part of Utik-Gardman and Dzoroget.
