Anna OHANJANYAN

Academic Year:
2018/2019

Field of Study:
Historical Theology

Research Program:
PoM Pontica Magna

Affiliation:
Mashtots Institute for Ancient Manuscripts “Matenadaran”, Yerevan

Position:
Senior Researcher

Country:
Armenia

Research project: Narratives of Armenian Polemics with Muslims from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The research focuses on describing and analyzing the corpus of Armenian polemical texts against Muslims from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Religious life in Armenian communities of the period experienced a profound change under the impact of diverse proselytization activities by the Shia and Sunni Muslims, as well as Catholic missionaries of various orders. Consequently, these centuries were marked by abundant polemical literature on diverse doctrinal topics targeting different social groups. However, this rich polemical literature from the early modern period has remained largely unexplored, especially when it comes to Armenian polemics with Islam and Muslims. The aim is to understand the relatively small number of such sources and explain the contexts in which they were produced. I will examine the social and political contexts and physical spaces where polemics occurred, as well as the themes that were disputed between Muslims and Christians.

A full-length study is available here.