Pashinyan Calls Efforts to Prove Gandzasar’s Armenian Identity to Azerbaijan “Pointless”
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan broke his public silence Wednesday over Azerbaijan’s claims about the Armenian heritage of Gandzasar, four days after a senior Azerbaijani official presented the medieval monastery to foreign diplomats as part of the heritage of Caucasian Albania.
Pashinyan addressed the controversy after opposition lawmaker Lena Matevosyan of the Strong Armenia faction raised the issue during a question-and-answer session in parliament and urged him to “come to the podium and say that Gandzasar is Armenian.”
Rather than make that declaration directly, Pashinyan pointed to the response issued by the Matenadaran, Armenia’s institute of ancient manuscripts, saying its director was the country’s most qualified official to address the historical record.
“If we are interested in the origins of a manuscript, or of a monastery complex mentioned in it, we should turn to that manuscript and the original texts,” Pashinyan said. “Armenia has responded through the most competent official on this matter — the director of the Matenadaran — and has affirmed Gandzasar’s Armenian origin.”
Pashinyan also said he saw no purpose in trying to prove Gandzasar’s Armenian identity to Azerbaijan.
“I consider the discussion on this issue pointless, and I also consider it pointless to set ourselves the goal of proving this to Azerbaijan,” he said. “That is a pointless and unachievable task.”
The dispute began after Hikmet Hajiyev, a senior adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, accompanied foreign diplomats to Gandzasar and Dadivank on Sept. 12. During the visit, Hajiyev described the medieval monasteries as part of the Christian heritage of ancient Caucasian Albania rather than Armenian religious and cultural monuments.
At Gandzasar, Hajiyev also showed diplomats replicas of Armenian manuscripts kept at the monastery’s former Matenadaran branch. He flipped through blank pages in the replicas while questioning Armenian accounts of the site’s history. Footage from the visit showed laughter among some members of the delegation.
Matenadaran Director Ara Khzmalyan later explained that the books displayed at Gandzasar were specially produced replicas, not original manuscripts. Only selected pages were reproduced because the exhibition space lacked the security, temperature and humidity controls required to preserve centuries-old manuscripts, he said. The originals of the works represented by the replicas are held at the Matenadaran in Yerevan.
The Matenadaran also pointed to manuscripts and historical documents in its collection recording Gandzasar’s Armenian history. The monastery’s main cathedral was built in the 13th century under Hasan-Jalal Dawla, the Armenian prince of Khachen, and its Armenian heritage is documented in medieval sources, inscriptions and architectural studies.
The controversy followed a two-day Azerbaijani-organized tour of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas for foreign diplomats and representatives of international organizations on Sept. 11-12.
Among those on the trip was Magdalena Grono, the European Union’s special representative for the South Caucasus. After traveling from Baku to Yerevan, Grono visited the Matenadaran on Sept. 14 with Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan, where she was shown original manuscripts and documents connected to Gandzasar.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said Tuesday that Armenia had taken the “necessary steps” in response to the episode, arguing that the Matenadaran was the appropriate institution to address questions about the historical record. He also said Hajiyev’s conduct did not contribute to strengthening peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Pashinyan’s remarks Wednesday were his first public comments on the controversy since the Sept. 12 visit and came only after Matevosyan raised the issue directly during the parliamentary question-and-answer session.
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