2025 Volume 60 Pages 7-18
This article deals with the relationship between the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia and the Mamluk Sultanate during the reign of Lewon IV (r. 1320–1341). This study uses two different groups of sources: colophons of Armenian manuscripts and various Arabic chronicles. The first description about the Mamluks found in the Armenian colophons during Levon’s reign details the dispatch of Catholicos Kostandin Drazarkec’i as a negotiator in 1325, while Arabic sources also describe Armenian emissaries arriving in Cairo in roughly the same year. In 1335, both the Armenian colophon and Arabic sources report the Mamluk invasion in Cilicia. However, while the Arabic sources describe a subsequent massacre of Muslims by inhabitants in Ayas, the Armenian source describes the imprisonment and slaughter of Armenians by “infidels” in Jerusalem as retaliation against the murder of an Arab qadi in Ayas. From these records of 1336, one can see that the Armenian fortress called “Nłir” is equivalent to the Arabic place name “al-Naqīr.” In 1337, both sources record a huge Mamluk raid of Cilicia. Especially al-ʿAynī and his Syrian source, al-Jazarī, provide more detailed information about the Mamluk expedition, while the other source, al-Yūsufī, tends to describe the relationship with the post-Ilkhanate regime in Iran. Thus the reign of Lewon IV marked the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia’s last period of stability between the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ilkhanate.
