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Dvin
("dvin" means "hill" in Middle Persian),
founded in the 4th c. AC by King Khosrov III and
for centuries the capital and the largest and richest city of
Armenia.
At its peak, Dvin's population may have surpassed 100,000,
with Armenians, Jews, Arabs, Kurds, and others living together in
reasonable harmony under a Muslim governor appointed by the Caliph
in Baghdad.
The Arab geographers reported that Dvin (called Dabil in
Arabic) exported a wide range of wool and silk textiles,
"Armenian wares" of a quality famous throughout the
Muslim world, some elaborately figured and dyed with cochineal.
In 572, when the Armenians rose up with
Byzantine help under Vardan Mamikonian (a later one, not the saint
of Avarayr in 451), they captured Dvin and killed the Persian marzpan
Suren. Plundered by the Arabs in 640, Dvin was captured and occupied in
654 by Habib b. Maslama, who promised the inhabitants their lives,
property, and religion so long as they paid their taxes. Dvin
became the seat of the appointed Muslim governor or ostikan
of the vast region of Arminiya. The
Armenian majority in Dvin learned Arabic (while not forgetting
their Persian), and exploited the political unity of the Caliphate
to travel as merchants across the whole Middle East.
Unfortunately, this arrangement fell victim to internal
disorders of the Caliphate, and over the centuries a number of
figures, Arab, Kurdish, Turkic, or Armenian, seized and plundered
the town. Dvin was almost obliterated by a horrific earthquake in
893/4, which left 70,000 people entombed in the ruins.
The city was rebuilt, and remained the seat of the
Katholikos until the 10th century.
In 951, a little group of Kurdish adventurers, the Shaddadids,
moved into Dvin as hired defenders. They ended up staying more
than a century, albeit with interruptions. According to Arab
historians, the father of the great Kurdish general Saladdin,
nemesis of the Crusaders, was born near Dvin. A bewildering
series of Muslim lords succeeded the Shaddadids. Only in 1203 did
a Christian army under Atabeg Ivane take and hold Dvin, just one
generation before the Mongol invasion of 1236 destroyed the city.
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