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Amaras Monastery (Template:Lang-hy) is one of the oldest Christian sites in Nagorno-Karabakh and the world, and is an Armenian Apostolic Church monastery located near the village of Sos in the Martuni county of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. According to the 5th-century chronicler Faustus Byuzand, St. Gregory the Illuminator founded a church in what was to become Amaras Մonastery at the start of the 4th century.

Amaras was the burial place of St. Gregory the Illuminator's grandson, St. Grigoris (died in 338), the patron saint of Artsakh. A tomb built for his remains still survives under the roof of the 19th-century church of St. Grigoris.

At the beginning of the 5th century Mesrop Mashtots, the inventor of the Armenian Alphabet, established in Amaras the first-ever school that used his script.

The monastery was plundered in the 13th century by the Mongols, destroyed in 1387 during Tamerlane's invasion, and demolished again in the 16th century. It underwent radical restructuring in the second quarter of the 17th century when the surviving defensive walls were constructed.

Amaras was later abandoned, and in the first half of the 19th century the monastery served as a frontier fortress for Russian imperial troops.

The Armenian Apostolic Church regained the monastery in 1848. The monastery's church appears to have been severely damaged during the military occupation, to the extent that a new church had to be constructed on the site of the old one. This new church, dedicated to St. Grigoris, was built in 1858 and paid for by the Armenians of the city of Shusha. It still survives and is a three-nave basilica constructed from bright white stone.

The monastery was abandoned during the Soviet period.

In 1992 Azerbaijani troops briefly occupied the site during the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Tomb of St. Grigoris

St. Grigoris was originally buried at the eastern end of the now vanished St. Gregory church. In 489 King Vachagan III the Pious (Վաչագան Բ Բարեպաշտ) renovated Amaras, restoring the church and constructing a new chapel for the remains of St. Grigoris. In later centuries a church was built over what became the sepulcher for St. Grigoris' remains, which is located under the altar of the church. A blocked passage at its eastern end indicates there was originally an entrance from that direction as well. The vaulted tomb chamber is 1.9m wide, 3.75 long, and 3.5m high. The upper half of the structure originally projected 1.5 to 2m above ground level, but it lies now entirely underground.

References

1. Viviano, Frank. “The Rebirth of Armenia,” National Geographic Magazine, March 2004
2. Khatcherian, Hrair. Artsakh: A Photographic Journey. Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, 1997, p. 6. OCLC 37785365
3. Viviano, Frank. "The Rebirth of Armenia", National Geographic Magazine, March 2004
4. M. Hasratyan, "Amaras", Yerevan 1990.

External links

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39°41′02″N 47°03′25″E / 39.684°N 47.057°E / 39.684; 47.057

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