Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Church of the Holy Apostles (Ani)" in English language version.
This was an early 11th-century church that was expanded in the early 13th century by the addition of a gavit on its southern side. In form this building was clearly indebted to Seljuq architectural designs, both for the overall structure of its porch (fig. 10), and for the muqarnas construction of its central dome. The architectural similarities highlight the importance of texts as a means of articulating identity in Ani when so many other facets of the contemporary environment were almost indistinguishable from that of the Seljuq world around them.
By the 1260s, at which time Ani was under Ilkhanid rule, the gavit seems to have acted as a central deposit for legal affairs, especially those concerning taxes and import duties. The interior and exterior of the building are replete with inscriptions recording changes to levies – usually the alleviation of taxes, but occasionally impositions (such as the ban on Sunday street trading after the earthquake). These texts show a marked difference from the earlier Shaddadid inscriptions in the city about trade. Whereas those inscriptions were in Persian, these are all in Armenian, despite their ultimate authority coming from Iran. Indeed six of the inscriptions begin their texts with the words "[In the name of] the Ilkhan". They even adopt Mongolian terms, notably the word yarligh (imperial decree) which appears in the inscription of 1270.
We are faced with the opposite situation from the Abul Mā'maran inscription, in that this inscription is designed to appeal to the non-Armenian population, but is placed in a relatively private location inside the gavit, and also uses Armenian as its language. Although it does not have an official Ilkhanid seal, it was still issued by a powerful and well-connected figure, Khuandze, wife of the atabeg Shahanshah II, and daughter of the Ilkhanid Sahib Divan.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)[En 180, par la grâce de Dieu, moi, Apoughamr, fils de Vahram, prince des princes, j'ai donné] le champ [de Ca]rnout aux [Saints-Apôtres, pour la santé et la prolongation [de la vie de mon frère Grigor.]
The only parallels to them come from the Christian monuments of the Caucasus, such as the zhamatun of the church of the Holy Apostles in Ani, and the Akhlati-built Sitte Melik in Divrigi.
Many of these overlaps come together in one building, the zhamatun that was added to the early eleventh-century church of the Holy Apostles in Ani some time shortly before 1217 (the earliest inscription on the building). Note 25: A date of around 1200 is supported by the similarity of the vaulting of the zhamatun of the monastery at Bagnayr, where the earliest inscription dates to 1201.
This date is based on the similarity between its stone vaults and those of the zhamatun of the church of the Holy Apostles, which has a terminus ante quem of 1217, determined by the earliest surviving inscription there: Orbeli, Corpus Inscriptionum Armenicarum, no. 56; Basmadjian, Inscriptions armeniennes d'Ani, no. 49.
The most obvious architectural form that was adopted in Armenian churches was the muqarnas vault. A fine example is the complex muqarnas that was used to build up the central vault of the zhamatun at Harichavank, which was added to the main church in the monastery by 1219. The origin of this type of vaulting clearly comes from Islamic sources, but it is used very differently here. There are no comparable examples in the Islamic world of using it to form complete vaults with an oculus in the centre. Throughout Anatolia in this period muqarnas were used to form niche heads. It was used for domes elsewhere in the Islamic world, as at Nur al-Din Zangi's 1174 hospital in Damascus, but conceived very differently: the monastic muqarnas are structurally pendentives, whereas the Damascus dome is a succession of stucco squinches. A generation later the Armenian use of muqarnas was re-imported into the Muslim world, and buildings such as the Yakutiye Madrasa in Erzurum (1310) copied the idea of a muqarnas vault around an oculus.
We are faced with the opposite situation from the Abul Mā'maran inscription, in that this inscription is designed to appeal to the non-Armenian population, but is placed in a relatively private location inside the gavit, and also uses Armenian as its language. Although it does not have an official Ilkhanid seal, it was still issued by a powerful and well-connected figure, Khuandze, wife of the atabeg Shahanshah II, and daughter of the Ilkhanid Sahib Divan.
We are faced with the opposite situation from the Abul Mā'maran inscription, in that this inscription is designed to appeal to the non-Armenian population, but is placed in a relatively private location inside the gavit, and also uses Armenian as its language. Although it does not have an official Ilkhanid seal, it was still issued by a powerful and well-connected figure, Khuandze, wife of the atabeg Shahanshah II, and daughter of the Ilkhanid Sahib Divan.
We are faced with the opposite situation from the Abul Mā'maran inscription, in that this inscription is designed to appeal to the non-Armenian population, but is placed in a relatively private location inside the gavit, and also uses Armenian as its language. Although it does not have an official Ilkhanid seal, it was still issued by a powerful and well-connected figure, Khuandze, wife of the atabeg Shahanshah II, and daughter of the Ilkhanid Sahib Divan.