July 1182 A.D. – Armenia – Crossing the Plain

The summer sun was beating down on the young lad who was only eleven years old. He was nervous and becoming ever more so. It was the first time he had ever moved more than a mile or so, outside the walls of his home city. Ani, his birthplace, was situated in the north of Armenia. Yenovk had lived a quiet life there. His father was an academic, a scholar at the largest church in the city. He studied ancient Christian texts and worked with other clerics to relate them to current Church teachings. The work paid well, so that there was always plenty of food on the table. His mother was at home all the time, always bustling around the kitchen and he had the constant companionship of his two younger brothers and an elder sister.

But more recently, the boy Yenovk had become gradually aware, of a sense of tension seeping through his small household. He remembered whispered, private conversations between his parents. His father’s friends were forever visiting. Sometimes he could hear raised voices, from the men’s animated conversations in the outside courtyard. And then he received the shock news. They had to leave the city, and make their way hundreds of miles west, to a different place entirely. Cross the plains to the coastal settlement at Antioch.

Yenovk had desperately sought an explanation from his parents, or sister. But all he had been told was that God required it of them. In actual fact, the reason was a little more of this earth. Ani had once been the most powerful city in Armenia. It was the resting place of over 200,000 souls. It was an important commercial city, controlling trade routes between Byzantium, Persia, Syria and Asia. It was also an important centre of Christianity. Known as ‘the city of a thousand and one churches’. But for the last hundred years, Ani had found itself under the control of the Islamic dynasty of the Kurdish Shaddadids.

Usually, the Islamic rulers were fairly tolerant of the practices of their Christian subjects, who massively outnumbered them. But periodically, the more zealous of the Christians would appeal to Georgia for help in overthrowing their Muslim masters. The last appeal had resulted in a close call for the Shaddadid Kurds, when seven years earlier they had only just repelled a large, determined Georgian army. The city was awash with rumour that a plot was being hatched for another appeal. The ruling dynasty had threatened dire retribution against anyone found involved with such a scheme. Yenovk’s father was no fighting man, but he was a fervent Christian. There was some evidence that he and his colleagues at the church had been involved in subversive discussions.

Yenovk’s father was unsure as to what, if any charge was to be levelled against him. But he had decided it was too dangerous to remain. He would need to move his family to the Christian stronghold at Antioch. And so Yenovk found himself perched precariously on a horse with his youngest brother, some twenty miles outside the safety of Ani’s walls. His mother was walking slowly alongside. Another five families accompanied them on their journey. Thirty or so weary travellers.

The convoy was making its way slowly across the windswept plain. Several families huddled together to provide as much protection as they could. Two of the strongest men were riding at each side of the column acting as lookouts. As the afternoon sun started to drop down towards the horizon, one of them observed some strange shapes, silhouetted against the dull blue of the late summer sky.

He called out to his companion, his arm pointing into the distance, in the direction of his gaze. The other man spent a few minutes watching carefully, then turned his look back, white faced.

“Soldiers. Hordes of them.”

The two men, rode back to the main column and instructed everyone to stop. The men were all scholars, not fighters and prepared themselves calmly to meet the advancing troops. All they could do was state their case. Plead that they were Christian refugees, seeking a safe passage to Antioch. Yenovk fervently hoped that this would suffice. He hoped in vain. The soldiers were Turks. They had no need for the men of the party, who were swiftly and clinically put to the sword. The women and children were separated and led away in different groups. Yenovk would never see his mother again. His happy childhood had come to an sudden end.