“We have no blank pages in our manuscripts or our history”: Matenadaran Director responds to Hikmet Hajiyev

Ara Khzmalyan, Director of the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts – Matenadaran, has responded to statements made by Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev regarding Armenian manuscripts at Gandzasar, stressing that the manuscripts on display were not originals but high-quality replicas specially produced for exhibition.

“We have no blank pages in our manuscripts or our history, unlike many, many others,” Khzmalyan said in an interview with Armenian Public Television’s Lurer news programme, Armenpress reported.

Hikmet Hajiyev had shown representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Baku the blank pages of Armenian books at the Gandzasar Matenadaran, presenting them in the context of Armenia’s history.

The Matenadaran explained that the manuscripts displayed at Gandzasar had never been originals. They are high-quality replicas of manuscripts produced as a result of years of work, from which the most important and elaborate pages were selected for display.

“Anyone even slightly familiar with museum work will understand that if a manuscript is to be displayed in an environment where there are no proper security conditions, professional conservation conditions or special temperature and humidity controls, replicas of manuscripts are produced for that purpose. Producing a manuscript replica is quite an expensive process, and usually the opening is reproduced, that is, the two leaves that are to be presented in a particular exhibition hall,” Khzmalyan said.

According to him, this is precisely why the other pages of the manuscripts shown by Hajiyev are blank.

The Matenadaran Director also showed the journalist the original of a miniature displayed at Gandzasar.

“I also want to note that among the replicas displayed there, there is not a single one whose original or original text is not held at the Matenadaran. I think everyone who has seen the footage presented to ambassadors and diplomatic circles will recognise this image. A replica of this was displayed at the Gandzasar branch of the Matenadaran. This magnificent miniature. We can turn through the pages one by one. In a sense, we are now even engaged in confirming or proving something incomprehensible. We have nothing to prove or confirm, because time is a far more powerful tool for proving anything,” Khzmalyan said.

Nevertheless, the Matenadaran Director invited representatives of diplomatic circles and scholars who question Armenian cultural heritage to visit the Matenadaran in Yerevan, promising to dispel all their doubts and concerns.

“We are now showing the original and the replica of the same manuscript so that it is clear to many what we are talking about. I want to say again: to demonstrate that it is a replica of the manuscript, we ourselves are also showing the blank pages. Here are the blank pages of this manuscript’s replica. And there can be no reasonable explanation as to why, when only two pages are to be displayed, we should illustrate and inscribe the remaining leaves.

“If you are not a specialist, manuscript scholar or miniature painter, you may not even be able to distinguish between the highly artistic, high-quality replica and the original. And now it is all the more incomprehensible to show the replica and present it as a distortion of history,” Khzmalyan said.

According to Matenadaran custodian Khachik Harutyunyan, more than 100 manuscripts in total were replicated for the Gandzasar branch, which opened in 2015. Most were subsequently transferred to Armenia, while around three dozen remained at Gandzasar.

“Usually, the best miniatures or the best pages of a particular manuscript are selected for replication, while the remaining pages are naturally left blank because only one page is going to be displayed. But even that one or two pages intended for display are replicated with such fidelity that someone seeing them, or someone unfamiliar with the material, may think they are actually originals,” Harutyunyan said.

Footage circulated by the Azerbaijani side also shows a replica of one of those manuscripts. Its original, which is in Yerevan, is a manuscript written in 1232 that was taken to Karabakh at the beginning of the 14th century and illuminated there.

According to Tamara Minasyan, Senior Researcher at the Matenadaran in Yerevan, it is also known as the Targmanchats Gospel.

“It is also called the Targmanchats Gospel because it was kept at the Targmanchats Monastery, but for a very long time it was kept at Khadavank, from where it was later transferred to the Targmanchats Monastery in the Gandzak region. The dominical scenes were created in the 14th century at the commission of representatives of the Dopyan princely house,” Minasyan said.

EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus Magdalena Grono also participated in the event organised for representatives of the diplomatic corps at Gandzasar.

According to Ara Khzmalyan, at the Matenadaran in Yerevan, Grono was presented not only with Armenian manuscripts but also with examples of the written heritage of different civilisations and religions.

“I am pleased to note that the information we provided to Ms Grono and the manuscripts she saw made a great impression on her. I think she has reconsidered her perceptions quite profoundly compared with those she had before entering the Matenadaran,” Khzmalyan said.

Addressing the history and origins of Gandzasar, the Matenadaran Director noted that the Gandzasar branch had housed replicas of numerous unique documents attesting to that history, the originals of which are held at the Matenadaran in Yerevan.

“Here you see just a few examples relating to the history of Gandzasar. These are documents of exceptional historical significance. Here you will see documents bearing the fingerprints of the meliks of Gandzasar, while these seals signified authority; this seal signifies spiritual life, cultural and economic relations. Thus, Gandzasar was one of the spiritual and cultural centres of the Armenian people,” Khzmalyan said.

According to him, for around three years, with the support of the US Embassy in Armenia, a programme has been under way to restore and publicise manuscripts written in Karabakh and unique, rare archival documents.

As part of the programme, the manuscripts from that region have been fully restored, and a special exhibition of them and the archival documents is also planned in the near future.

Dozens of representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Azerbaijan visited Gandzasar and Dadivank on September 12, accompanied by Hikmet Hajiyev, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan and Head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration.

At Gandzasar, Hajiyev presented diplomats with replicas of manuscripts remaining at the Matenadaran’s former branch, showing their blank pages and claiming that they allegedly demonstrated falsification of history by the Armenian side.

During the same visit, Hajiyev also stated that Gandzasar and Dadivank are “an integral part of the ancient Christian heritage of Caucasian Albania” and linked the foundation of Gandzasar to Hasan Jalal, presenting him as a ruler of Caucasian Albania.