Mkrtičʻ Nałaš: An Armenian Bishop as Pillar of the Aqquyunlu State? Synchronisms in the Armenian and Aqquyunlu History of Diyarbakır, 1430–1450 CE

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Leube, Georg:
Mkrtičʻ Nałaš: An Armenian Bishop as Pillar of the Aqquyunlu State? Synchronisms in the Armenian and Aqquyunlu History of Diyarbakır, 1430–1450 CE.
In: Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā. Bd. 33 (2025) . - S. 107-138.
ISSN 1068-1051
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52214/uw.v33i.12725

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Abstract

Although the fifteenth century CE has commonly been recognized as a crucial saddle period in both the history
of the Armenian church and the administrative history of the Middle East, which is largely focused on Muslim
rulers before the Ottoman-Safavid confrontation, the two topics are usually approached separately. To bridge
this gap, the present contribution examines three pivotal moments in the tenure of the Armenian bishop,
painter, and poet Mkrtičʻ Nałaš (d. after 1469 CE) in Diyarbakır to argue that his career was inextricably entangled
with the trajectory of the Aqquyunlu “Turkmen” rulers who were establishing Diyarbakır as a regional center
at the time. Accordingly, I suggest that we should see the processes of Aqquyunlu state formation as including
members of the Armenian clerical elite such as Mkrtičʻ Nałaš.
I propose to use the concept of synchronisms to reflect the joint and entangled agency of multiple
individuals and interpersonal networks of mobilization and patronage. This concept enables the description
of entanglements and linkages without attributing primacy to any of the involved parties. I argue that the
synchronisms linking Mkrtičʻ Nałaš and early Aqquyunlu rulers of Diyarbakır demonstrate that the histories of
Christian clerical elites and the histories of the Muslim etatist and administrative configurations they inhabited
must be told together.