40°27′47″N44°26′37″E / 40.46306°N 44.44361°E /40.46306; 44.44361
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TheAstvatsankal Monastery is an Armenian Monastery complex inAragatsotn Province, between the villages of Yernjatap and Hartavan. It was built in the 4th-13th centuries.
The original chapel of the church was built in the 5th or 6th century.[1]
The main church was added to the chapel in 1244 under the commission of Prince K'urd of theVachutian dynasty and his wife Xorisali, as known from an inscription:[1]
By the grace and mercy of God, I Kurd, Prince of Princes, son of the great Vache, and my wife Khorishah, daughter of Marzpan, built the Holy Katoghike for the memory of our souls. We have decorated it with every kind of precious ornament and offered the garden bought by us in Parpi, virgin land inOshakan, a garden inKarbi, a villager (?), and three hostels, in theyear 693/AD 1244.[2]
A largegavit ornarthex was built right after, circa 1250.[1]
This is one of the famous examples ofArmenian architecture in the 13th century adopting the use ofmuqarnas designs, spurred by the influence of contemporary Islamic architecture.[1][3] Examples of this can be found in theGeghard Monastery, theGandzasar Monastery as well (all in present-day Armenia),[4] and at theChurch of St Gregory of the Illuminator in Ani.[5] In many of these examples, muqarnas vaults are recurring features in thegavits (narthexes) of the churches, which were the locus of much innovation and experimentation in medieval Armenian architecture.[4] These borrowings of Islamic architectural motifs may have been due to either Ilkhanid or Seljuk influences in the region, although the wide geographic spread of muqarnas usage in this period makes it difficult to pinpoint any specific influence with certainty.[5]
The gavit collapsed in the1988 Armenian earthquake, but has since been reconstructed.[6]
(Page 145:) The original chapel at the site dates from the fifth or sixth century, to which the main church or katholikon was added on the north side. It is dated by inscription to 1244, attributed to the patronage of Prince K'urd and his wife Xorisali. A separate inscription names a master, presumably the builder, named Yovhanes. The large gavit or narthex was constructed immediately following the church, and must have been completed by ca. 1250. The interior space of the gavit is subdivided by four freestanding piers, which support several different types of ornamental vaults. Above the square central space was a complexmuqarnas vault, measuring just over 5 m on each side, with a centralerdik or oculus, which may have originally been covered by a colonnaded canopy.
(Page 146:) The common nine-bayed plan of the gavit calls to mind the typical nine-bayed mosque plan that spread throughout the Islamic world from Central Asia to Spain after the Abbasid era; at the same time, the domed, nine-bayed design was common for the naos of both Byzantine and Armenian church. (...) For that reason, the thirteenth-century gavits are excellent indicators of architectural inventiveness, and with forms imitated from adjacent cultures, also indicators of cultural interaction. Other, better preserved, examples known fromGeghard (before 1225),Haric' (ca. 1224), andGandzasar (1261) were equipped with elaborated muqarnas vaults similar to the vault at Astvatsankal and perhaps executed by the same masons. The early-thirteenth-century muqarnas vault of the gavit at theChurch of the Apostles atAni also has similar geometry.
(Pages 152-153:) Because themuqarnas was clearly invented in an Islamic milieu....
Even more unfortunately, the building in question was devastated in the 1988 Armenian earthquake, and the central vault and the north and west walls of the gavit collapsed.
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