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Re: What if Armenians were Muslim?
You have to see our early defense of Christianity against the Sasanids in the battle of Avarayr as a defense of a Western orientation by Armenians, a defense of Hellenistic culture (which the Arshakunis were fond of), Christ was just its adopted archetype. You can see this clearly in the decision of Armenians in the 5th century AD choosing to base their most important translations on Greek manuscripts rather than Syriac, which was both more local and likely better understood by the Armenian literate class, as it was the lingua franca in the region during the Parthian period. It was not Christianity for its own sake that they were after, it was Hellenism. The thing with Armenia after the fall of Byzantine power is that it became an island of this western hellenophilia in matters more powerful than the design of columns and the style used for making statues: religion. And in a sea of Islam. No longer was Armenia's identity visible as a tug of war between Greeks and Persians, which is essentially the basis for much of our religious and cultural history, but as an island stubbornly resisting conversion as always to whatever is mainstream, in this case, Islam.
Under Arab rule, the Armenians even chose to ally themselves with an Arab orientation at least politically during the 7th-9th centuries, and flourished under its protection, though Arab emirs started to show up in Armenia and ruled peasants much as the Nakharars did, and brought their language and culture with them (though the borrowings in Armenian from Arabic never reached vernacular status, and entered the Armenian language just as easily as they left it).
But it was also during this time that Armenians developed most of the theological framework of their Christianity, as now they were safely cut off from the Greeks, always seeking to assimilate the Armenians to their religion. Under Arab rule, Armenians were finally able to feel secure with their own religious historiography as a distinctly Armenian phenomenon: the coast was finally clear for them to associate Christianity with Armenian-ness without worrying about being invaded by Greeks for not norming in all the tenets adopted by their Church in Constantinople, a very serious one being their desire for Greek to be the language used for the divine liturgy (basically attempts at assimilating the divergent Oriental Orthodox Churches, including the Armenian Apostolic Church).
If it were not for the rise of the Bagratunis, Armenia would have been missing the subsequent 300 years of history which followed Arab rule where we were truly politically autonomous, and had our own center of religion that had the power to assimilate non-Armenians. We would have a completely different history if that never happened: we would likely have had many more Muslim Armenians today as the emirs present in Armenia during Arab rule would have never left, their legacy would continue uninterrupted during Seljuk rule.
You have to see our early defense of Christianity against the Sasanids in the battle of Avarayr as a defense of a Western orientation by Armenians, a defense of Hellenistic culture (which the Arshakunis were fond of), Christ was just its adopted archetype. You can see this clearly in the decision of Armenians in the 5th century AD choosing to base their most important translations on Greek manuscripts rather than Syriac, which was both more local and likely better understood by the Armenian literate class, as it was the lingua franca in the region during the Parthian period. It was not Christianity for its own sake that they were after, it was Hellenism. The thing with Armenia after the fall of Byzantine power is that it became an island of this western hellenophilia in matters more powerful than the design of columns and the style used for making statues: religion. And in a sea of Islam. No longer was Armenia's identity visible as a tug of war between Greeks and Persians, which is essentially the basis for much of our religious and cultural history, but as an island stubbornly resisting conversion as always to whatever is mainstream, in this case, Islam.
Under Arab rule, the Armenians even chose to ally themselves with an Arab orientation at least politically during the 7th-9th centuries, and flourished under its protection, though Arab emirs started to show up in Armenia and ruled peasants much as the Nakharars did, and brought their language and culture with them (though the borrowings in Armenian from Arabic never reached vernacular status, and entered the Armenian language just as easily as they left it).
But it was also during this time that Armenians developed most of the theological framework of their Christianity, as now they were safely cut off from the Greeks, always seeking to assimilate the Armenians to their religion. Under Arab rule, Armenians were finally able to feel secure with their own religious historiography as a distinctly Armenian phenomenon: the coast was finally clear for them to associate Christianity with Armenian-ness without worrying about being invaded by Greeks for not norming in all the tenets adopted by their Church in Constantinople, a very serious one being their desire for Greek to be the language used for the divine liturgy (basically attempts at assimilating the divergent Oriental Orthodox Churches, including the Armenian Apostolic Church).
If it were not for the rise of the Bagratunis, Armenia would have been missing the subsequent 300 years of history which followed Arab rule where we were truly politically autonomous, and had our own center of religion that had the power to assimilate non-Armenians. We would have a completely different history if that never happened: we would likely have had many more Muslim Armenians today as the emirs present in Armenia during Arab rule would have never left, their legacy would continue uninterrupted during Seljuk rule.
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