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Gregory of Akner

Armenian historian and author

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ1752222 ↗
Source-derived summary

Gregory of Akner (Armenian: Գրիգոր Ակներցի) or Grigor Aknertsi, Grigor Akants, Akanc was a thirteenth-century Armenian historian and author. He is best known for his valuable work, the History of the Nation of the Archers, which is an important source for the Mongol conquest of the Near East and the period of Mongol rule in Armenia. It is the only work of Armenian literature of which the original manuscript has survived to the present day.

Gregory moved from Eastern Armenia to Cilicia in the years of 1265 or 1266, where he joined the Akner monastery.

His work was edited and published with an English translation by Robert P. Blake and Richard N. Frye in 1949. A new English translation by Robert Bedrosian appeared in 2003.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gregory of Akner” is armenian historian and author. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gregory, Akner and Armenian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1265, 1266, 1949, 2003—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Gregory, Akner and Armenian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “armenian historian and author” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1752222. VIAF identifies the subject as 25444265. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1265, 1266, 1949 and 2003.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gregory of Akner”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gregory of Akner primary sources, Gregory of Akner archive and Gregory research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Gregory of Akner”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Gregory of Akner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.