Vardan Areveltsi
Armenian scholar
Vardan Areveltsi (Armenian: Վարդան Արևելցի; Vardan the Easterner, c. 1198 – 1271 AD) was a medieval Armenian historian, geographer, philosopher and translator. In addition to establishing numerous schools and monasteries, he also left behind a rich contribution to Armenian literature. He is known for writing the Historical Compilation (Havak'umn Patmuc'yan), one of the first ever attempts to write a history of the world by an Armenian historian.
Biography
Early life
Vardan was born in Gandzak in 1198. He received his education at a school in Gandzak and at Nor Getik Monastery (later known as Goshavank), where he was student of the prominent scholar Mkhitar Gosh. He continued his studies at the Khornashat monastery in Tavush, learning literature, grammar, and theology. He also learned several languages while at Khornashat, mastering Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Persian. In 1235, Vardan became a vardapet and put his experience in education into action: he opened a school at St. Andre monastery in Kayenaberd and taught there from 1235 to 1239 and from 1252 to 1255. In 1239, he left Armenia for Jerusalem and on his return journey, traveled through the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, where he was a guest in the royal court of Het'um I. He remained in Cilicia long enough to participate in the 1243 ecumenical council in the capital at Sis.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vardan Areveltsi” 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.