Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks at the Armenological market place, so to speak, at a phenomenological distance. It traces "Factors in the Pre-Islamic Armenian Condition–Fourth–Seventh Centuries," as the title states. The book shows that Armenian dissidence was not just a class struggle within the Armenian peculiar feudal system, in which the Church too was another powerful participant. It discusses "Early Arab Campaigns and the Regulation of Relations According to the Medinan Legacy" deals with a relatively better-researched subject. The book also discusses the development of the patterns in which Islamic–Armenian relations were regulated as per early Islamic political culture. It describes the so-called Paulician and Tondrakian histories were very much part of the Arab Period. The book provides entirely new paradigm: the Frontiers or the Borderlands between the Byzantine and Islamic empires. It discusses revolutionary-reformist or "dissident" nature of the literature of Grigor Narekac'i.