ABSTRACT
Armenians lived there as integral elements and their world was governed by more or less the same laws that governed the region. The focus on the ongoing Armenian experience as part of the Near Eastern world will overcome an inherent Armenocentrism, which has inevitably created a dualism in Armenian historical writing. The scholarship and the discipline of Armenian studies in general face serious problems, such as cultural traffic lights and institutional validations. In line with the initial argument, the re-conceptualization of the medieval Armenian experience within the context of cultural and political Islam is an immediate task. The point is that the Armenian experience in the medieval Near East is too diverse and complicated to respond to simplistic and quasi-epic constructs. It is very difficult to trace a constant line of Armenian policy, ideology, or strategy, except mobility and flexibility in the different communities and places that sustained the continuity of the whole for centuries.
