Syunik

Syunik is a province in the far south of Armenia. It borders Nakhichevan on the west and Iran on the south.¹ Its administrative center is Kapan.² Syunik was an independent kingdom from 987 to 1170.¹

The monastery of Tatev was the seat of a bishop from the ninth century and the administrative and learning center of the province.¹ Its church of Saints Paul and Peter was built by Bishop Hovhannes with the help of the princes of Syunik, according to an inscription of 895 to 906. The Orbelian family restored Tatev in the thirteenth century, in the time of Stepanos Orbelian, bishop of Syunik and author of the History of Syunik.¹ An earthquake damaged the monastery in 1138, the Seljuks attacked it in 1170, and Timur destroyed it in 1380. It was restored in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and an earthquake in 1931 brought down the dome of the church of Saints Paul and Peter and the bell tower.¹

The Armenian Church says that the apostle Bartholomew preached in Goghtn in Syunik, and that an episcopal see was founded there.³