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Utik
Province of Kingdom of Armenia
189 BC–387 AD
Historical era	Antiquity Middle Ages
• Artaxias I declaring himself independent	189 BC
• Given to Caucasian Albania by Sassanids	387 AD
Today part of	Azerbaijan  Armenia

Utik (Template:Lang-hy), also known as Uti, was a historical province and principality within the Kingdom of Armenia. It was ceded to Caucasian Albania following the partition of Armenia between Sassanid Persia and the Eastern Roman Empire in 387 AD. Most of the region is located within present-day Azerbaijan immediately west of the Kura River, while a part of it lies within the Tavush province of present-day northeastern Armenia.

Name

In Armenian sources, Utik is also called Uti, Awti, Utiats’wots’ ashkharh 'land of the people of Utik', Utiats’wots’ gavar’ 'district of the people of Utik', Utiakan ashkharh and Utiakan gavar’ 'Utian land/district'. It is identified with the place names Otene in Ptolemy's Geography, Otenon in the Latin Ravenna Cosmography, Otena by Pliny, and Ūdh in the Arabic history Futuh al-Buldan by al-Baladhuri. It may also be identifiable with the land called Ouitia by Strabo, although others have placed Strabo's Ouitia on the northwestern or southern shore of the Caspian Sea. According to Robert H. Hewsen, the name of Utik is likely connected with the ethnonyms Outioi, mentioned by Herodotus, Ouitioi, mentioned by Strabo, and Udini, mentioned by Pliny. Pliny also mentions a group called the Uti, which suggests that this is a separate group from the Udini. Wolfgang Schulze writes that Otene and Uti(k) are not necessarily related and may refer to two distinct regions. Udi-/Uti- may be an old toponym referring to the lowlands between the Kura River, the Arax, and the mountains of Karabakh. The place name is related to the name of the Udi people, who live in the South Caucasus today north of the Kura, mainly in the village of Nij in Azerbaijan. Later, Utik and neighboring Artsakh were known as Karabakh, with the territory of Utik forming the lowland or steppe part of Karabakh.

Geography and administration

According to the Armenian geography Ashkharhatsuyts (7th century, attributed to Anania Shirakatsi), Utik was the twelfth of the fifteen provinces of the Kingdom of Greater Armenia, and belonged, at the time, to Caucasian Albania (the provinces of Utik and Artsakh had been lost by Armenia after its partition in the 4th century). According to Ashkharatsuyts, Utik consisted of eight districts (gavar’s in Armenian): Aranrot, Tri, Rotparsyan, Aghve, Tuskstak (Tavush), Gardman, Shakashen, and Uti Arandznak ('Uti Proper'). The province was bounded by the Kura River from north-east, the river Arax from south-east, and by the province of Artsakh from the west. According to Hewsen, in the Ashkharhatsuyts, in contrast with other old Armenian sources, the principality of Utik is combined with the separate principalities of Gardman and Shakashen (consisting of the districts of Shakashen and Tuskstak). It is unknown whether this reflects some Albanian or Armenian administrative situation (for example, the primacy of the princes of Utik over the other two) or the decision of the author of Ashkharhatsuyts to merge the principalities into one province for simplicity's sake. Additionally, the districts of Tri and Rotestak/Rotparsyan may have formed a separate principality of the Gargarians during the Arsacid period.

Utik was the site of the settlement of Khaghkhagh, which Agathangelos calls the "winter quarters of the Armenian kings" but which Elishe and Movses Kaghankatvatsi call the quarters of the Albanian kings. Its location is uncertain. Suren Yeremian places the city of Ainiana, mentioned by Strabo as being located in Outia, with modern Aghdam, but, in Hewsen's view, this is also uncertain. Utik was the site of a settlement called Tigranakert, built by Tigranes I in the 2nd–1st century BC. It may have been located in Gardman in the valley of the Shamkir (Shamkor) River.

History

The territory of Utik was controlled by the Achaemenid Empire. Herodotus reports that the Outians were located in the fourteenth satrapy of that empire and that they formed part of the Persian army together with the Mykoi at Doriscus. The Outians and the Mykoi, identified with the Yutiya and Maka of Achaemenid inscriptions, may have been migrants from southeastern Iran, although, according to another view, these groups were only ever located in southeastern Iran. According to Hewsen, Utik seems to have been part of the satrapy of Media and the succeeding kingdom of Media Atropatene until the 2nd century BC, when, according to Strabo, Artaxias I of Greater Armenia conquered the lands of Syunik and Caspiane and the lands that lay between them, i.e., Utik and Artsakh. Some Armenian scholars like Babken Harutiunian and Asatur Mnatsakanian believe that Syunik and Utik were already controlled by Armenia under the Orontid dynasty and were reconquered by Artaxias I, but Hewsen writes that there is no evidence to support this claim.

Utik remained a part of Armenia for some 500 years after Artaxias's conquest, although the Armenian-Albanian boundary along the Kura River was often overrun by armies of both countries. It was lost as a result of the Roman–Persian peace of 363 AD, but, according to the author of Buzandaran Patmut’iwnk’, in 370 AD the Armenian sparapet Mushegh Mamikonian defeated the Albanians and restored the frontier back to the river Kura. In 387 AD, the Sassanid Empire helped the Albanians to seize from the Kingdom of Armenia a number of provinces, including Utik. Although there is some evidence that suggests that Utik remained a part of the Persian-controlled kingdom of Armenia even after 387, it was definitely incorporated into Albania after the abolition of the Armenian kingdom in 428.

In the middle of the 5th century, by the order of the Persian king Peroz I, the king Vache of Caucasian Albania built in Utik the city initially called Perozapat, and later Partaw and Barda, and made it the capital of Caucasian Albania. (Partaw may have existed previously as a town or a village by that name.) According to another view, Peroz I constructed the city himself after deposing the ruling family of Albania. The princes of Utik, who formed part of the Armenian nobility, remained as rulers the province under Albanian and, later, Arab rule. After the fall of the Albanian kingdom in the early 6th century, it was not the princes of Utik, however, but those of Gardman who became the dominant princes of Albania. They were recognized as Presiding Princes of Albania by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius in 628 and remained in this position until 822. In 922, Utik was annexed by the Bagratid kingdom of Armenia, but this included only part of the province's historical territory. According to Cyril Toumanoff, the descendants of the princes of Utik were present in southern Artsakh as late as the 11th century.

Population

According to many scholars, the name Utik derives from the name of the ancient Udis/Utis, who, in their view, lived on both sides of the Kura or were a distinct tribe related to the Caucasian Albanian tribes living on the right side of the Kura. The ancient Udis/Utis have traditionally been considered the ancestors of the modern-day Udi people, who speak a Lezgic language closely related to (but possibly not directly descended from) the Caucasian Albanian language. However, different views exist about the exact relationship between the ancient groups called some variation of Udi/Uti, the modern-day Udis, and the toponym Utik. Schulze has suggested that the ethnonyms derive from a much older, possibly descriptive toponym referring to the lowlands between the Kura River, the Arax, and the mountains of Karabakh and that Udi/Uti did not necessarily refer to any specific ethnic group, but rather the inhabitants of that region. As for the modern-day Udis, Schulze writes that "he fact that today the Udis name themselves udi- is perhaps related to the adaption of the ethnonymic tradition in the former Uti region ." Alexan Hakobyan notes that considers it likely that Udi/Uti was a common term among speakers of Northeast Caucasian languages used to designate one's own or a different group (like *arya and *an-arya among Iranian peoples), hence why it was apparently applied to a number of Lezgic-speaking groups or their neighbors. He hypothesizes that the province received its name because of its proximity to the Utis/Udis on the other side of the Kura, or because a distinct Lezgic-speaking people by that name had once lived there and had been Armenized.

Differing views exist about the timing of the presence of Armenians in Utik. The issue has occupied a prominent place in the disputes between Armenian and Azerbaijani scholars about the history of Caucasian Albania and the historical eastern regions of Armenia. In 1958, Yeremian expressed the view that the people of Utik came under Armenian rule in the 2nd century BC and were assimilated into the Armenians by the 4th–6th centuries AD, but subsequent works by Armenian scholars have argued that Armenians inhabited the right bank of the Kura from a much earlier period. Aleksan Hakobyan argues that Utik was wholly Armenian from at least the 4th century BC. Bagrat Ulubabyan asserts that the people of Utik were not Armenized but were simply Armenians. This latter view has been criticized by some other Armenian scholars such as Paruyr Muradyan. The early Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi writes that the princes of Utik descended from Sisak, a descendant of the legendary Armenian progenitor Hayk and the reputed ancestor of the princes of Syunik. While some Armenian scholars interpret this as an indication of the Armenian origin of the princes, Toumanoff argues that this merely indicates that they had ruled the area since time immemorial. Hewsen writes that "t seems likely that except for Siwnik', eastern Armenia was not much more than armenized, if that" and that the Utians were "almost certainly a Caucasian tribe." Historian Tim Greenwood writes that by the time of the composition of the Ashkharhatsuyts, Utik, along with the provinces of Artsakh and Gugark, were no longer administratively part of Armenia but "they were evidently remembered as once having been Armenian and may have still contained communities who thought of themselves and the settlements they occupied as Armenian."

See also

• List of regions of ancient Armenia

Notes

1. Without the suffix -k’, which forms the nominative plural and the names of countries
2. Hariutiunian considers the juncture of the Kura and its tributary the Zayamchay (Zakam) to be a likely location. Other proposed locations are the confluence of the Kura and the Aghstafa or further up the Aghstafa.
3. Strabo refers to Phauene, which some scholars read as *Sauene and identify with Syunik.
4. Elsewhere in the same work, however, Hewsen writes that it is possible that Orontid domains extended to the confluence of the Kura and the Arax.

References

1. ^ Chaumont, M. L. (1985). "Albania". Encyclopædia Iranica, Online Edition. Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation. The more or less self-interested loyalty of the Albanians explains why the Sasanians helped them to seize from the Armenians the provinces (or districts) of Uti (with the towns of Xałxał and Pʿartaw), Šakašēn, Kołṭʿ, Gardman, and Arcʿax. (...) These territories were to remain in the possession of Albania; a reconquest by Mušeł (cf. Pʿawstos, ibid.) was unlikely.
2. ^ Harutiunian, B. (1986). "Utikʻ". In Arzumanian, Makich; et al. (eds.). Haykakan sovetakan hanragitaran [Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia] (in Armenian). Vol. 12. Erevan: Haykakan hanragitarani glkhavor khmbagrutʻyun. pp. 267–269.
3. ^ Hewsen, Robert H. (1992). The Geography of Ananias of Širak (Ašxarhac῾oyc῾): The Long and the Short Recensions. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag. p. 260. ISBN 3-88226-485-3.
4. Pliny, Natural History, VI, 42; XII, 28. Cited in Akopian , Aleksan (2022) . Albaniia-Aluank v greko-latinskikh i drevnearmianskikh istochnikakh (in Russian) (2nd, rev. ed.). Yerevan: Gitutyun. p. 73. ISBN 978-5-8080-1485-5.
5. ^ Hewsen, Robert H. (2001). Armenia: A Historical Atlas. University of Chicago Press. p. 58. ISBN 0-226-33228-4.
6. Roller, Duane W. (2018). "The Northeastern Part of the Inhabited World". A Historical and Topographical Guide to the Geography of Strabo. Cambridge University Press. p. 682. doi:10.1017/9781316848203.013. ISBN 978-1-107-18065-9.
7. Akopian 2022, p. 71-72: "Я. А. Манандян и С. Т. Еремян видят прямое упоминание армянской провинции Утик в следующем разделе Страбона в описании Армении: 'Передают также, что некоторая часть энианов поселилась в Уитии, другая же – над армянами, за горами Абом и Нибаром'. Однако, как видим, данная фраза противопоставляет с одной стороны Армению, с другой же – Уитию на берегу Каспийского моря, следовательно, вторая не может являться частью первой. Уития в данном разделе не Утик, а та область обитания уитиев, которых Страбон в разделе XI, 7, 1 прямо помещает между амардами и анариаками description of Armenia: 'It is also reported that some of the Enians settled in Uitia, while the others settled above the Armenians, behind the mountains Abom and Nibar'. However, as we see, this phrase contrasts Armenia on the one hand, and Ouitia on the shores of the Caspian Sea on the other, therefore, the second cannot be part of the first. Ouitia in this section is not Utik, but the area inhabited by the Ouitians, whom Strabo in section XI, 7, 1 explicitly places between the Amardians and Anariacae]."
8. Schulze, Wolfgang (2018). "Caucasian Albanian and the Question of Language and Ethnicity". In Mumm, Peter-Arnold (ed.). Völker und Phantome: Sprach- und kulturwissenschaftliche Studien zur Ethnizität (1st ed.). Berlin: De Gruyter. p. 289.
9. Schulze 2018, pp. 289–290.
10. Mutafian, Claude (2024). "Survey of Historical Geography of the South Caucasus from the Middle Ages to the Present Day". In Dorfmann-Lazarev, Igor; Khatchadourian, Haroutioun (eds.). Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus: Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan in Contemporary Geopolitical Conflict. Leiden: Brill. pp. 15–16. ISBN 978-90-04-67738-8.
11. Hewsen 1992, p. 195.
12. Anania Shirakatsi, "Geography"
13. Hewsen 2001, p. 102.
14. ^ Garsoïan, Nina G. (1989). The Epic Histories Attributed to Pʻawstos Buzand (Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 498. ISBN 0-674-25865-7.
15. Harutiunian, B. (1978). "Khaghkhagh". In Simonian, Abel; et al. (eds.). Haykakan sovetakan hanragitaran [Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia] (in Armenian). Vol. 4. Erevan: Haykakan hanragitarani glkhavor khmbagrutʻyun. pp. 715–716.
16. Hewsen 2001, map 52.
17. Hewsen, Robert H. (1982). "Ethno-History and the Armenian Influence upon the Caucasian Albanians". In Samuelian, Thomas J. (ed.). Classical Armenian Culture: Influences and Creativity. Chico, CA: Scholars Press. p. 33. ISBN 0-89130-565-3.
18. Akopian 2022, pp. 67–68.
19. Hübschmann, Heinrich (1904). Die altarmenischen Ortsnamen (in German). Straßburg: Trübner. pp. 263–266.
20. Hewsen 1992, pp. 189–191.
21. ^ Hewsen 1982, p. 32.
22. Hewsen 2001, p. 32.
23. Dum-Tragut, Jasmine; Gippert, Jost (2023). "Caucasian Albania in Medieval Armenian Sources (5th–13th Centuries)". In Gippert, Jost; Dum-Tragut, Jasmine (eds.). Caucasian Albania: An International Handbook. Berlin: De Gruyter. p. 48. doi:10.1515/9783110794687-002. ISBN 978-3-11-079459-5.
24. Hewsen 1992, p. 263.
25. Gadjiev, Murtazali (2017). "Construction Activities of Kavād I in Caucasian Albania". Iran and the Caucasus. 21 (2). Brill: 122–123. doi:10.1163/1573384X-20170202.
26. Akopian 2022, p. 73: "Многие исследователи считают бесспорным фактом, что топоним 'Утик' произошел от названия древних удинов-утиев, проживавших, по их мнению, как на левобережье, так и на правобережье Куры ."
27. Alikberov, A. K. (2015). "Narody i iazyki Kavkazskoĭ Albanii. O iazykovom kontinuume kak alʹternative koĭne. Iazyk pisʹmennosti i «iazyk bazara»" [The peoples and languages of Caucasian Albania: on the language continuum as an alternative to Koine: written language and 'bazaar language']. In Alikberov, A. K.; Gadjiev, M. S. (eds.). Albania Caucasica (in Russian). Vol. 1. Moscow: IV RAN. pp. 102–103. ISBN 978-5-89282-642-6. ряд исследователей полагает, что население Арцаха и Утик'а, до того, как утратило собственный язык и арменизировалось, было родственно албанским племенам левобережья, представляя собой отдельное племя
28. ^ Shnirelman, Victor A. (2001). The Value of the Past: Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia. National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka. pp. 175–176.
29. Schulze 2018, p. 303.
30. Schulze 2018, pp. 289–292.
31. Akopian 2022, pp. 72–74.
32. Akopian 2022, p. 74.
33. Moses Khorenatsʻi (2006). History of the Armenians. Translation and commentary by Robert W. Thomson (Rev. ed.). Ann Arbor: Caravan Books. p. 137 (Book II, Chapter 8). ISBN 978-0-88206-111-5.
34. Toumanoff, Cyril (1963). Studies in Christian Caucasian History. Georgetown University Press. pp. 108, 216, 218, 222, 469. OCLC 505712128. Cited in Hewsen 1982, 29, note 16.
35. Greenwood, Tim (29 August 2019). "Armenian Space in Late Antiquity". In Van Nuffelen, Peter (ed.). Historiography and Space in Late Antiquity. Cambridge University Press. p. 84. doi:10.1017/9781108686686.004. ISBN 978-1-108-68668-6.

v t e Historical states and regions of Armenia
Independent Armenian states	Kingdom of Armenia (antiquity) (Orontids, Artaxiads and Arsacids, 553 BC–428 AD) Kingdom of Armenia (Middle Ages) (Bagratunis, 884–1045) Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (Rubenids, Hethumids and Lusignans, 1080–1375) Republic of Armenia (1918–1920) Republic of Armenia (1991–present)
Minor or dependent Armenian states	Satrapy of Armenia (Orontids, 522–331 BC) Principality of Hamamshen (790–1486) Kingdom of Vaspurakan (Artsrunis, 908–1021) Kingdom of Vanand (963–1064) Kingdom of Tashir-Dzoraget (Kiurikians, 979–1118) Kingdom of Syunik (Siunis, 987–1170) Kingdom of Artsakh (Khachen, 1000–1261) Zakarid Principality of Armenia (Zakarians, 1201–1335) Melikdoms of Karabakh (Beglarians, Israelians, Hasan-Jalalians, Shanazarians and Avanians, 1603–1822) Republic of Mountainous Armenia (1921, unrecognized) Soviet Armenia (1920–1991) Artsakh (1991–2023, unrecognized)
Provinces or Ashkhars of Armenia Major	Upper Armenia Sophene Arzanene Turuberan Moxoene Corduene Nor Shirakan Vaspurakan Syunik Artsakh Paytakaran Utik Gugark Tayk Ayrarat
Other Armenian regions	Lesser Armenia First Second Third Armenian Mesopotamia Cilicia Mountainous Plain Rocky
Other provinces under Tigranes the Great	Syria Atropatene Adiabene Assyria Iberia Albania Cappadocia Judea Osroene

v t e Historical regions of Caucasian Albania
	Caspiane Gardman Cambysene Utik Begh Eghni Shake Kholmaz Gelavu Kaladash Kapalak Hegeri Cholaa Lpina Hereti

• States and territories established in the 2nd century BC
• Provinces of the Kingdom of Armenia (antiquity)
• Ancient history of Azerbaijan