Ashot II Bagratuni

Ashot II Bagratuni (Armenian: Աշոտ Բ Բագրատունի) was the presiding prince of Armenia in 685–690, when the country was contested between the Byzantine Empire and the Umayyad Caliphate.

Ashot Bagratuni's father was named Biurat or Smbat.^[1] Ashot became presiding prince of Armenia in 685, when his predecessor, Grigor I Mamikonian, was killed fighting against a Khazar invasion. Ashot managed to repel the invaders.^[2][3] At about the same time, however, as the Umayyad Caliphate was preoccupied by civil war, the Byzantine emperor Justinian II launched an invasion of Armenia;^[3][4] as the Byzantines considered Ashot as too independent and too powerful, they set up a rival presiding prince of their own, Nerses Kamsarakan.^[5] When the Arabs invaded Armenia in turn in 690 to re-establish their control over the country, Ashot confronted them in battle and defeated them, but in the subsequent pursuit he outpaced the main force of his army, and was heavily wounded. The rest of the army caught up and carried him away, only for him to die of his wounds at his residence at Dariunq.^[6][7]

Kamsarakan remained as the sole presiding prince until his death in 691; he was succeeded by Smbat VI Bagratuni (of a different branch of the family than Ashot) who betrayed the Byzantines and defected to the Arabs in 693, when the Umayyads, victorious in their civil war, invaded Armenia once more.^[8][9]

• Grousset, René (1973). Histoire de l'Arménie, des origines à 1071 (in French). Paris: Payot.
• Laurent, Joseph L. (1919). L'Arménie entre Byzance et l'Islam: depuis la conquête arabe jusqu'en 886 (in French). Paris: De Boccard.