Oganes Khachaturovich KHALPAKHCHIAN

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A large monastery ensemble of Sanahin occupies the place of honour among the main cultural centres of the 10th-l 3th century Armenia. Artistic qualities of its architectural masterpieces being very high, the monastery is included into the treasury of both national and world culture. The Sanahin Monastery stands two kilometers south-cast from the Alaverdi station, in the village of the same name on the plateau gently running to the canyon of the Debed-river. Surrounded by village structures the monastery buildings clearly stand out against the woody slope of the Chatindag mountains. Small churches on near-by hills, a bridge across the Debed-river and a group of khatchkars (stones in the form of crosses) complete the ensemble. Sanahin strikes the viewer with the beauty and grandeur of its architecture and simultaneously its position and unity with the scenery around.
The monastery has been referred to in documents beginning from the early 10th century. The formation of Tashir-Dzoraghet kingdom and establishing of the episcopal cathedra in Sanahin favoured its development. Since this time the monastery was often rebuilt by the kings of Ani and Gugarkh and their vassals.
Its commune was quite big. As the historian Stepannos Taronetsi (Asokhick) said in the early 11th century "Sanahin and Haghbat housed five hundred people".
In the late 10th-early 11th centuries Sanahin was the spiritual nucleus of the Tashir-Dzoraghet kingdom and one of the cultural centres of Armenia as a whole. Its Academy associated with Gregory the Magister ranked among the best in the country. Here they taught seven "free" arts of the Middle Ages (grammar, rhetoric, logics, mathematics, geometry, astronomy and music) as well as painting, chiefly miniature, and medicine.