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Anania Shirakatsi: A Medieval Armenian Scholar Ahead of His Time

Byzantium in the early Middle Ages was the intellectual center of the world. Islam had not yet created a major science, and Western Europe was in a state of severe barbarization with very few influential thinkers of its own. In the 6th century, the major Byzantine merchant Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote “Christian Topography,” where he tried to interpret the Old Testament as if the Earth was depicted as flat.

Cosmas Indicopleustes’ opinion had some influence on educated people of the 7th century, the time when Anania Shirakatsi lived. Shirakatsi himself, as a person who had studied for a long time in Byzantium, must have had noticeable courage to come forward with a different point of view.

Shirakatsi, following Ptolemy, considered the Earth to be the center of the Universe. Aristotle had already proven that it is spherical in 330 BC. According to Shirakatsi, our planet is not a flat cake, a kind of lavash, but a spherical or, more precisely, egg-shaped object: “like a yolk, it is in the center, the air around it is like a white, and the sky surrounds everything like a shell.”

Perhaps this judgment was also based on the Armenian tradition, as the inhabitants of the Armenian Highlands observed the stars from about the 5th millennium BC.

Even in our 21st century, there are ordinary people and scientists who are trying to prove that the Earth is flat. Yet, the great Anania Shirakatsi in the 7th century already proved that the planet has a round shape, thus getting ahead of not only the Greek and other contemporaries but also looking thousands of years ahead.

In “Cosmography,” Shirakatsi disagreed with theologians on the issue of the Earth’s balance. According to the Holy Scripture, the Earth rests on water or, more precisely, the sea. Anania believed that the “heavy” planet was kept from falling by a strong wind blowing from below – this hypothesis would later be called the vortex theory.

Shirakatsi advocated rationalism in the study of nature and condemned superstitious beliefs and astrology. He claimed that a person’s fate is not determined in advance by the star under which a child is born.

If this astrological theory of the stars predetermining fate is true, if a person’s life is predetermined by the moment of his birth, wrote Shirakatsi, then why do servants strive for a good life, since God has predetermined their miserable life? And if God puts evil into a small innocent child, then God himself is evil.

In “Cosmography,” Shirakatsi explains the nature of our Galaxy: he says that the Milky Way consists of “many clustered stars, weak and strong, whose light is perceived equally due to unclear visibility.” This point of view was advanced not only for the 7th century but seemed new and progressive a thousand years later.

The most authoritative scientist at that time was Aristotle, and, according to him, the Milky Way is a consequence of the combustion of fiery vapors from the stars, and not distant stars at all – and he believed that these stars are in the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere, below the Moon. Anania Shirakatsi did not accept Aristotle’s version, although, unfortunately, in “Cosmography” Shirakatsi does not explain why he considered Aristotle’s authoritative opinion to be incorrect.

The Armenian scientist urged not to be deceived by the small size of the Sun – in fact, it is larger than the Moon, it is simply located much further away. He gives the distance to the luminary from the Earth in “Geometric Astronomy” – 30 million 930 thousand stadia or approximately 5.5 million km.

Here, of course, Shirakatsi was mistaken, but the scientist correctly believed that there are craters on the Moon – in 1979, one of them was named after Shirakatsi.

And here Shirakatsi is noticeably ahead of his time: in European science, until the invention of telescopes, there was no consensus on this matter. In addition, Shirakatsi talks in detail about the “lunar eclipses” of the sun, explains what happens when the Sun rotates in the northern hemisphere, and the Moon in the southern hemisphere (the Earth falls between them) and blocks the penetration of sunlight to the Moon, causing a lunar eclipse.

Shirakatsi’s “Cosmography” often contradicts the Church Fathers: there are indications in the book that the “convicted of ignorance” scientist was banned, but his contribution to cosmography is undeniable. In the people’s memory, as often happens, a special image of the Armenian thinker has been preserved. Folk legends about him claim that he found high in the mountains an unfading, magical flower, Amaspyur, which grants wisdom if eaten.

Anania Shirakatsi’s contributions to science and knowledge are a testament to the advanced understanding and intellectual achievements of medieval Armenian scholars. His work continues to inspire and intrigue researchers and historians, shedding light on the rich cultural and scientific heritage of Armenia.