The Policy of Byzantine Administration within the Territory of Armenian Provinces during the late 6th - first third of 7th A.D.: a Military Aspect

The paper considers the question of methods of reinforcement of Byzantine regular army which stood in Armenian provinces of Byzantium in 4th - 7th A.D. The problem of internal organization of this army and the ways of its further development are connected directly with the internal policy which the Byzantine administration managed on the territory of Armenian lands. The practice of internal government of Armenian provinces included the compulsory conscription – the general recruitment, a system of military levy, but, as the Armenian and Byzantine sources testify, the forms of this levy changed depending on the military-political context of each the period. The evidence of Ananias of Širak, an Armenian scholar of 7th A.D., and the data of historian Sebeos show that until the 90th of 6th A.D. the regional army of Armenia was manned by local people of another provinces, but not from the Armenians themselves, while in the first third of 7th A.D. the personal squads of nakharars, who were the representatives and heads of Armenian aristocratic families, became the ground of this army. Under emperor Heraclius (610-641) these squads still were the parts of Byzantine army of Armenia, but Byzantine administration converted them into regular military units of ethnic character. The reasons of such changes have been studied and considered in present paper