The Armenian military under Justinian and Maurice: A reply to pseudo-criticism

Abstract

This polemical paper discusses the three negative reviews written by Everett L. Wheeler, Ch.G. Mak­rypoulias, N.D. Barabanov, and G.G. Markaryan on the book “The Armenian Military in the Byzantine Empire: Conflict and Alliance under Justinian and Maurice” by A.M. Ayvazyan. The detailed analysis strongly questions the academic validity and sincerity of these reviews, reveals the low professionalism and extreme tendentiousness of their criticisms. The reviewers use a similar methodology for history falsification, which includes, among other things, deliberate fabrications, distortions of the original sources, disregard for the academic literature, malign substitution of the notions, and complete rejection of the patriotic narrative. All the three reviews visibly contain an anti-Armenian political-ideological bias. The paper also summarizes the positive reviews of the same book made by qualified specialists.

Keywords

• falsification of history
• byzantine empire
• sasanian empire
• great armenia
• armenian army
• armenian historiography
• emperor justinian
• emperor maurice
• patriotism
• nationalism
• “strategicon”