Armenian sources online at Robert Bedrosian

Robert Bedrosian writes to say that he has created a new collection of Armenian patristic materials on his website here.  In this he is rather too modest.  It is a cornucopia of PDF’s of Armenian materials.

Anyone who has ever tried to locate an Armenian edition of an ancient text will know that it is a lesson in pain.  Those of us who are not Armenian-speakers find it impossible to construct useful searches in Google Books.

The page begins with catalogues of Armenian manuscript holdings; in Munich, Paris, Oxford and others.  Much material in this language is unpublished, so these are valuable insights into available materials, all by themselves.

Then we pass to editions of Philo, and then patristic and liturgical texts.  These include many of the publications of the Mechitarist Fathers of Venice, all valuable, often referenced in bibliographies, and dreadfully hard to find online.  I noted two editions of Severian of Gabala, also sermons of John Chrysostom, and material by Timothy Aelurus, Eznik of Kolb, and so on.

After this we pass into editions of the bible in classical Armenian (or Grabar).  Finally there are some very useful reference volumes.

I don’t know of anyone but Robert Bedrosian who could have made such a collection.  But in so doing he has made accessible a world of useful material!

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42 thoughts on “Armenian sources online at Robert Bedrosian

  1. I’m very keen to find an online English translation of Michael the Syrian’s ‘Chronicle’, but can’t seem to access Robert Bedrosian’s site or indeed contact him. Thanks in advance for any tips.

  2. What happened to Robert Bedrosian’s website? Whenever I try opening rbedrosian.com it denies access (error 403).

  3. Roger, do you know how to contact Robert Bedrosian? Because all I’m getting is “Error 403 – Forbidden. You don’t have permission to access the requested resource. Please contact the web site owner for further assistance.”

  4. I have the same problem with Arshak.
    I cannot reach the Rbedrosian website as it gives the same error as above.
    Regards

  5. Still Error 403 – Forbidden… What has happened with RB.s site? Arshak, Ismail, did you already find access to the website? Regards, Heiko

  6. Same problem as Ismail and Arshak! Still Error 403 – Forbidden…
    Did someone succeed?

  7. I find the same – that access is denied. I have just had an email from Dr Bedrosian telling me that the site is under attack 24 hours a day. I might see if I can host a mirror of his site then.

  8. HI Roger,
    have you been able to set up the mirror.
    I’m keen to view the online sources that Dr Bedrosian has, especially on syriac literature.

  9. Thanks Roger,
    your link works but all other links on the page pointing to rbedrosian.com return the same error.

  10. Thanks for pointing this out. I’ve had the same error message myself, and thought it was just me until I found this discussion via Google.
    I intend to mirror the part of most interest to me, “Armenian Historical Sources”, at http://www.attalus.org/armenian/
    But I see what Roger means about the size – I’ve only done part and there are already over a thousand files! I’ll do some tomorrow if I have time.

  11. Bearing in mind the warning about the size, I’ve stuck to the historical sources – a mere 183 Mb. The patristic material unfortunately looks more complicated. It’s sad that this should happen to such an excellent site.

  12. Could I perhaps ask for you to host the Peter Charanis artile “Armenians in the Byzantine Empire”? Thank you for any help.

  13. Could I perhaps ask for you to host the Peter Charanis article “Armenians in the Byzantine Empire”? Thank you for any help.

  14. Hello!

    I am trying to access Robert’s pdfs and website but it says ‘error occurred’ this seems to be a new error message, does anyone have any information on this?

    Thank you! Its for my Phd work!

  15. Dear colleagues,

    I faced the same connection issues as you did, and I would like to thank Andrew for mirroring the historical sources, that was a major help.
    Unfortunately, at the moment I desperately need the first part of Khachikyan’s volume on XV century armenian colophons. It’s split in three parts and it should be around 100 mb altogether, so I’m not sure that something can be done about it, but any help would be really appreciated.
    In turn, I wonder if there is anything I can do to help as an armenologist. Bedrosian’s site is invaluable for the discipline, and it is sad to know that it is under attack 24 hours a day. Would it be possible to collect a small group of researcher who share the burden of mirroring the various sections?

  16. Unfortunately Khachikyan has defeated me – the historical sources were reasonably easy to copy because they had been zipped, but not these PDFs. Maybe someone else has the skills to extract the files.

  17. That’s ok, thank you very much for trying, Andrew, I knew it was a long shoot…

  18. Does anybody have diakonoff pdfs; the hittite and hurrian social structure and ethnic divisions of the hurrians? I need for my dissertation

  19. You can try attalus.org/armenian/urartian.html

    For the time being, I’ve copied the files over as is, so some of the links will work and some won’t.
    I won’t have much spare time over the next week, but after that I’ll tidy up a bit.

  20. Federico, if you haven’t yet found the book you need, download it from here: http://serials.flib.sci.am/openreader/nyut_hay_jogh_patm_6/book/Binder1.pdf

    All the volumes of Armenian medieval colophons can be downloaded from the following page of the website of the Fundamental Scientific Library of NAS RA: http://serials.flib.sci.am/openreader/test/index.html

    This library has a rich collection of on-line Armenian resources, mainly digitized books starting from the first printed Armenian book (1512) — http://www.flib.sci.am/arm/node/2

  21. Robert Bedrosian’s site is still inaccessible to me; has been for a couple of years now. It’s clear that because he’s fighting the attacks that all of us have, he’s tried to repair it by blocking wide swaths of the Internet… Not a winning strategy.

  22. I’m really sorry to hear that, Bill. His site still seems to work for me.

    By the way I’m glad to hear from you. Are you still working away at Lacus Curtius? I think you may have my email blocked? I’ve written a couple of times but no answer. I was able to get to Jona Lendering tho.

  23. Do you have Robert Bedrosian’s email contact information? I have some problems with his translation of the English text of Hetum.

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