Armenian Sea

Armenian Sea or Sea of Armenia (Hermenia)ХХII.Rubruck's return journey.

"My guide presented me to the Soldan. The Soldan said he would be pleased to have me taken to the sea of Hermenia or of Silicia."

(Armenian: Հայկակաան ծով), also its eastern part was called the Armenian Bay (Armenian: Հայկական ծոց).

In the 11-14 centuries, during the existence of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, was the name of the waters of the easternmost part of the Mediterranean Sea, which included the waters of the waterarea between Cilicia and Cyprus and the Gulf of Alexandretta (Iskanderun Bay).

William of Rubruck in his book “A Journey to the Eastern Countries”, describing in it his meeting with the Sultan of Rum, and then with the Armenian prince-regent Constantine of Baberon(Lambron), the father of the Armenian king Hethum I, calls this sea an Armenian sea: “...My conductor presented me to the sultan. Sultan said that he would willingly order to escort me to the Armenian sea or before Cilicia. Then the above-mentioned merchant, knowing that the Saracens care little about me and that I was overly burdened by the company of my guide, who daily annoyed me with requests for gifts, ordered to escort me to Korikos, the harbor of the king of Armenia. I arrived there on the eve of Ascension and remained until the day following Pentecost. Then I heard that the ambassadors of the king of Armenia came to his father. I put my belongings on the ship to take them to Acre, and I went to the king’s father to see if he heard anything new about his son. I found an old man in Ayas along with all his sons, except one named Barunuzin, who was building some castle. From his son the king, he received several messages, namely, that he was returning, that Mangu Khan had greatly facilitated for him the sake of paying tribute and gave him the advantage of that no ambassador to enter his country; on this occasion, the old man with all his sons and the whole people would have a great feast. He ordered me to be escorted to the sea to the harbor, called Ayas, and from there I crossed to Cyprus...” GUILLAUME de RUBRUCK, "A JOURNEY TO THE EASTERN COUNTRIES"

It is also called the Armenian Sea (Mare di Armenia) in the works of the famous Marco Polo and Marino Sanuto the Elder(1260–1338) – a Venetian geographer, traveler and statesman. In his famous 14th-century geographical and crusading treatise "Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis" (Book of Secrets for True Crusaders), the Venetian statesman and geographer Marino Sanudo il Vecchio (c. 1270–1343) explicitly used the term Mare di Armenia (the "Armenian Sea" or the "Sea of Armenia") to refer to the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea. He wrote: “The ports of Cilican Armenia are motley, multilingual, boiling ... Ayas and Koricos on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, Tarsus on the Kidn river and Mamestia on the Pyram river, Adana on the Sar river and Seleucia on the river Calicadn – they have always been overflowing with ships from all over the earth.” Marin Sanuto, an Italian writer of the 14th century, lists 25 ports of Cilician Armenia in his book. Nowadays, almost all of these ports no longer exist, most of them lie in ruins and disappeared underground or underwater, but then in the past they were known to the whole world. At the Cilicia then looked at as a bulwark of the Armenian world. In the book about traveling of Marco Polo "Il Milione" by Rustichello da Pisa, Sea of ​​Armenia is one of the seas mentioned in the geography described in the work. Historically, it corresponds to the body of water near Cilicia which called Lesser Armenia at that time.

Since the Lusignans—the last dynasty of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia—also ruled Cyprus, medieval Islamic historians considered Cyprus part of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (Lesser Armenia).