David of Sassoun

A boy comes down from the hills at dusk driving the town’s lambs in front of him, and the women of Sassoun slam their doors. Mixed in with the flock are hares, foxes and a wolf or two, all trotting along in good order. The new herd-boy could not tell which animals were whose, so he ran down everything on the mountain and brought the lot home. He is pleased with his day’s work. The town is less sure.

This is David, and Sassoun will get used to him. He is the hero of the third and longest part of Sasna Tsrer, the Daredevils of Sassoun, the epic the Armenians of the highlands around Lake Van carried in their heads for something like a thousand years. Its wars are usually read as a memory of Armenian resistance to Arab rule between the eighth and tenth centuries. Its four cycles follow four generations of one oversized, hot-tempered family. First come the twins Sanasar and Baghdasar, who found the fortress town. Then Great Mher, the lion-killer. Then David. Last comes David’s son, Little Mher, who ends shut inside a rock.

David is born late to Great Mher and is an orphan almost at once, since both his parents die soon after his birth. The baby is sent south to Msr, the epic’s name for Egypt, to the court of the family’s old rival and to the breast of Ismil Khatun, who has a son of her own. That son grows up to be Msra Melik, the lord of Msr. He is David’s half-brother in most tellings and the man David is going to kill. The two boys quarrel as soon as they can walk, and David is sent back to his uncles in the mountains before Melik can do away with him.

In Sassoun the uncles try to keep him out of trouble. They make him a shepherd, with the results already described. Out on the high pastures he comes on forty demons in a cave, kills them, and helps himself to their hoard. An old woman, tired of his blundering through her millet, tells him what nobody else has dared to: his father had a hunting preserve on the mountain and a monastery beside it, and the men of Msr have wrecked both. David goes and looks. Then he rebuilds the monastery of Marutha with forty altars and fills it with the demons’ gold.

Tribute is the next thing he finds out about. Sassoun has been paying Msr for years. A collector named Kozbadin arrives with forty strong men to gather seven years of arrears, and finds a large young man standing in the storeroom who has just learned where the town’s gold goes. David sets about them with his bare hands. The smell of spilled grain and the sound of breaking measures follow the tax men out of the gate. Kozbadin comes back with five hundred and sacks the monastery. David catches them at a river crossing and none of them reach the far bank.

So Msra Melik gathers his armies, a host so large the storytellers say it drank rivers dry, and marches on the mountains. Only now does David’s uncle Ohan give up what he has kept hidden: Great Mher’s helmet and armour, the Lightning Sword, the Battle Cross that fixes itself to the right arm of the one entitled to wear it, and the horse Kurkik Jalali, who can talk and can clear a valley in one jump. David rides down alone.

Melik does not fight fair. He invites his brother into his tent to eat, and the carpet is spread over a pit. David drops out of sight. Up in Sassoun, Ohan senses it and shouts, and the old man’s voice carries across the mountains with force enough to bring David up out of the hole. Then the duel is set. Melik claims the right to charge first and takes three runs with his mace, the second from far off and the third all the way from Msr. A pillar of dust goes up each time. Each time a voice comes out of the dust to say that David is still there.

Now it is David’s turn. Melik has himself lowered into a pit and roofed over with forty millstones and forty buffalo hides. David brings the Lightning Sword down once. It goes through the stones, through the hides, and through Melik. Then he rides to the edge of the enemy camp and tells the soldiers to go home. They are farmers and fathers who were marched here, he says, and he has no quarrel with them. It is the most quoted moment in the epic.

David’s strength is plain. He can uproot a poplar, outrun game, and break an army alone, and his father’s gear makes him close to unbeatable in the field. What he cannot do is think ahead. He is hasty, easily talked round and careless of his word, and the epic is quite frank about it. His weapons come with a condition too. The cross on his arm keeps faith only with a man who keeps his own.

That is what ends him. Lady Khandut, a princess who has heard singers praise him, sends for David and marries him, and she bears him Little Mher. But years before, David lay with another woman, Chmshkik Sultan of Akhlat, and swore an oath to her that he then forgot. When he finally rides to Akhlat to answer for it, he is already weakened by the broken vow. The daughter he never knew, born of that earlier night, shoots him with a poisoned arrow. Khandut kills herself when the news reaches her, and the men of Sassoun level Akhlat in revenge.

None of this was written down until 1873, when a bishop named Garegin Srvandztiants found a village teller called Krpo who recited the tale to him over three days. It was printed in Constantinople the next year. The scholar Manuk Abeghian later gathered dozens of variants, and a joined-up version in a single style came out in 1939. Hovhannes Tumanyan had already turned the David cycle into a poem in 1902 that Armenian schoolchildren still learn. The telling itself goes on, with a seated narrator and a duduk player beside him, most of all on the first Saturday of October, and UNESCO put the performance on its heritage list in 2012. Since 1959 a copper David on a rearing Kurkik Jalali, the work of the sculptor Yervand Kochar, has stood outside the railway station in Yerevan with the sword drawn back for the stroke.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is David of Sassoun?

David of Sassoun is the central hero of the Armenian national epic Sasna Tsrer, the Daredevils of Sassoun. He is the son of Great Mher and the third of four generations of heroes who defend the mountain town of Sassoun. He is best known for killing the invader Msra Melik in single combat.

How did David of Sassoun defeat Msra Melik?

David of Sassoun survived three charges from Msra Melik’s mace and then struck once with the Lightning Sword. Melik had hidden in a pit under forty millstones and forty buffalo hides, and the sword cut through all of them and through Melik. David then told the enemy soldiers to go home unharmed.

What weapons and horse did David of Sassoun have?

David of Sassoun carried the Lightning Sword and wore the helmet and armour of his father, Great Mher. He also bore the Battle Cross on his right arm and rode the wonder horse Kurkik Jalali. His uncle Ohan had kept these hidden until Msra Melik’s army marched on Sassoun.

How did David of Sassoun die?

David of Sassoun was killed by a poisoned arrow shot by his own daughter, the child of his earlier affair with Chmshkik Sultan of Akhlat. He had broken an oath to Chmshkik Sultan, and the broken vow had weakened him. His wife Khandut killed herself after his death.

Is David of Sassoun an ancient story?

The epic of David of Sassoun was passed on by word of mouth for centuries and is usually tied to Armenian resistance to Arab rule between the eighth and tenth centuries. It was first written down in 1873 by Bishop Garegin Srvandztiants from a village teller named Krpo. UNESCO added its performance to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2012.

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