Gavit

Gavit of Geghard Monastery in Armenia (UNESCO World Heritage Site). Dated 1215-1225, it has a muqarnas vault at the center.

A gavit (Armenian գավիթ gawit‘) or zhamatun (Armenian: ժամատուն žamatun) is a congressional room or mausoleum added to the entrance of a church, and therefore often contiguous to its west side, in a Medieval Armenian monastery. It served as narthex (entrance to the church), mausoleum and assembly room, somewhat like the narthex or lite of a Byzantine church.[1] As an architectural element, the gavit was distinct from the church, and built afterwards.[2] Its first known instance is at the Horomos Monastery, dated to 1038, when it was already called "žamatun".[3][2] The term "gavit" started to replace the term zhamatum' from 1181, when it first appears in an inscription at the Sanahin Monastery.[4]

  1. ^ Levon Chorbajian; Patrick Donabédian; Claude Mutafian (1994). The Caucasian knot: the history & geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh. Zed Books. p. 84. ISBN 1-85649-288-5.
  2. ^ a b Ghazarian, Armen; Ousterhout, Robert (2001). "A Muqarnas Drawing from Thirteenth-Century Armenia and the Use of Architectural Drawings during the Middle Ages". Muqarnas. 18: 145–146. doi:10.2307/1523305. ISSN 0732-2992.
  3. ^ Vardanyan, Edda (1 January 2015). "The Žamatun of Hoṙomos and the Žamatun/Gawit' Structures in Armenien Architecture". Hoṙomos Monastery: Art and History, edited by Edda Vardanyan, Paris : ACHCByz: 207.
  4. ^ Vardanyan, Edda (1 January 2015). "The Žamatun of Hoṙomos and the Žamatun/Gawit' Structures in Armenien Architecture". Hoṙomos Monastery: Art and History, edited by Edda Vardanyan, Paris : ACHCByz: 208.

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