100 Dram Shirakatsi

Anania Shirakatsi was a 7th-century Armenian scholar whose works on cosmography, mathematics, and calendar reform were so far ahead of provincial intellectual norms that later historians debated whether his manuscripts could genuinely be that early. He argued, correctly, that the Earth was spherical at a time when that position required active defense. Armenia issued this coin as part of a broader commemorative series honoring figures central to Armenian cultural identity — a program that accelerated notably in the post-Soviet years as the republic worked to anchor its national narrative in pre-Russian, pre-Ottoman history.