25 000 Drams Christianity in Armenia - 1700

Artsakh — the self-declared republic across territory disputed with Azerbaijan since the early 1990s conflict — issued commemorative coinage partly as an assertion of institutional statehood, not purely for numismatic revenue. This piece marks 1,700 years since Armenia's adoption of Christianity in 301 AD, when King Tiridates III converted following his imprisonment and alleged miraculous healing of Gregory the Illuminator. That event made Armenia the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion, predating Rome's Edict of Milan by over a decade.

KM#14 is one of a small cluster of Artsakh issues from 1998, struck in limited quantities and never circulated.