Ashot I was the first of his family to consolidate power in this country, which he did during the ninth century AD by playing the Abbasids off against Byzantium. Under that family, the Bagratids, the capital was moved from Kars to Ani, and this kingdom remained intact until it was overrun by the Seljuks. The earlier Artaxiad family ruled this country, and it sheltered Mithridates VI, thus inviting an invasion by Lucullus that seized this country's capital, Tigranocerta. 
Ashot I was the first of his family to consolidate power in this country, which he did during the ninth century AD by playing the Abbasids off against Byzantium. Under that family, the Bagratids, the capital was moved from Kars to Ani, and this kingdom remained intact until it was overrun by the Seljuks. The earlier Artaxiad family ruled this country, and it sheltered Mithridates VI, thus inviting an invasion by Lucullus that seized this country's capital, Tigranocerta.  Earlier, that king who eventually lost to Rome, Tigranes the Great, had exploited Parthian weakness to annex a number of Seleucid cities. The first twentieth-century version  of this country lasted for two years, from the Russian Revolution to an invasion by Turkish forces, which had support from Moscow. For ten points, what is this country of the southern Caucasus which became independent again after the fall of the Soviet Union, with its present capital at Yerevan?
Ashot I was the first of his family to consolidate power in this country, which he did during the ninth century AD by playing the Abbasids off against Byzantium.
{Armenia}