Bagrat II Bagratuni (, Arabic: Buqrāṭ ibn Ashūṭ; died after 851) was an Armenian noble of the Bagratid (Bagratuni) family and the presiding prince ("prince of princes") of Arab-ruled Armenia between 830 and 851. He succeeded his father, Ashot IV Bagratuni, as ruler of Taron in 826, and was named presiding prince by the Abbasid Caliph in 830. In 849 he began an open rebellion against Abbasid authority in Armenia. The rebellion provoked the dispatch of Bugha al-Kabir to the country, who crushed the revolt in a three-year campaign. Bagrat was treacherously captured during negotiations in 851 and brought captive to the Abbasid capital Samarra. He was succeeded in Taron by his sons, while the title of presiding prince passed to his nephew, the future King Ashot I of Armenia.
Life
Bagrat was the eldest son of Ashot IV Bagratuni, who by the time of his death in 826 had come to control a large part of Armenia, and was recognized by the Abbasid caliphs as presiding prince (ishkhan) of Armenia. After his death, Bagrat and his brother Smbat divided their father's inheritance between them: Bagrat took the regions of Taron, Khoith and Sassoun, i.e. the family's domains on the Upper Euphrates, while Smbat received the ancestral lands around Bagaran and the Araxes river. In a calculated effort to keep the two brothers divided, the Abbasid government divided Ashot's authority and conferred on Smbat the title of commander-in-chief (sparapet), while Bagrat was named presiding prince four years after his father's death. Bagrat was also probably the first presiding prince to bear the title of "prince of princes" (ishkhan ishkhanats) instead of just "prince of Armenia".
Abbasid calculations proved correct, as the two brothers spent much time quarrelling with each other. In 841, for instance, Bagrat had the Armenian bishops depose the Catholicos of Armenia, John IV, but he was promptly re-installed in his see by Smbat with the assistance of the other princes. Nevertheless, the Armenian princes were able to use the Caliphate's preoccupation with the Khurramite rebellion of Babak Khorramdin to achieve a significant degree of autonomy during this period. Smbat, who had spent time at the caliphal court as a hostage, was more circumspect about openly challenging Arab power than his brother, but both were ultimately too weak to seriously threaten Abbasid predominance for the time being. Thus Bagrat participated in the great campaign of Caliph al-Mu'tasim against the Byzantine Empire in 838, and even fought in the Battle of Dazimon against Emperor Theophilos. In 841, on the other hand, under the leadership of the sparapet Smbat, the Armenians revolted against the appointment as caliphal governor of Khalid ibn Yazid al-Shaybani, who in his previous tenures had become enormously unpopular among both the Christian and the Arab princes of the country. The rebels achieved his recall by the Caliph and his replacement with the weaker and more pliant Ali ibn Husayn, to whom the Armenians not only refused to hand over the expected taxes, but whom they promptly blockaded in his capital, Bardaa.