Alishan was a prolific author who wrote across different genres over the course of his more than sixty-year-long career․
Translations into Armenian Alishan translated works in prose and verse from English, French, Persian and Italian into Armenian. His translations include Canto IV of Lord Byron's ''
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'', Friedrich Schiller's "Die Glocke", and works by François de Malherbe, Alphonse de Lamartine, and François-René de Chateaubriand. Some of his uncompleted geographical studies have remained in manuscript form. In 1988–91,
Bazmavēp published Alishan's hitherto unpublished studies of the provinces of
Artsakh and
Utik; the former was also published as a separate book in Yerevan in 1993. Most of Alishan's works are in Armenian, but he also wrote in, and was translated into, French, English and Italian. These include a collection of Armenian folk songs translated into English (1852), a collection of primary sources in Italian regarding Armeno-Venetian relations in the medieval period (, 1893), and several French adaptations of his Armenian studies, such as (1861), (1881), and (1899). Publishing in European languages made Alishan's work more accessible and earned him the admiration of several European academics; later in his life, he received several honors from European academic institutions (
see above). In 1895, Alishan published , a dictionary of the flora of Armenia, and (The old faith or the pagan religion of the Armenians), a study of
pre-Christian Armenian religion. According to Bardakjian, "Any search [in Alishan's work] for dissension from Christian tenets on the Creator, the Creation, and human behavior would be a futile attempt." Alishan rooted his understanding of Armenian history in the biblical narrative of Genesis and tried to prove the traditional view that the Garden of Eden was located in Armenia using data from modern science. He saw patriotism and faith as inseparable, writing at the end of his '''': "One who is true to God and himself is true to his homeland. He who is untrue to his homeland is true neither to his soul nor to heaven." Bardakjian describes Alishan's patriotism as "a cultural and in many ways a passive patriotism," one which nonetheless had a major impact on the Armenian reading public and its growing national consciousness. He suggests that the "boisterous tone" in some of Alishan's poems may "replace, or cover up, rebellious sentiments unutterable by a monk." == Legacy ==