In the works of earlier Armenian authors no name is attached to
The History and early in the 13th century, however,
Mkhitar Gosh names a Movses Dasxurants'i as the author. The earliest extant manuscript of
The History, also of the 13th century (1289), bears no author's name; nor do other manuscripts. The earliest manuscript to bear the name of Movses Kalankatuaci is that copied by the scribe Lunkianos in 1761. The date of the compilation known as
The History is based on the fact that the last person to have a hand in
The History wrote at the earliest at the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century. The first historian to mention Movses' work was the medieval Armenian legal scholar
Mkhitar Gosh, referring to him as "Movses Daskhurantsi." A later historian,
Kirakos Gandzaketsi, referred to a statement in the
History itself, to attribute the name of the author as
Movses Kaghankatvatsi. The statement in question (Book II, ch. 11) says: Movses narrates the
Khazar invasion of Transcaucasia and other events up to the seventh century in Book I and II of his
History. Book III of his
History differs from the previous ones in style of writing and date. It deals with the
Caspian expeditions of the Rus' and their conquest of
Partav in the tenth century. Because of such time lapse and difference in style, attribution of the work to a single author seems doubtful. For this reason it has been common to assume two consecutive authors or editors,
Kaghankatvatsi (seventh century) as the author of Books I and II, and
Daskhurantsi (tenth century) as the editors of Kaghankatvatsi's text and the author of Book III. ==Publications and translations==