This paper attempts to reconsider the geographic, religious and political orientations of the city of Ani in the 13th century. Long considered an “Armenian” capital, this economically robust city was home to Armenian, Georgian, Persian and Turkish speakers, and during the 13th century enjoyed a great deal of artistic, architectural and commercial productivity. While recent scholarship on medieval cities in the region have yielded findings that suggest varying degrees of pacific inter-faith interaction, primary sources produced in Ani indicate that relations between the range of religio-linguistic populations living in and around the city were based primarily on competition (within a larger framework of coexistence.) This paper will attempt to understand how these competitive interactions were articulated within the city walls. At the same time, this paper will look beyond the walls of the city itself and strive to understand Ani’s “place” in the region. A city with a complicated internal identity, Ani was many things to many people in the 13th century: an Armenian “capital,” a Georgian city, a robust trading center and, eventually, a city controlled by the Mongols. This paper will suggest that Ani’s complicated internal dynamics were also reflected externally; and that echoes of the ambiguity of the city’s identity (geographic, religious and political) can be seen in texts composed from Baghdad to Tblisi to Konya.