Abas was king of Bagratid Armenia from 928 to 953. He was a member of the Bagratid (Bagratuni) royal dynasty. He was the son of Smbat I and the brother of Ashot II the Iron, whom he succeeded. In contrast to the reign of his predecessors, Abas's reign was mostly peaceful, and he occupied himself with the reconstruction of the war-torn kingdom and the development of his capital at Kars.

Bagratid Armenia was an independent Armenian state established by Ashot I Bagratuni of the Bagratuni dynasty in the early 880s following nearly two centuries of foreign domination of Greater Armenia under Arab Umayyad and Abbasid rule. With each of the two contemporary powers in the region—the Abbasids and Byzantines—too preoccupied to concentrate their forces on subjugating the region, and with the dissipation of several of the Armenian nakharar noble families, Ashot succeeded in asserting himself as the leading figure of a movement to dislodge the Arabs from Armenia.