Azat
Azat (
naxarark who were the great lords. From the Late Middle Ages
on the term and its derivatives were used to designate the entire body of the nobility.
The term is related to the Iranian āzāt-ān, "free" or "noble", who are listed as the lowest class of the free nobility in the bilingual (Middle Persian and Parthian) Hajjiabad inscription of King Shapur I, and parallels to the aznauri of Georgia. See the article in Wiktionary for further etymology.
The azatkʿ were a class of noble landowners directly subordinate to the princes and to the king, as prince of his own
Catholicos of Armenia according to Faustus of Byzantium
.
Pharantzem and their son, the future king Papas (Pap) were holed up with the Armenian treasure in the fortress of Artogerassa defended by a troop of azatkʿ.[2] Their equivalence with the medieval Western knights was immediately recognized when, as during the Crusades, the two societies, Armenian and Frankish, existed side by side. Thus the Armeno-Cilician Code of the Constable Smbat (after 1275) explains the meaning of azat by dziavor, an Armenian adaptation of chevalier.[1]
References
- ^ Encyclopaedia IranicaOnline Edition. Retrieved on January 13, 2008 (broken link repaired March 3, 2019).
- ISBN 0-520-23332-8.