Nakhichevan Khanate

Coordinates: 39°12′00″N 45°30′00″E / 39.2000°N 45.5000°E / 39.2000; 45.5000
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Nakhchivan Khanate
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Nakhichevan Khanate
1747–1828
Erivan khanates in c. 1800
StatusKhanate
Under Iranian suzerainty[1][2]
CapitalNakhichevan
Common languagesPersian (official)[3][4][5] Azerbaijani
Armenian
Kurdish
History 
• Established
1747
• Disestablished
1828
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Afsharid Iran
Armenian Oblast
Today part of

The Nakhichevan Khanate (Persian: خانات نخجوان, romanizedKhānāt-e Nakhjavān) was a khanate under Iranian suzerainty, which controlled the city of Nakhichevan and its surroundings from 1747 to 1828.

The territory of the khanate corresponded to most of the present-day Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic and Vayots Dzor Province of present-day Armenia.[6]

History

Nakhichevan is both the name of a city and historical region located in the

Kangarlu branch of the Ustajlu tribe, the latter being one of the original Qizilbash tribes that had supplied power to the Safavids since its earliest days.[11][10]

The Kangarlu were described by J. M. Jouannin as “a small tribe established in

Aras".[11] Later that year, as Ottoman forces threatened the area during the same war, Shah Abbas ordered Maqsud Sultan to evacuate the entire population of the Nakhichevan region (including the Armenians of Julfa, who, in the following year, were transplanted to Isfahan, Qaraja Dag (Arasbaran) and Dezmar.[11] Persian rule was interrupted by Ottoman occupation in 1635–1636 and 1722–1736. It officially became a fully functioning khanate under the Afsharid dynasty. Initially, the territory of Nakhichevan was part of the Erivan Khanate, but later came to be ruled by a separate khan.[12]

The palace of the khans of Nakhichevan

Following the Treaty of Georgievsk in 1783 between the Russian Empire and the east Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, Kalb-Ali tried to establish contact with Russia. This action angered the Qajar king of Iran, Agha Mohammad Khan (r. 1789–1797), who as a result had Kalb-Ali seized and taken to Tehran in 1796, where he was blinded.[13] Another khan, Mohammad Khan Qajar of Erivan, had attempted the same, but his Qajar ancestry saved him from the same punishment; he was instead put under house arrest.[14] Following the assassination of Agha Mohammad Khan in 1797, Kalb-Ali went back to Nakhichevan, where he was appointed as its khan by Agha Mohammad Khan's successor, Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797–1834).[15] In return, Kalb-Ali supplied Fath-Ali Shah's army with soldiers from the Kangarlu tribe. In 1809, Prince Abbas Mirza annexed Nakhichevan and sent Kalb-Ali to Erivan. In Nakhichevan, he installed Kalb-Ali's sons, Nazar-Ali Beg and Abbas Qoli Agha, as his deputies.[16]

In 1808, during the

Gudovich briefly occupied Nakhichevan, but as a result of the Treaty of Gulistan
, it was returned to Persian control.

In 1827, during the

major-general of the Russian army and the title of campaign ataman
of the Kangarlu militia.

Population

Demographics of the Nakhichevan Khanate in 1826[18]
Group Families Males Females Total
Iranian elite/army Unknown Unknown Unknown 3,000
Turks and Kurds (settled, semi-settled, and nomadic) 3,863 9,033 8,105 17,138
Armenians 530 1,404 1,286 2,690
Total 22,828

Administration

It appears that Nakhichevan had a much higher proportion of private property than Erivan because it was less centrally organized, which allowed the illegal conversion of state lands into private property. This was caused by the lack of state lands in Nakhichevan.[19]

Taxes

Every adult male over the age of fifteen living in a city had paid an income or head tax, known as the bash-puli ("head money") in Nakhichevan. Despite Nader Shah's removal of the poll tax paid by Eastern Armenian Christians at Catholicos Abrahim III's request in 1736, Armenians (including in Nakhichevan) often paid more taxes than Muslims did.[20]

On Nowruz and other holidays, the khan and senior administrators received taxes in the form of presents. These were initially given as gifts but quickly transitioned to formal taxes and were commonly sought as bribes or tribute. These type of gifts were known as pishkesh, salamane and bairamlik / nowruzi / eydi.[21]

Coinage

The coins minted in the Nakhichevan Khanate were in the abbasi currency and equal to that of the coins minted by Karim Khan Zand, with the verse shod and the exclamation ya Karim on them. There are only a dozen of these extremely rare coins in existence, being minted between 1766–1777. Compared to Iranian coins that weigh a mithqal, these Nakhichevan coins are a little lighter. The few coins produced reveal their supposedly philanthropic and non-economic purposes.[22]

References

  1. ^ Bournoutian 2016a, p. xvii.
  2. ^ Hambly 1991, pp. 145–146.
  3. . (...) and Persian continued to be the official language of the judiciary and the local administration [even after the abolishment of the khanates].
  4. ^ Pavlovich, Petrushevsky Ilya (1949). Essays on the history of feudal relations in Armenia and Azerbaijan in XVI - the beginning of XIX centuries. LSU them. Zhdanov. p. 7. (...) The language of official acts not only in Iran proper and its fully dependant Khanates, but also in those Caucasian khanates that were semi-independent until the time of their accession to the Russian Empire, and even for some time after, was New Persian (Farsi). It played the role of the literary language of class feudal lords as well.
  5. ^ Homa Katouzian, "Iranian history and politics", Published by Routledge, 2003. pg 128: "Indeed, since the formation of the Ghaznavids state in the tenth century until the fall of Qajars at the beginning of the twentieth century, most parts of the Iranian cultural regions were ruled by Turkic-speaking dynasties most of the time. At the same time, the official language was Persian, the court literature was in Persian, and most of the chancellors, ministers, and mandarins were Persian speakers of the highest learning and ability."
  6. ^ Hewsen, Robert H. Armenia: a Historical Atlas. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001, map 149.
  7. ^ Sinclair 2014.
  8. ^ Tsibenko 2021.
  9. ^ Floor 2008, p. 171.
  10. ^ a b Floor 2008, p. 248.
  11. ^ a b c Oberling 2010.
  12. ^ Bournoutian, George A. (1992). The Khanate of Erevan Under Qajar Rule, 1795–1828. p. 32.
  13. ^ Bournoutian 2021, pp. 258, 283. For information about the treaty, see p. 16.
  14. ^ Bournoutian 2021, p. 264.
  15. ^ Bournoutian 2021, p. 283. For information about Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar's death and his succession, see pp. 20–21.
  16. ^ Bournoutian 2021, p. 283.
  17. ^ a b Ekbal, Kamran. "ʿAbbāsābād". Encyclopædia Iranica. Archived from the original on April 29, 2011. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
  18. ^ Bournoutian 1980, p. 12.
  19. ^ Bournoutian 1982, p. 115.
  20. ^ Bournoutian 1982, pp. 125, 128.
  21. ^ Bournoutian 1982, p. 126.
  22. ^ Akopyan & Petrov 2016, p. 2.

Sources

39°12′00″N 45°30′00″E / 39.2000°N 45.5000°E / 39.2000; 45.5000