Melik

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Template:History of Nagorno-Karabakh Мelik (Template:Langx, from Template:Langx) was a hereditary Armenian noble title used in Eastern Armenia from the Late Middle Ages until the nineteenth century. The meliks represented some of the last remnants of the old Armenian nobility, as well as Persian nobility in Shirvan and other areas of the Persian Empire. The most prominent and powerful meliks were those of Karabagh (Artsakh) and Syunik, which ruled autonomous or semi-autonomous principalities known as melikdoms (Template:Langx) under Iranian suzerainty. Meliks also existed in Yerevan, Nakhichevan, Sevan, Lori, Northwestern Persia, and other areas, although outside of Karabagh and Syunik most were merely hereditary leaders of local Armenian communities, not rulers of principalities.

The meliks of Karabagh each had their troops and military fortifications known as Template:Transliterations. They ruled on legal disputes within their territory and collected tax. The meliks of Karabagh saw themselves as the last bastion of Armenian independence in the region. After the conquest of Eastern Armenia by the Russian Empire, the meliks were generally not recognized as princes, but only as untitled nobles. Many of them, especially meliks from Karabagh, became Russian generals.

History

Origins

The conquest of Armenia by successive foreign dynasties during the medieval period dealt severe blows to the traditional Armenian nobility. By the end of Mongol rule in Armenia, the old social structure of Armenia had been virtually destroyed and the great princely houses had mostly disappeared.Template:Sfn Remnants of these princely houses survived in a few places, most notably in the mountainous and strategically important regions of Karabagh (part of historical Artsakh province) and Syunik, where they retained their autonomy.Template:Sfn Old Armenian titles fell out of use and were replaced with the flexible term melik, which was used to refer to any of the remnants of the Armenian nobility, whether successors of the great princely houses or of the lower gentry (Template:Transliterations).Template:Sfn Later, the term was used to refer to even lower layers of elites, such as municipal and village chiefs in charge of duties such as tax collection.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Outside of Karabagh and Syunik, most people bearing the title of melik were merely hereditary leaders of local Armenian communities, rather than (semi-)autonomous rulers.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn According to historian Robert H. Hewsen, all of the melik houses of Karabagh and probably most of those of Syunik were descended from branches of the Syuni dynasty.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Besides the meliks of Karabagh, Syunik, Lori and Somkhiti, the other meliks of Eastern Armenia cannot be proven to have been of princely origin,Template:Sfn although the highly influential Aghamalian meliks of Yerevan were almost certainly of princely extraction.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The other, minor meliks may have been descendants of the gentry or local headmen and larger landowners who were raised to the status of melik.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Melikdoms of Karabagh and Syunik

Template:MainThe meliks of Karabagh (Artsakh) and Syunik were the successors of the earlier Armenian lords of those regions, mainly of Syuni origin, who had maintained their autonomy following the Seljuk conquest of Armenia in the tenth century. The Armenian lords of Artsakh and part of Syunik were more or less united from the tenth century under the Principality of Khachen.Template:Sfn Template:Efn Khachen reached its peak in the thirteenth century under the Hasan-Jalalian family, although the principality was later broken up and weakened because of the attacks of foreign conquerors.Template:Sfn In the mid-fifteenth century, the Qara Qoyunlu ruler Jahan Shah placed a number of territories along the northern frontier of his realm under the control of the Armenian nobles of Karabagh and Syunik, many of whom had earlier been dispossessed by Timur.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn They were granted the title of melik and allowed broad autonomy.Template:Sfn Template:Efn The meliks of Karabagh and Syunik retained their autonomous status under Safavid rule, although they were weakened as a result of the devastating Ottoman–Safavid wars in the sixteenth century.Template:Sfn During the reign of Shah Abbas I (Template:Reign), the Safavids confirmed and increased the rights of the meliks and apparently raised new people to the status of melik.Template:Sfn Succession of a new melik was confirmed by a decree of the shah, but was actually hereditary, with the eldest son or sometimes a younger brother of the melik succeeding him.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

The five Armenian melikdoms of Karabagh, known as the Khamsa melikdoms, were Gulistan, Jraberd, Varanda, Khachen, and Dizak.Template:Sfn These five principalities were ruled by the Beglarian, Israelian, Shahnazarian, Hasan-Jalalian, and Avanian families, respectively.Template:Sfn The Khamsa melikdoms formed a league against their foreign enemies, but they also competed with each other.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The melidom of Tsar was geographically in Karabagh but not a part of the Khamsa melikdoms' league.Template:Sfn There were four important melikdoms in Syunik: Sisian (or Angeghakot), Ghapan (or Bekh), Tatev and Kashatagh.Template:Sfn Sisian was ruled by the Tangians, Tatev and Ghapan by branches of the Parsadanians, and Kashatagh by the Haykazians (from which branched off the Israelians of Jraberd).Template:Sfn Template:Sfn To the north, near Lake Sevan (Gökche), there were the minor melikdoms of Gegham and Gardman.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn These two were ruled by branches of the Shahnazarian (originally Shahanshah or Ulubekian) family which later took over Varanda.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

The meliks of Karabagh and, to a lesser extent, Syunik were fully autonomous and held executive, legislative, judicial, military, and fiscal authority over their territories.Template:Sfn They issued their own decrees, ruled on legal disputes and criminal cases and collected their own taxes, from which they paid tribute to the Iranian shah.Template:Sfn They were often responsible for maintaining more than one fortress, called Template:Transliterations.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn They had their own military forces consisting of one to two thousand infantrymen, although more troops could be raised in emergencies.Template:Sfn A melik had his own banner (Template:Transliteration), commander (Template:Transliteration), and his subordinates, the chiliarchs (Template:Transliterations) and centurions (Template:Transliterations or Template:Transliterations).Template:Sfn These officers were often members of the melik's family.Template:Sfn Despite the name, the centurions or Template:Transliterations were not literally the commanders of a hundred men, but rather vassals of the meliks, either hereditarily or by appointment, who controlled two or more villages and furnished a certain number of troops under his own banner.Template:Sfn

The meliks of Karabagh saw themselves as the saw themselves as the last bastion of Armenian independence in the region and sometimes claimed to speak on behalf of the entire Armenian people in their communications with foreign rulers.Template:Sfn The meliks played an especially prominent role in Armenian political life from 1678 until the Russian annexation of Eastern Armenia in 1828.Template:Sfn In 1678, Catholicos Hakob Jughayetsi called a secret meeting at Etchmiadzin with leading meliks and members of the clergy, where he proposed accepting Catholicism in exchange for European protection.Template:Sfn A delegation of meliks headed by the Catholicos set out for Rome, but the mission was abandoned after the Catholicos died on the journey.Template:Sfn Only the young Israel Ori of the Haikazian family went on to Europe.Template:Sfn Ori spent much of his life trying to convince a European ruler, first Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine and later Peter the Great, to conquer Iranian Armenia with the help of the meliks.Template:Sfn He did not succeed, but his activities contributed to Armenian elites seeing Russia as an ally and liberator of the Armenians.Template:Sfn The collapse of Safavid power and the Russian invasion of Iran in 1722 raised Armenian hopes of liberation from Muslim rule.Template:Sfn The meliks of Syunik and Karabagh raised a rebellion against the local Turkic tribal lords under the leadership of Avan Yuzbashi and Davit Bek, an Armenian from Georgia of possible melik extraction.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The rebels were soon faced with an Ottoman invasion, which they resisted successfully in Syunik and Karabagh at least until the deaths of Davit and his successor Mkhitar Sparapet in 1728 and 1730.Template:Sfn

In 1735, Nader Khan Afshar drove the Ottomans out of the South Caucasus and was crowned Nader Shah the next year.Template:Sfn Nader reconfirmed the autonomy of the meliks of Karabagh and recognized Karabagh and Zangezur as semi-autonomous regions.Template:Sfn After Nader's death in 1747, chaos beset Iran again, allowing the Muslim khanates to reassert their power in the Caucasus.Template:Sfn During this time, Melik Shahnazar of Varanda allied himself with Panah Khan Javanshir, the chieftain of a Turkic tribe, against other Armenian meliks, which ultimately led to the downfall of the autonomous Armenian melikdoms of Karabagh.Template:Sfn

Other meliks

There were also melikdoms in southern Georgia: in Lori, Aghstev and Pambaki.Template:Sfn The Armenians of Tbilisi had their own melik from the Bebutian family.Template:Sfn There were twelve melikdoms in Nakhichevan.Template:Sfn South of the Aras River, there were meliks in Maku, Marand, Khoy, and Karadagh and Salmast.Template:Sfn There were at least eleven meliks in the Erivan Khanate, including those of the Aghamalians, Geghamians, Loris-Melikians, Arghutians, and so on.Template:Sfn There were four semi-autonomous meliks in the Khanate of Ganja, who, according to Raffi, had good relations with the Khan.Template:Sfn Further east, there was one melik each in Shaki, Shamakhi, and Baku.Template:Sfn There were also meliks in Surmalu who claimed descent from the ancient noble house of Kamsarakan.Template:Sfn

Meliks of Erivan

Template:See also From the mid-seventeenth century until 1828, the Armenians of the province (or khanate) of Erivan were under the authority of the Aghamalian meliks of Yerevan (Erivan).Template:Sfn Each mahal (district) of the province with a significant Armenian population had its own melik as a hereditary leader, who, along with the Armenian village headmen, answered to the melik of Yerevan.Template:Sfn The melik of Yerevan was the most powerful non-religious leader in the province after the sardar (governor).Template:Sfn He was appointed directly by the shah and on some occasions dealt with him directly.Template:Sfn The meliks of Yerevan accumulated great wealth from their properties and the tribute they received from all the Armenian villages of the province.Template:Sfn The Aghamalian meliks had full administrative, legislative and judicial powers over the Armenians under their authority save for the death penalty, which remained the sole right of the sardar.Template:Sfn The melik also appointed the commander of the Armenian infantry units that served in the sardar's army.Template:Sfn The Aghamalians' exact origin cannot be determined, but their high degree of authority and their high-level marriage alliances (for example, with the royal house of Georgia) strongly suggests a princely origin.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

After Russian conquest

After the Russian conquest of Karabagh in 1813, the meliks of Karabagh were reduced to untitled nobles with the word "melik" incorporated into their surnames.Template:Sfn Save for a few exceptions, the meliks were generally not officially recognized as princes in the Russian Empire.Template:Sfn Some meliks remained on their ancestral properties after the Russian conquest.Template:Sfn The descendants of the meliks of Karabagh formed a large part of Russian Armenian "high society" in major cities such as Baku, Tbilisi, Moscow and Saint Petersburg.Template:Sfn

Melik families of Eastern Armenia

Altogether, there were between 70 and 90 melikal houses in Eastern Armenia, mostly in the provinces of Artsakh, Gardman, Syunik, Lori, Yerevan, Nakhichevan, Kashatagh, and Karadagh. Below is the incomplete list of some of the most prominent Armenian melik houses:

(15th–19th centuries)

Melik Hasan-Jalalian (meliks of Khachen before 1755)
Melik-Avanian (Meliks of Dizak)
Melik-Mirzakhanian (meliks of Khachen-Khndzristan after 1755)
Melik-Shahnazarian (meliks of Varanda)
Melik-Beglarian (meliks of Gulistan)
Melik-Haykayzan (meliks of Kashatagh)
Melik-Israelian (meliks of Jraberd before 1783)
Melik-Alaverdian (meliks of Jraberd in 1783 - 1814)
Melik Atabekian (meliks of Jraberd since 1814 - mid-1850s)
Meliks of Barsum (Utik)
Meliks of Getashen (Utik)
Meliks of Khachakap (Utik)
Meliks of Voskanapat (Utik)

Prominent members of melik families

Israel Ori (1658–1711)
David Bek (d. 1728)
Melik Shahnazar II (d. 1792)
Avan-khan (d. 1744)
Valerian Madatov (1782–1829)
Count Loris-Melikov (1825–1888)

Popular culture

The meliks of Karabagh and Syunik inspired the historical novel David Bek (1882) by Raffi, the opera David Bek (1950) by Armen Tigranian and the novel Template:Transliteration (1961) by Sero Khanzadyan.Template:Sfn In 1944, the film David Bek was released and in 1978, Armenfilm in association with Mosfilm produced another movie about the efforts of David Bek and Mkhitar Sparapet called Star of Hope (Template:Transliteration).

References

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Citations

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