Nakhichevan is both the name of a city and historical region located in theArmenian highlands in theSouth Caucasus.[9][10] Until the demise ofSafavid Iran, Nakhichevan was under the administrative jurisdiction of theErivan Province (also known as Chokhur-e Sa'd).[11] Shortly after the recapture of Yerevan in 1604 during theOttoman–Safavid War of 1603–1618, then incumbent king (shah)Abbas I (r. 1588–1620) appointed as its new governor Cheragh Sultan Ustajlu, who, after his brief tenure, was succeeded byMaqsud Sultan.[12] Maqsud Sultan was a military commander who hailed from theKangarlu branch of the Ustajlu tribe, the latter being one of the originalQizilbash tribes that had supplied power to the Safavids since its earliest days.[13][12]
The Kangarlu were described by J. M. Jouannin as “a small tribe established inPersian Armenia on the shores of theAras".[13] Later that year, as Ottoman forces threatened the area during the same war, Shah Abbas ordered Maqsud Sultan toevacuate the entire population of the Nakhichevan region (including theArmenians of Julfa, who, in the following year, were transplanted toIsfahan, Qaraja Dag (Arasbaran) and Dezmar.[13] Persian rule was interrupted byOttoman occupation in 1635–1636 and 1722–1736. It officially became a fully functioning khanate under theAfsharid dynasty. Initially, the territory of Nakhichevan was part of theErivan Khanate, but later came to be ruled by a separate khan.[14]
The palace of the khans of Nakhichevan
Following theTreaty of Georgievsk in 1783 between theRussian Empire and the eastGeorgian kingdom ofKartli-Kakheti, Kalb-Ali tried to establish contact with Russia. This action angered theQajar king of Iran,Agha Mohammad Khan (r. 1789–1797), who as a result had Kalb-Ali seized and taken toTehran in 1796, where he was blinded.[15] 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.[16] 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).[17] In return, Kalb-Ali supplied Fath-Ali Shah's army with soldiers from the Kangarlu tribe. In 1809, PrinceAbbas 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.[18]
In 1827, during theRusso-Persian War of 1826–1828, Abbas Mirza appointedEhsan Khan Kangarlu as commander ofAbbasabad, a fortress of strategic importance for the defense of the Nakhichevan Khanate.[19] After heavy losses in an attempt to take the fortress by escalade on July 14, the Russians mounted a siege. Ehsan Khan secretly contacted the Russian commander, GeneralPaskevich, and opened the gates of the fortress to him on 22 July 1827. With theTreaty of Turkmenchay, in 1828 the khanate became a Russian possession and Ehsan Khan was rewarded with the governorship,[19] conferred the rank ofmajor-general of the Russian army and the title of campaignataman of the Kangarlu militia.
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.[21]
Every adult male over the age of fifteen living in a city had paid an income or head tax, known as thebash-puli ("head money") in Nakhichevan. Despite Nader Shah's removal of the poll tax paid by Eastern Armenian Christians atCatholicosAbrahim III's request in 1736, Armenians (including in Nakhichevan) often paid more taxes than Muslims did.[22]
OnNowruz 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 types of gifts were known aspishkesh,salamane andbairamlik /nowruzi /eydi.[23]
The coins minted in the Nakhichevan Khanate were in theabbasi currency and equal to that of the coins minted byKarim Khan Zand, with the verseshod and the exclamationya 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 amithqal, these Nakhichevan coins are a little lighter. The few coins produced reveal their supposedly philanthropic and non-economic purposes.[24]
^Swietochowski, Tadeusz (2004).Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920: The Shaping of a National Identity in a Muslim Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 12.ISBN978-0521522458.(...) and Persian continued to be the official language of the judiciary and the local administration [even after the abolishment of the khanates].
^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.
^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."
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Bournoutian, George (2016b). "Prelude to War: The Russian Siege and Storming of the Fortress of Ganjeh, 1803–4".Iranian Studies.50 (1). Taylor & Francis:107–124.doi:10.1080/00210862.2016.1159779.S2CID163302882.
Bournoutian, George (2018).Armenia and Imperial Decline: The Yerevan Province, 1900–1914. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.ISBN978-1-351-06260-2.OCLC1037283914.
Bournoutian, George (2021).From the Kur to the Aras: A Military History of Russia's Move into the South Caucasus and the First Russo-Iranian War, 1801–1813.Brill.ISBN978-9004445154.
Broers, Laurence (2019).Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry. Edinburgh University Press.ISBN978-1474450522.
Floor, Willem (2008).Titles and Emoluments in Safavid Iran: A Third Manual of Safavid Administration, by Mirza Naqi Nasiri. Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers.ISBN978-1933823232.
Floor, Willem (2018). "Tribal Resurgence in the Eighteenth Century: A Useful Label?". In Axworthy, Michael (ed.).Crisis, Collapse, Militarism and Civil War: The History and Historiography of 18th Century Iran. Oxford University Press. pp. 151–162.ISBN978-0190250331.
Floor, Willem (2021). "The Safavid court and government". In Matthee, Rudi (ed.).The Safavid World. Routledge. pp. 203–224.
Yilmaz, Harun (2015). "A Family Quarrel: Azerbaijani Historians against Soviet Iranologists".Iranian Studies.48 (5). Cambridge University Press:769–783.doi:10.1080/00210862.2015.1058642.S2CID142718875.
