Melik

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For the village formerly named Melik in Greece, see Meliki.

Мelik (Armenian: Մելիք, prince, from Arabic malik —king) — was a hereditary Armenian noble title, in various Eastern Armenian principalities known as Melikdoms encompassing modern Yerevan, Kars, Nakhichevan, Sevan, Lori, Artsakh, Tabriz and Syunik starting from the Late Middle Ages until the end of the 19th century.

The realm of the meliks was almost always semi-independent and often fully independent, they had their own court known as darpas, army, castles and military fortifications known as skhnakhi, carried out justice in the form of trials and collected tax. The relationship between meliks and their subordinates was that of a military commanding officer and junior officer, and not of feudal lord and a serf. Peasants were not allowed to own land, but otherwise were free and owned property. Meliks preserved their rights and privileges after Eastern Armenia became part of the Russian Empire, many of them, especially meliks from Karabakh became Russian generals.

1 Melikdoms of Karabakh
2 Prominent Meliks
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Melikdoms of Karabakh

The five Armenian Melikdoms of Karabakh: Gulistan, Jraberd, Varanda, Khachen, and Dizak, originated in the Principality of Khachen, an ancient feudal state that existed between the tenth and sixteenth centuries.^[1] These five principalities were ruled by the Beglarian, Israelian, Shahnazarian, Hassan-Jalalian and Avanian families respectively.^[2] In 1603 Shah Abbas I recognized their special semi-independent status. Rivalries among the meliks prevented them from becoming a fomidable and a unified power against the Muslims but unstable conditions in Persia eventually forced them to forgot their squabbles and seek support from Europe and Russia.^[2] In 1678 Catholicos Hakob Jughayetsi (Jacob of Jugha, 1655-1680) called for a secret meeting in Echmiadzin and invited several leading meliks and clergymen. He proposed to head a delegation to Europe. The Catholicos died shorlty and the plan was abandoned. One of the delegates, a young man named Israel Ori, the son of Melik Haikazyan of Zangezur continued on and proceeded to Venice and from there to France. Ori died in 1711 without seeing the liberation of Armenian lands.^[2] In the second half of the eighteenth century melik Shahnazar of Varanda allied himself with Panah Khan Javanshir, the chieftain of a Turkic tribe, against other Armenian meliks which led to the downfall of the autonomous Armenian melikdoms of Karabakh.^[1] The meliks of Karabakh inspired the historical novels The Melikdoms of Khamsa (1882) and David Bek (1882) by Raffi, the opera David Bek (1950) by Armen Tigranian and the novel Mkhitar Sparapet (1961) by Sero Khanzadyan.^[1]In 1944, David Bek the movie was filmed and in 1978, Armenfilm in association with Mosfilm produced another movie about the efforts of David Bek and Mkhitar Sparapet called the Star of Hope.

[edit] Prominent Meliks

Israel Ori (1658 - 1711)
David Bek (d. 1728)
Valerian Madatov (1782 - 1829)
Count Loris-Melikov (1825 - 1888)

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b ^c Jack Hacikyan, Agop (2005). The Heritage of Armenian Literature: From the Sixth to the Eighteenth Century. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 5-6. ISBN 0-8143-3221-8.
^ ^a ^b ^c Hovannisian, Richard G. (1997). The Armenian people from ancient to modern times: from antiquity to the fourteenth century. Palgrave Macmillan, 86. ISBN 0-312-10168-6.