# Nakhichevan Khanate

The Nakhichevan Khanate (Persian: خانات نخجوان, romanized: Khānāt-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.

## History

Nakhichevan is both the name of a city and historical region located in the Armenian highlands in the South Caucasus. Until the demise of Safavid Iran, Nakhichevan was under the administrative jurisdiction of the Erivan Province (also known as Chokhur-e Sa'd). Shortly after the recapture of Yerevan in 1604 during the Ottoman–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 by Maqsud Sultan. Maqsud Sultan was a military commander who hailed from 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.
The Kangarlu were described by J. M. Jouannin as “a small tribe established in Persian Armenia on the shores of the Aras". 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. 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.
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. 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. 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). 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.
In 1808, during the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813, Russian forces under general Gudovich briefly occupied Nakhichevan, but as a result of the Treaty of Gulistan, it was returned to Persian control.
In 1827, during the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828, Abbas Mirza appointed Ehsan Khan Kangarlu as commander of Abbasabad, a fortress of strategic importance for the defense of the Nakhichevan Khanate. 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, General Paskevich, and opened the gates of the fortress to him on 22 July 1827. With the Treaty of Turkmenchay, in 1828 the khanate became a Russian possession and Ehsan Khan was rewarded with the governorship, conferred the rank of major-general of the Russian army and the title of campaign ataman of the Kangarlu militia.

## Population

Demographics of the Nakhichevan Khanate in 1826 :
| 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.

## 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.
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.

## 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.