Following the death of Nader Shah in 1747, Iranian authority over the territories north of the Aras River was greatly weakened, and the Erivan Khanate became a tributary of King Heraclius II of Georgia.

[17] The remaining fringes of historic Armenia under Iranian rule were part of the Karabakh and Ganja Khanates as well as the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti.

[15] Nader Shah (r. 1736–1747) organized the region into four khanates: Erivan, Nakhchivan (formerly a part of Chokhur-e Sa'd),[18] Karabakh, and Ganja.

[19] Nader's assassination in 1747 was followed by fifteen years of disorder in the region, which allowed some of the Turkic tribes in Iranian Armenia to reassert themselves.

[21] The Georgian king Heraclius II and the Javanshir khan of Karabakh Panah Ali allied to divide Iranian Armenia into their own protectorates.

The khan of Erivan appealed to Heraclius of Kakheti and his father King Teimuraz of Kartli, offering to become their tributary in exchange for their assistance.

The khan often tried to escape this obligation, and Heraclius campaigned against the Erivan Khanate several times to exact tribute.

[25] In 1765 and 1769, Heraclius II invaded the Erivan Khanate in response to Hoseyn Ali Khan's attempts to terminate payment of tribute.

Both times, bloodshed was avoided through the mediation of the Armenian Catholicos Simeon of Yerevan, and Heraclius accepted the restoration of the khanate's tributary status.

[33] A capable administrator, his long tenure as governor is considered to be an era of prosperity, during which he made the khanate a model province.

[2] In February 1828, Iran was forced to sign the Treaty of Turkmenchay, which resulted in the cession of the khanate (as well as the other remaining territories to the north of the Aras River) to the Russians.

[36] Its enormous fortress, which was located on "high ground" and was surrounded by thick walls, as well as moats and cannons, helped to prevent the Russian advance for some time.

[39][e] Per article III of the Treaty of Turkmenchay, the Iranians had to give the tax records of the lost territories in the Caucasus to the Russians.

Based on the Persian administrative records of the Erivan Khanate as well as interviews, the Kameral'noe Opisanie' is considered to be "the only accurate source for any statistical or ethnographical data" on the territories that comprised Iranian Armenia, on the situation before and immediately after the Russian conquest.

[42] For example, basically the entire Persian ruling elite and the military officer apparatus, "most of whom resided in the administrative centers", migrated to mainland Iran after the defeat.

[42] Furthermore, a number of the Turkic and Persian soldiers had perished in the 1826–1828 war, which lead to the Russian conquest of the Erivan and Nakchivan Khanates.

[42] According to professor of history George Bournoutian, it can therefore be taken for granted that the combined Persian and Turkic (settled and semi-settled) population of Iranian Armenia amounted some 93,000, instead of 74,000.

[42] The term "Persians" in this specific matter refers to the ruling hierarchy of the khanate, and does not necessarily denote the ethnic composition of the group.

[42] The principal settled Turkic groups in the khanate were the Bayat, Kangarlu, Ayrumlu, Ak Koyunlu, Qara Qoyunlu, Qajars, as well as the "Turkified Qazzaqs" (i.e., Karapapakh).

[43] The Turkic nomads were important to the local Persian governors for their animal husbandry, handicrafts and horses which they provided for the cavalry.

[40][n] The utter vast majority of the Armenians, some 80% of their total number, were located in the districts (mahals) of Kirk-Bulagh, Karbi-Basar, Surmalu, and Sardarabad.

[64] At the close of the fourteenth century, after Timur's campaigns, Islam had become the dominant faith, and Armenians became a minority in Eastern Armenia.

[65] To repopulate the frontier region of his realm, Shah Abbas II (1642–1666) permitted the Turkic Kangarlu tribe to return.

[67] An example of this can be seen in 1808; when the Russians launched another siege in that year, in a 2nd attempt to take the city from the Iranians, the Armenians displayed "general neutrality".

[68] Armenians in the territory of the Khanate lived under the immediate jurisdiction of the melik of Erivan, a position held by members of the Melik-Aghamalyan family.

The melik of Erivan had full administrative, legislative and judicial authority over Armenians up to the sentence of the death penalty, which only the khan was allowed to impose.

[2] From the mid-2000s, the concept of a "Western Azerbaijan", originally a colloquialism used by some Azerbaijani refugees to refer to the Armenian SSR of the Soviet Union, was merged into renewed interest of the Khanates of the Caucasus, in, what the historian and political scientist Laurence Broers explains as "wide-ranging fetishisation" of the Erivan Khanate as a "historically Azerbaijani entity".

[70] According to Broers, catalogues of "lost Azerbaijani heritage" portray an array of "Turkic palimpsest beneath almost every monument and religious site in Armenia – whether Christian or Muslim".

[69] In terms of rhetoric, as Broers narrates, the Azerbaijani palimpsest beneath Armenia "reaches into the future as a prospective territorial claim".

[69] The Armenian capital of Yerevan is particularly focused by this narrative; the Erivan Fortress and Sardar Palace, which had been demolished by the Soviets during their building of the city, have become "widely disseminated symbols of lost Azerbaijani heritage recalling the fetishised contours of a severed body part".