[1] As a result of the Peace of Amasya of 1555, the Safavids, then under King Tahmasp I (r. 1524–1576) were forced to cede the western part of historic Armenia to the expanding Ottoman Empire.

[9] When the Safavid government started to decline, in the second half of the 17th century, during the reign of King Suleiman I (1666–1694), the situation of the Catholic Armenians of Nakhchivan deteriorated.

[9] As a result of the increasing religious intolerance and misrule by governmental officials, the majority of the Armenian Catholics of Nakchivan had to convert to Islam.

[9] The remaining minority either returned to the Armenian Apostolic Church, or migrated to Smyrna, Constantinople, Bursa and other towns in the Ottoman Empire.

In 1714, the mayor (kalantar) of the provincial capital, Mohammad Reza Beg, was appointed as the new ambassador to France, and led the embassy to Louis XIV of 1715.

[1] The French missionary and traveller Père Sanson, who was in Iran during the latter part of King Suleiman I's reign (1666–1694), wrote that some 12,000 Safavid troops were stationed in the Erivan province.

[15] 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.