Melik
The most prominent and powerful meliks were those of Karabagh (Artsakh) and Syunik, which ruled autonomous or semi-autonomous principalities known as melikdoms (Armenian: մելիքություն, romanized: melikut’yun) under Iranian suzerainty.
Meliks also existed in Yerevan, Nakhichevan, Sevan, Lori, Northwestern Persia, and other areas, although outside of Karabagh and Syunik most were merely hereditary leaders of local Armenian communities, not rulers of principalities.
[1] Remnants of these princely houses survived in a few places, most notably in the mountainous and strategically important regions of Karabagh (part of historical Artsakh province) and Syunik, where they retained their autonomy.
[1][3] Outside of Karabagh and Syunik, most people bearing the title of melik were merely hereditary leaders of local Armenian communities, rather than (semi-)autonomous rulers.
[4][10] The meliks of Karabagh (Artsakh) and Syunik were the successors of the earlier Armenian lords of those regions, mainly of Syuni origin, who had maintained their autonomy following the Seljuk conquest of Armenia in the tenth century.
[11] In the mid-fifteenth century, the Qara Qoyunlu ruler Jahan Shah placed a number of territories along the northern frontier of his realm under the control of the Armenian nobles of Karabagh and Syunik, many of whom had earlier been dispossessed by Timur.
[14][b] The meliks of Karabagh and Syunik retained their autonomous status under Safavid rule, although they were weakened as a result of the devastating Ottoman–Safavid wars in the sixteenth century.
[4][21] The meliks of Karabagh and, to a lesser extent, Syunik were fully autonomous and held executive, legislative, judicial, military, and fiscal authority over their territories.
[4] They issued their own decrees, ruled on legal disputes and criminal cases and collected their own taxes, from which they paid tribute to the Iranian shah.
[4] Despite the name, the centurions or yuzbashis were not literally the commanders of a hundred men, but rather vassals of the meliks, either hereditarily or by appointment, who controlled two or more villages and furnished a certain number of troops under his own banner.
[4] In 1678, Catholicos Hakob Jughayetsi called a secret meeting at Etchmiadzin with leading meliks and members of the clergy, where he proposed accepting Catholicism in exchange for European protection.
[27] Ori spent much of his life trying to convince a European ruler, first Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine and later Peter the Great, to conquer Iranian Armenia with the help of the meliks.
[9] The Aghamalian meliks had full administrative, legislative and judicial powers over the Armenians under their authority save for the death penalty, which remained the sole right of the sardar.
[41] The descendants of the meliks of Karabagh formed a large part of Russian Armenian "high society" in major cities such as Baku, Tbilisi, Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
[42] Altogether, there were between 70 and 90 melikal houses in Eastern Armenia, mostly in the provinces of Artsakh, Gardman, Syunik, Lori, Yerevan, Nakhichevan, Kashatagh, and Karadagh.
