The 1823 Russian survey of the Karabagh province

"On May 14 (26), 1805 General Paul Tsitsianov, the Russian commander in the Caucasus, and Ebrahim Khan of Karabagh signed a treaty, by which the Karabagh Province became a Russian protectorate. Ebrahim Khan promised to be a loyal subject of the Russian Emperor, to pay an annual tribute of 8,000 gold rubles to the treasury in Tiflis, and to send a son and a grandson as hostages to Tiflis. In exchange, Russia promised that Ebrahim Khan and his progeny would continue as the khans of Karabagh and that local rule, including the courts and administration, as well as the taxes would remain under Ebrahim Khan's jurisdiction. On the night of June 2 (14), 1806, a group of Russian soldiers killed Ebrahim Khan, after he had reportedly resubmitted to Fath `Ali Shah of Iran and had left Shushi to join the Iranian army. The Russians appointed Mahdiqoli, a son of Ebrahim Khan, as the new Khan of Karabagh. He promised to abide by the articles of the 1805 treaty. On November 21 (December 2) 1822 Mahdiqoli Khan fled to Iran. Taking advantage of the situation, General Alexei Ermolov, the Commander-in-Chief of Georgia, Astrakhan, and the Caucasus, declared the 1805 treaty null and void. He terminated the protectorate and, on December 26 (January 7, 1823) sent a letter to Count Victor Kochubei, the Minister of Internal Affairs, stating that Karabagh was now incorporated into the Russian Empire. In order to enumerate the population of Karabagh and ascertain the revenues collected by the Khan, Ermolov, on January 13 (25), 1823, ordered State Counselor Paul I. Mogilevskii and Colonel Ermolov II to conduct a detailed survey of the Karabagh Province. On April 17 (29) 1823, they presented their findings in thirty-five registers to the Municipal Council in Shushi, and on May 2 (14) to General Ermolov in Tiflis. The survey, titled The Description of the Karabagh Province, compiled in 1823, was eventually published in 1866 by the printing house of the Viceroy of the Caucasus in Tiflis. The number of copies printed must have been very few, for it, as well as the previous surveys conducted in the Sheki (Shakki) Province by Mogilevskii and General F. Akhverdov in 1819, and in the Shirvan Province, by Mogilevskii and General V. Madatov in 1820, both of which were also printed in 1866 in Tiflis, soon became rarities. To our knowledge, with the exception of I. P. Petrushevskii, no serious scholar of 19th-century Transcaucasia or Iran has mined the valuable information contained in these surve

Year

2011

Language

English

Series

Armenian studies series -- no. 18

Publisher

Mazda Publishers

Editions

1

Pages

456

ISBN

9781568591735

Data source: Wikidata