The Turco-Mongol Invasions and the Lords of Armenia in the 13 ...

Manandyan and Toumanoff likewise disagreed on the duration
of the naxarar "system". Adontz wrote:
The naxarar system existed in Armenia from
antiquity until the Mongol invasions. Like any
institution developing in accordance with conditions
of place and time, the naxarar system often changed
in character and passed through several phases. 1.
Manandyan hypothesized that the participation of the
naxarars in the Mongols' many campaigns and the heavy
taxes of the period combined to initiate the system's
2
collapse . The final liquidation of the system in his
view came after the mid-fourteenth century, when Armenia
became a battleground for numerous nomadic Turkic groups,
though Manandyan noted certain "survivals" of "naxarar
customs" in the inaccessible mountain regions of Eastern
Armenia and Qarabagh . Toumanoff wrote:
This social structure perished with the brutal
Byzantine and Seljuq destruction of the Armenian
polity in the eleventh century. Some vestiges of
it, however, survived the catastrophe, both in
Armenia and, through emigration, elsewhere. 4.
regarded itself as equal to the monarch. One should
consult the notes and appendices to Adontz provided
by N.Garsoian, also the same author's recent "Prolegomena
to a Study of the Iranian Aspects in Arsacid Armenia*.HA
(1976) PP. 177-234, and also R. Hewsen's important
tripartite study on the Melike of Eastern Armenia(see
Bibliography) on which see the conclusions of this study.
1 Adontz, p. 183.
2 Manandyan, Feudalism, pp. 255-56.
3 Ibid. p. 256.
Studies, p. I44n. 262.
158