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

submerged by the egalitariansio of Islam which
recognized no princely dignity, or incorporated
into the surviving Caucasian social structure in
Georgia. Only here and there, notably in the
mountains of Karabagh and Siwnik' some vestiges
of the old princely houses survived and retained
some measure of local autonomy. This social
disintegration is clear from the disappearance
of the old Armenian princely titles, so important
in the Caucasian social system, and their replacement
by one new and flexible term, 'melik*, the
very all-purposeness of which is an indication
that the fixed social framework was no longer
there. It would appear then, that the title
'melik1 was used simply to designate any of the
few surviving members of the Armenian nobility
of old who retained any kind of social position
in a world which had become the world of Islam;
whether one had been a naxarar (dynast) or merely
an azat (member of the gentry). Indeed, as we
shall see, the term was applicable to municipal
ethnarchs and, in time, it would appear, even to
mere village chiefs. 1.
We might ask, parenthetically, if indeed even in Arsacld
times the term naxarar had a single sense or meaning.
It was pointed out in chapter three that as
regards control mechanisms, the Mongols invented nothing
new. Furthermore, naxarar reactions to the different
control techniques used by the Mongols before and after
their Islamization were varied, but also contained no
new elements. Naxarar reaction to the invasions was
clear: when united military resistance proved Impossible,
the naxarars holed up in their mountain fortresses; when
R. Hewsen, "The Meliks"(I) p. 293.
S47