Ahmad bey Jafargulu bey oglu Javanshir (, 2 March 1828 – 9 January 1903) was an

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

i historian and soldier. He was the great-grandnephew of

Ibrahim Khalil Khan Ibrahim Khalil Khan Javanshir (, 1732–1806) was the second khan of the Karabakh Khanate from the Javanshir family. He was the son and successor of Panah-Ali khan Javanshir. Early life He was born in c. 1732 in Karabakh. He was among depo ...

, the last ruling khan of Karabakh, and the father of philanthropist and feminist

Hamida Javanshir Hamida Ahmad bey qizi Javanshir (; 19 January 1873 – 6 February 1955) was an Azerbaijani activist and one of the first enlightened women of Azerbaijan, wife of Jalil Mammadguluzadeh, daughter of historian Ahmad Bey Javanshir, philanthropist, ...

Life

Little is known about Ahmad bey Javanshir's personal life. His autobiography attached to the manuscript of his work ''On the Political Affairs of the Karabakh khanate in 1747–1805'' disappeared probably between 1905 and 1907. Historians have established that he was born in his family estate of Kahrizli, located near the town of Agjabadi in present-day Azerbaijan. His parents, Jafargulu bey and Zahra khanum descended from

Panah Ali Khan Panah Ali Khan Javanshir (; ; 1693 – 1759 or 1763) was the founder and first ruler of the Karabakh Khanate under Persian suzerainty. Ancestry Panah Ali Khan was from the Sarijali branch of the Javanshir clan, who with their associate clan of ...

, the first khan of

Karabakh Karabakh ( ; ) is a geographic region in southwestern Azerbaijan and eastern Armenia, extending from the highlands of the Lesser Caucasus down to the lowlands between the rivers Kura and Aras. It is divided into three regions: Highland Kara ...

. Until age 15, Ahmad bey studied at a religious school (''mollakhana''). The integration of the

Azeri Azeri or Azeri Turk may refer to: * Azeri people, an ethnic group also known as Azerbaijanis * Citizens of Azerbaijan * Azeri language, the modern-day Turkic language * Old Azeri, an extinct Iranian language * Azeri Turk (journal), Academic jour ...

upper class Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status. Usually, these are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper cla ...

into the Imperial Russian political system required among other things the knowledge of the

Russian language Russian is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic languages, Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is ...

, which is why Ahmad bey was sent to study to the Pavlov Cadet Corps in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

. Preface t
The Karabakhnamehs
by A.Shukurzadeh. Beginning in 1848 he served in a

hussar A hussar, ; ; ; ; . was a member of a class of light cavalry, originally from the Kingdom of Hungary during the 15th and 16th centuries. The title and distinctive dress of these horsemen were subsequently widely adopted by light cavalry ...

regiment where he was advanced to the rank of Stabs-Captain. In 1853–1854 he participated in the

Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...

. In 1854 he was injured during a

duel A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two people with matched weapons. During the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier), duels were mostly single combats fought with swords (the rapier and later the small sword), but beginning in ...

with Ali bey Sultanov, a fellow officer, and could not continue his military service. After returning to his native village, Ahmad bey Javanshir carried out economic reforms. In the 1860s he built an 8-

verst A verst (; ) is an obsolete Russian unit of length, defined as 500 sazhen. This makes a verst equal to . Plurals and variants In the English language, ''verst'' is singular with the normal plural ''versts''. In Russian, the nominative singul ...

(ca. 8.5 km) irrigation channel across the

Mil plain Mil plain is a plain in Azerbaijan located on the bank of the Aras river and extending to Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, ...

. In the 1880s he was appointed member of the

Shusha Shusha (, ) or Shushi () is a city in Azerbaijan, in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Situated at an altitude of 1,400–1,800 metres (4,600–5,900 ft) in the Karabakh mountains, the city was a mountain resort in the Soviet Union, Soviet ...

-based Bey Committee aimed at verifying the claims of some locals of having noble origins (if proven, they were exempt from some taxes according to the Russian law). His denunciations caused resentment among the committee members which led to Javanshir being temporarily imprisoned. Javanshir spent his last years in Kahrizli, engaged in translation of the poems by

Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin () was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era.Basker, Michael. Pushkin and Romanticism. In Ferber, Michael, ed., ''A Companion to European Romanticism''. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. He is conside ...

Lermontov Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov ( , ; rus, Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов, , mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjʉrʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲerməntəf, links=yes; – ) was a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of ...

and Zhukovsky into Azeri, as well as writing his own historical work in Russian, entitled ''On the Political Affairs of the Karabakh khanate in 1747–1805'' (1883). It was published two years after his death in the ''Geyrat'' publishing house in

Tiflis Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი, ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), ( ka, ტფილისი, tr ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Georgia (country), largest city of Georgia ( ...

. His other works are ''Asar-i Ahmad bey Javanshir'' (a collection of children's poems) and ''Turk zarb-misallar majmuasi'' (an explanatory Azeri dictionary). His works were cited by

The Cambridge History of Iran ''The Cambridge History of Iran'' is a multi-volume survey of Iranian history published in the United Kingdom by Cambridge University Press. The seven volumes cover "the history and historical geography of the land which is present-day Iran, as w ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Javanshir, Ahmad bey 19th-century Azerbaijani historians Azerbaijani nobility Russian military personnel of the Crimean War 1828 births 1903 deaths 19th-century historians from the Russian Empire