The khans of Quba were from the Qeytaq tribe, which was divided into two branches, the Majales and the Yengikend.[7] The origin of the tribe is obscure. First attested in the 9th-century, only their chieftain and his family were Muslims, according to the historian al-Masudi (died 956). The chieftain bore the Turkic title of Salifan, as well as the title of Kheydaqan-shah.[8] According to the 17th-century Ottoman historian, Evliya Çelebi (died 1682), the Qeytaq spoke Mongolian, but this was dismissed as a "hoax" by the IranologistVladimir Minorsky (died 1966), who demonstrated that Çelebi copied the alleged Mongolian speech of the Qeytab from the texts of Hamdallah Mustawfi (died after 1339/40).[9] The German historian and orientalist, Josef Markwart (died 1930), quoting from a earlier source, refers to the chieftain as Adharnarse.[10][11] The khans of Quba were descended from Hosein Khan of the Majales branch, who was given the governorship of Saleyan and Quba by Shah Soleiman (r. 1666–1694) in the second half of the 1680s.[7]
The khanate achieved its greatest prominence under Fath-Ali Khan, whose governorship lasted from 1758 to 1789. He seized Derbent, and divided Shirvan with Hosein Khan of Shaki.[12]
After Fath Ali Khan's death, the khanate's influence declined. As a result of Mohammad Khan Qajar's conquests and the devastation it had brought, the Alliance of Northern khanates disintegrated. The khanate was conquered by Russia in 1806, and was fully incorporated into newly created Shamakha Governorate by 1846.[13]
^Bournoutian, George A. (2016). The 1820 Russian Survey of the Khanate of Shirvan: A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of an Iranian Province prior to its Annexation by Russia. Gibb Memorial Trust. p. xvii. ISBN978-1909724808. Serious historians and geographers agree that after the fall of the Safavids, and especially from the mid-eighteenth century, the territory of the South Caucasus was composed of the khanates of Ganja, Kuba, Shirvan, Baku, Talesh, Sheki, Karabagh, Nakhichivan and Yerevan, all of which were under Iranian suzerainty.
^Swietochowski, Tadeusz (2004). Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920: The Shaping of a National Identity in a Muslim Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 12. ISBN978-0521522458. (...) and Persian continued to be the official language of the judiciary and the local administration [even after the abolishment of the khanates].
^Pavlovich, Petrushevsky Ilya (1949). Essays on the history of feudal relations in Armenia and Azerbaijan in XVI - the beginning of XIX centuries. LSU them. Zhdanov. p. 7. (...) The language of official acts not only in Iran proper and its fully dependant Khanates, but also in those Caucasian khanates that were semi-independent until the time of their accession to the Russian Empire, and even for some time after, was New Persian. It played the role of the literary language of class feudal lords as well.
^"...khanates of Sheki, Karabagh, and Kuba became the most powerful" Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920 – The Shaping of a National Identity in a Muslim Community, p. 17. Cambridge University Press
^Bournoutian, George A. (2016). The 1820 Russian Survey of the Khanate of Shirvan: A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of an Iranian Province prior to its Annexation by Russia. Gibb Memorial Trust. p. xvii. ISBN978-1909724808. Serious historians and geographers agree that after the fall of the Safavids, and especially from the mid-eighteenth century, the territory of the South Caucasus was composed of the khanates of Ganja, Kuba, Shirvan, Baku, Talesh, Sheki, Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Yerevan, all of which were under Iranian suzerainty.
^Literature: Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin. Travels through Northern Persia 1770-1774 translated and annotated by Willem Floor (Washington DC, MAGE, 2007); Bakikhanov, The Heavenly Rose-Garden. A History of Shirvan & Daghestan translated and annotated by Willem Floor & Hasan Javadi(Washington DC: MAGE, 2010); Willem Floor, “Who are the Shamkhal and the Usmi?” ZDMG 160/2 (2010), pp. 341–81
Bournoutian, George (2021). From the Kur to the Aras: A Military History of Russia's Move into the South Caucasus and the First Russo-Iranian War, 1801–1813. Brill. ISBN978-9004445154.
Minorsky, Vladimir (1970). Bosworth, Clifford Edmund (ed.). Hudūd al-ʿĀlam: The Regions of the World: a Persian geography, 372 A.H.–982 A.D. Second edition. Luzac & Co. ISBN978-0718902018.
Tsutsiev, Arthur (2014). Atlas of the Ethno-Political History of the Caucasus. Yale University Press. ISBN978-0300153088.
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