The First Family Tree
According to the
book by Armèn Joseph, the first
known Zohrab family tree was contained in a letter dated 1st
May 1831 from Catholicos-Patriarch Yeprem (1809-1835) to melik Manuchar
and his brothers. That letter informed them that their ancestral
father was "the famous melik Mangkasar", the first
melik of Yerevan of their family. Previously, in 1780, the
Catholicos-Patriarch Lucas (1780-1799) had confirmed in a letter
to "Marcar Manuk, a great-grandson of Zohrab
I in the male line" (whose descendants are the topic of
this website), that he was a descendant of the noble family of the
Manuchariants.
It is not clear from our current knowledge of the
family tree who exactly this "Marcar Manuk" was, since
we have no great-grandson of Zohrab I by that name on the family
tree. The book by Armèn
Joseph also mentions a "Margar Manuk", as being a
cousin of Gavork Manuk,
but we have no cousin of his on the family tree with that name.
However, it is likely that "Marcar Manuk" and "Margar
Manuk" are the same person.
According to the
book by Armèn Joseph:
In the pre-Napoleonic period all marriages,
births and deaths in the Christian world were registered in the
parish churches only. The public registrar was instituted
by Napoleon. Initial consultations of the church registers
are required for making a genealogical tree or for any information
regarding a person. Generally speaking, the Armenian Apostollic
Church is still the registrar in Armenian circles.
Meliks
Here are excerpts from the
book by Armèn Joseph about meliks:
This Islamic-Persian word is the same as the
Hebrew melek which means crowned king.
However, melik in Persian is king
only.
In the old Persian Empire, the government was
based on feudal tribal and clan systems. The largest administrative
unit of the Persian State seems to have been the khanate under
a Persian khan, comparable to a vice-regent. He
was a civil servant appointed by the Persian Shah, and a tribal
chieftain.
A subjugated nation - a so-called ethnic group
- in a khanate was governed by a civil servant from that ethnic
group, called melik. The melik was a member
of the landed gentry of that ethnic group, comparable to high
commissioner or governor-general, appointed by the Shah.
Armenia, Hayastan in Armenian,
was comprised of four khanates; Yerevan (Erivan), Karabagh, Nakhidjewan
and Ganje (Gandz).
It often happened that several generations of
one noble family were appointed to the high office of melik successively.
His responsibilities were (1) finance (taxation), (2) administration
and (3) justice, except death penalty.
Depending on the khan and the personality of
the melik, it often occurred that the latter behaved himself like
an uncrowned king.
Various desendants (sic) of melik Mangkasar
received phirmans of appointment from Shah Seffi (1629 - 1642),
Shah Abbas II (1642 -1666), Shah Suleiman (1666 - 1694) and Nadir
Shah (1736 - 1747). Certificates of nobility were issued
to them by Pannu khan of Karabagh, Ibrahim khan of Karabagh (about
1800) and Mehdi khan of Yerevan (1805).
Later Family Trees
The credit for having written the second Zohrab/Zorab/Manuk
family tree should be given to Peter Thomas
Henry Gordon Zohrab. His tree must have been written between
about 1851 and 1881, since it is addressed to his children, his
eldest child was born in 1841, and Peter died in 1881. The copy
I have of it was made in 1919. According to Maureen
Kelly's book, the children of Peter's son Constantine (in New
Zealand) recited the family tree every night at bedtime. This family
tree was in Heading-plus-Paragraph (text, rather than graphic) format,
and only covered the descendants of Peter's grandfather, Constantine.
The next known Zohrab family tree was drawn up in
Armenian by Aviet (Avetick) Carapiet Zohrabyants in 1919 (Aviet's
Tree). The year 1919 is significant, in that that was also the year
in which a copy/copies were made of the earlier family tree. Perhaps
both these developments were stimulated by the Armenian genocide
(by the Turks) in 1915.
A Roman alphabet version of this tree was drawn by
Judge Edgar Zorab over five pages of a book (Edgar's
Tree).
The first Zohrab family tree (1 x A3 page) that I
ever saw was drawn up by Dr Phillip Zorab (on the basis of of Edgar's
Tree, and of research carried out in Iran and Armenia by Judge Edgar
Zorab) (Phillip's Tree).
A much larger (7 x A3 pages) tree was drawn up by
Mr. and Mrs. Kelvin & Rosemary Pollock in the late 20th Century
(Kelvin's Tree).
And now Peter Douglas Zohrab, in the first decade
of the 21st Century, has put a searchable text version of the family
tree up onto the World-Wide Web (Peter's Tree)
-- based largely on Kelvin's Tree, but also on Edgar's Tree, and
also on input from various other sources (see Notes).
