12 Iranian Empire and Caucasian Borderlandsthe khans would have deprived themselves of an important source of
revenue had they not taxed the tribes. Furthermore, tribal cavalry
provided the backbone of most of the khans' armies. The tribes' mili-
tary skills and habitual mobility were a volatile factor in the struggle
for domination of the eastern Caucasus.
There were also non-Muslims living in all parts of the region, except
Talesh. Ganjeh had a Georgian minority. Armenians constituted about
a fifth of Yerevan's population and their coreligionists were to be
found throughout the eastern Caucasus. All the Shirvani successor
states (except Shakki) had Jewish communities as well. Armenians
and, to a lesser extent, Jews played a central role in the economic life
of all the khanates as farmers and artisans and, above all, as merchants.
In every major commercial center, including Baku (the most impor-
tant), Armenians dominated trade. Baku's commercial significance
made it an especially cosmopolitan place, with inhabitants from
many parts of the Caucasus as well as from Iran and India.
Given the religious diversity of the region, sectarian differences
were always a potential source of friction. The Muslim population
was divided between the Sunni and Shia, sects, but this division did
not correspond to ethnic or political divisions. Most of the Turco-
mans and Kurds were Shii, although the ruling Khan Chopans of
Shirvan and some of the smaller nomadic tribes of Iranian Armenia
were Sunni. The tribes that had their origins in the high Caucasus
were mostly Sunni. One notable exception in this case was the Qaitaqs
of Derbent-Qobbeh who became Shii in order to obtain the endorse-
ment of the Safavis. All of the principalities, except Shirvan and
Shakki, were ruled by Shii khans, but all of the subject populations in-
cluded members of both sects. There was no recurrence of the bitter
religious wars that had gripped Shirvan and Shakki in the first half of
the century, but Sunni-Shia relations continued to be sensitive. The
Shii khans of Derbent-Qobbeh made a special point of trying to concili-
ate the Sunni majority. In the nineteenth century, conflict between
the two groups would greatly hamper the Russian takeover of Shakki.
Non-Muslims lived under certain disadvantages, notably a higher
rate of taxation, but they do not seem to have been actively perse-
cuted. In the countryside, Christians and Jews lived in their own
villages and enjoyed certain advantages, especially the local govern-
ance of their coreligionists. Some of the Armenian village chiefs were
extremely powerful and had an influential voice in a khanate's affairs,
for example, in Qarabagh, where they supported the establishment
of the Javanshirs as khans. The Christians and Jews, as "people of
The Book," were able to maintain their houses of worship, obtain