Land Tenure and Agriculture

The land tenure records for the Yerevan Province, registered in Tiflis, indicate that at the end of the nineteenth century, the Yerevan Province had five basic types of landownership: Treasury, Molk, Arbabi, Toyul, and Vaqf. The Yerevan and Nakhichevan districts, which formed the core of the Yerevan and Nakhichevan khanates, had the least amount of land belonging outright to the provincial treasury. The statistical data published in Yerevan between 1902 and 1910 lists, among other things, every village in each of the seven districts as well as the total land used for agriculture. Rice was cultivated mainly in the Yerevan District, with some of it exported to Georgia and Russia. The districts of Surmalu and Nakhichevan possessed the most pastureland, followed by Novo-Bayazet and Alexandropol. Large vegetable plots were cultivated, primarily in the colder climates of the Alexandropol and Novo-Bayazet districts, growing potatoes, cabbage, turnips, onions, beets and other winter vegetables.