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Descendants of Zohrab of the Manuchariants
The Zohrab Branch
Home > Biographical details > The Zohrab Branch
The Zohrabs in Persia/Iran
Part of the Zohrab family in Persia eventually settled between Tehran and the Caspian Sea -- on the plains of Mazanderan, and in the city of Ast(e)rabad -- now known as Gorgan in the area south-east of the Caspian Sea that was once known as Hyrcan(i)a. That is where Armenian agriculturalists were apparently settled, whereas Armenian merchants were settled in New Julfa, Isfahan.
Being a Christian family in a Moslem country, it is said to have refused the Persian throne on two occasions -- the first being in "ancient history" and the second being in the 18th Century, when they nominated Aga Mohammed Khan, who duly became Shah of Persia and founder of the Kajar dynasty.At some stage, members of the Zohrab family left Persia and settled in Turkey. It is not completely certain:
- Why they left Persia for Turkey;
- When they left Persia for Turkey; and
- Which members of the family left Persia for Turkey.
The Family Tradition
The traditional version, as handed down through the generations,
goes something like this: Aga Mohammed Khan, who was himself born in Asterabad,
later took a dislike to the Zohrab family, who had a private army, and
killed many members of the family. In 1795, some members of the family
who were living in Sistan Province, in South-east Persia, according
to Lady Fanny Blunt, escaped to Turkey, crossing the border near Mt.
Ararat, near the North-west corner of Persia. Mount Ararat was part
of historic Armenia, and is still visible from Armenia today. Some
of the family later took as a (probably unofficial) coat of arms a
shield depicting a dove above an olive tree, with an Ark above the shield
and the words: "Hence Springs Our Hope." See also: Grant
of Arms to John Manuk Zorab and his legitimate male heirs, Coat
of Arms of John Manuk Zorab and his legitimate male heirs, Crest
of the Zorab Family, and Official Badge of
the entire Zohrab/Zorab Family.
When and why did the family leave Persia for Turkey?
Hansen et al. (2005)
(as translated by David Wilson) states that
Paul Zohrab (b. ca. 1740?; d. ca. 1805?) was already in Constantinople
(Istanbul) in 1761. That may explain why some members of the Zohrab
family who were living in Sistan Province, in South-east Persia, exited
Persia at its North-west corner, rather than crossing the nearest border,
to the South-east. If they already had a family member in Turkey, it would
have made sense to join up with him.
Donoghue (2004) (page 297) also states that the father of Sophie
Zohrab (and therefore also of her brothers, Constantine
and Peter Paul John) was not Constantine (as
stated on the family tree up to 2012) but Paul
Zohrab, second dragoman (and later first dragoman) at the Danish embassy
at Constantinople/Istanbul. However, there could have been confusion about
who was who, because it seems to have been common for family members to
be known by their middle names, rather than by their Christian names.
Donoghue (2004) also states that
Thomas Thornton had described Paul, in a letter to Sir Robert Liston,
as "in the service of His Danish Majesty" in Constantinople.
David Wilson prefers to think that the Zohrabs went to
Turkey prior to 1761, and that the story about Aga Mohammed Khan is untrue.
This explanation is likely to have more appeal for outsiders than for
family members, who have grown up with this story. Nevertheless, it is
possible that the Zohrabs were economic migrants who found it useful to
create a story about their departure from Iran which made it more likely
that they would be well-treated. However, there are two facts which support
the theory that the Zohrab family in Persia had aristocratic status:
The Western expatriate community in Turkey, into which the Zohrabs were apparently well integrated, was presumably not very large, and so it would have been hard for the family to maintain the credibility of a false account of their former status in a neighbouring country;
Paul Zohrab was described by a Turkish Customs officer as "haughty", which is an attitude which fits in with being accustomed to aristocratic status.
Which members of the family left Persia for Turkey?
According to Judge Edgar
Zorab, it was two brothers who fled from Persia to Turkey (This does
not exclude the possibility of a sister being with them, as women were
typically not mentioned in the early part of the family tree), and I had
come to believe that those two brothers were Peter Paul John and his brother
Constantine. Donoghue (2004)
states that it was Paul and his three children (Constantine, Sophie and
Peter) who made the journey; I have emailed him about that but received
no reply. In addition, Peter
Thomas Henry Zohrab's booklet about the family also says that it was
the father of Peter Paul John and Constantine who escaped from Persia,
together with one brother, who did not have any children (the late Kelvin
Pollock, genealogist, also prefered this version of events). This childless
brother could well have been the celibate priest, Johannes
Zohrab. That booklet does not state whether the wife and children
fled Persia or whether the marriage and births took place afterwards,
in Turkey.
If the two brothers who fled Persia for Turkey were
Constantine and Peter Paul John (together with their sister, Sophie),
that is compatible with their father, Paul (if their father really was
Paul), being already in Constantinople and with the reason for their leaving
Persia being a massacre by the Shah. However, if it was their father,
Paul, and his brother Johannes who fled Persia, that must have been before
the reign of the Shah in question. We can reconcile the massacre
story with the presence of Paul in Constantinople in 1761, if we assume
that Paul and Johannes left Persia first, and were not followed by their
children until the massacre occurred. In that case, Paul might have
left his wife and some/all of his children in Persia, and the above three
children must have been adults when they joined him in Turkey. We
do know that Peter Paul John later left his wife and children on
Malta and went to live back in Turkey, so that scenario is not unlikely.
Moreover, Armenians were already spread widely across the World at that
time, since historical Armenia has been under foreign rule for much of
its history (and much of it still is). For example, a review of
Vahé Baladouni, Margaret Makepeace
(1998) at
http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showpdf.php?id=5241 states that
"Silk became the lifeblood of a flourishing commerce, with New Julfa
the axis in a profitable overland and maritime network traversing Europe,
the Levant, the Middle East, Central Asia, India and the East Indies."
One possibility is that some of the following theory (my theory) is true:
's wife, Katherine, was Danish (based on her name and
the names of her children), although there is nothing about their names
that excludes the possibility that all of them were Armenian, since some
names on the family tree are given in their Western equivalents.
which would explain why her son Paul was able to get a
job as a dragoman at the Danish embassy in Istanbul (Constantinople),
when such jobs were apparently hard to get without contacts (according
to David Wilson).
That also helps to explain why Paul was able to obtain Danish nationality, why his two sons applied for it as well (according to Donoghue 2008), and why his son Constantine was successful in his application, according to his son Edward's 1855 application for British nationality (UK Public Records Office);
Marcar and Katherine, according to this theory, lived
in Constantinople, which is why their son Johannes (if he was the Dr.
Hoohannes Zohrabian of "Zohrab Bible"
fame -- see below -- who is known to have been
born in Constantinople.) was born there,
and that is also why one of their sons was named "Constantine",
unlike any earlier member of the family.
However, some of Marcar's children and/or grandchildren
were living in Persia in 1795, when they had to flee the country, and
so they fled to Turkey to (re-)join their family there.
The page http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/denmark
states that:
"In 1687 a ship belonging to the Danish East Asian Company (Det Østasiatisk Kompagni) seized a Bengali ship and brought it into the port of Trankebar, a Danish colony on the southeastern coast of India. The merchandise belonged to Armenians from Jolfa at Isfahan in Persia. The Danes sent the ship with its cargo to Copenhagen, where four years later a Persian ambassador arrived to negotiate compensation for the merchandise. On 11 December 1691 he presented to King Christian V (1670-99) his credentials and a letter from the Safavid shah Solayman (1077-1105/1666-94) addressed to a former king, Christian III (1534-59); it included a comprehensive inventory of the disputed merchandise and the names of the Armenian merchants (partially published in Boisen, 1965, p. 66)."
So (for example) Marcar and his father could have been
held captive by the Danes in India and/or Denmark, and Marcar could have
met Katherine in that way. Alternatively, Marcar could have been the Persian
Envoy (or a member of his staff) on the trip to Denmark. Boisen
(1965, p. 62) states that the Persian Envoy had a retinue of 7 persons.
The "comprehensive inventory of the disputed merchandise
and the names of the Armenian merchants" referred to above has also
been published in Vahman (1998). The
names of the merchants and their clients are as follows (NB these are
English transliterations of Armenian/Persian names written in Persian,
so you may have seen these names with somewhat different spellings in
other contexts! Most of the spellings of names in brackets are alternatives
given in the letter to the King of Denmark, whereas the actual inventory
is a separate document):
Uhan (Johanes), son of Biqus (merchant), and Uvanis (client);
Grigur (Gregor), son of Markus (Marcus) (merchant) and Kasbir (Casper) (client);
Khajik, son of Uvanis (merchant) and Vasil, son of Manas (client);
Arabid, son of Ya'qub and Fukar, son of Bidrus and Makirdij (client);
Uvanis (Ovanes), son of Musis (merchant);
Siqmun (Simon) (merchant);
Ya'qubkhan (Jacob), son of Zadur (merchant) and Zadur, son of Biqus (client);
Avid, son of Zadur (merchant) and Zakarya (client);
Zakarya, son of Rapul (merchant) and Uvanis Kallah Gush and Sultan Kal (client);
Agha Piri, son of Uvdik (merchant) and Grigur, son of Mirkiz (Markus) (client);
Sarkiz (Sarkis) (merchant);
Grigur (Gregor), son of Khachidur (merchant).
The Zohrab family connection with Denmark may have involved neither marriage nor this particular incident at sea, of course. Setting aside the marriage question, however, which of the above names corresponds to someone in the right part of the family tree at about the right date? My best guess is Simon (Siqmun), who could have been the youngest son of the "original Zohrab". That would fit well with the fact that his grandson, Kevork (George) Manukian Manuchariants, lived in British India for a while and ended up as a wealthy merchant in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), and with the fact that all of Kevork's family were born in New Julfa and ended up in South or South-East Asia.
Johannes (Hoohannes) Zohrab,
author of the "Zohrab Bible",
was an archimandrite (celibate priest) of the brotherhood of
the Roman Catholic Mekhitarians of St. Lazarus of Venice. Born
in Constantinople in 1756, he became a priest in 1779. He was an
Armenologist. In 1817 he left the brotherhood and died in Paris
in 1829.
Krikor Zohrab
Krikor Zohrab
There was a Turkish Armenian writer, lawyer, and parliamentarian,
named Krikor (Grighor) Zohrab/Zohrabyan, but it is uncertain if he is
related to the other Zohrabs in these webpages. See www.iatp.am/resource/artcult/zohrab/0005.jpg
& www.iatp.am/resource/artcult/zohrab/biography.htm
.
I have been told that he was part of the defence team
of the French Jew Dreyfus. This is supported by the Google translation
of the Turkish Wikipedia page on Krikor Zohrab: http://translate.google.co.nz/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftr.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FKrikor_Zohrab&sl=tr&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
His grandfather, Sargis Zohrabyan, apparently moved
to Istanbul/Constantinople from Akn (west of Lake Van) in 1779-92. Since
he moved from East to West at about the same time (1795) that other
Zohrabs were doing that (see above), since Krikor
Zohrab was apparently a Catholic, like the ancestors of the New
Zealand Zohrabs, and since Zohrab is a first name of Persian, rather
than of Turkish or strictly Armenian origin, it is highly likely that
he was also part of the Zohrab family that had been living in Persia.
In fact, I have a transcript of a letter to Dr. John Zorab from his
daughter, Dolores Zohrab Liebmann, who married Henry Liebmann, a New
York Jewish brewery owner, in which she states that Krikor had told
her that his ancestors had come to Turkey from Persia.
The Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center in New
York was set up by his daughter and named after him and his wife. See
http://www.zohrabcenter.org/
.
(In 2010, Peter Douglas Zohrab entered into extensive
email correspondence with Haig Krikorian (haig4@sympatico.ca), who said
he was a descendant of Krikor Zohrab's brother, via his (Haig's) mother.
Haig said he would attempt to get his cousins, who were descended from
Krikor's brother through the male line, to take a Y-DNA test to see
if the two Zohrab families were indeed one and the same. Haig
kept promising but never delivered or explained his non-delivery, unfortunately.)
As far as I know, it is accurate to divide the known part of the Zohrab branch of the wider Zohrab family as follows:
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| Last Update | 12 May 2013 |