The Conversion of Christian Armenians to Islam in Iran in the Early Modern Period

Kostikyan, Kristine · 2026

From the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, much of the Armenian population of the Armenian Highland and the South Caucasus lived under the Safavids, Afsharids and Qajars, whose rulers repeatedly encouraged conversion to Shi'i Islam. Beyond outright coercion, Kostikyan identifies a set of structural pressures, focusing on the Shi'i inheritance law applied to Armenians from the 1620s onward, which became a major driver of conversion. Drawing on contemporary documents, she reconstructs the consequences of that law and the legal strategies Armenians used to protect property from the claims of relatives who had converted. She also documents the efforts of Armenian Church leaders to limit its damage and to obtain royal decrees against it.

Citation checked against the publisher's record on 2026-07-13.