Орта ғасырлық Еуропадағы Маркграф титулы

Military and noble title in medieval Europe

Margrave was originally the medieval title for the military commander assigned to maintain the defence of one of the border provinces of the Holy Roman Empire or a kingdom. That position became hereditary in certain feudal families in the Empire and the title came to be borne by rulers of some Imperial principalities until the abolition of the Empire in 1806 (e. g., Margrave of Brandenburg, Margrave of Baden). Thereafter, those domains (originally known as marks or marches, later as margraviates or margravates) were absorbed into larger realms or the titleholders adopted titles indicative of full sovereignty.

Etymologically, the word "margrave" (marchio, c. 1551) is the English and French form of the German noble title Markgraf (Mark, meaning "march" or "mark", that is, borderland, added to Graf, meaning "Count"); it is related semantically to the English title "Marcher Lord". As a noun and hereditary title, "margrave" was common among the languages of Europe, such as Spanish and Polish. A Markgraf (margrave) originally functioned as the military governor of a Carolingian march, a medieval border province. those who reigned as virtual sovereigns (Marquis of Mantua, Marquis of Montferrat, Marquis of Saluzzo, Marquis of Fosdinovo) exercised authority closer to the dynastic jurisdiction associated in modern Europe with the margrave, while some non ruling nobles (e. g., Burgau, Pallavicini, Piatti) retained use of the margravial title but held the non sovereign status of a marquis.

By the 19th century, the sovereigns in Germany, Italy and Austria had all adopted "higher" titles, and not a single sovereign margraviate remained. Although the title remained part of the official style of such monarchs as the German Emperors, Kings of Saxony ,and Grand Dukes of Baden, it fell into desuetude as the primary title of members of any reigning family. The children of Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Baden by his second, morganatic wife, Luise Karoline Geyer von Geyersberg, only legally shared their mother's title of Imperial Count von Hochberg from 1796, and were not officially elevated to the title of margrave until 1817 when they were publicly de morganitised. But their father had allowed its use for his morganatic children at his own court in Karlsruhe from his assumption of the grand ducal crown in 1806, simultaneously according to the princely title to the dynastic sons of his first marriage. In 1914, the Imperial German Navy commissioned a dreadnought battleship SMS Markgraf named after this title. She fought in WWI and was interned and scuttled at Scapa Flow after the war.

Several states have had analogous institutions, sometimes also rendered in English as margrave. For example, on England's Celtic borders (Welsh Marches and Scottish Marches), Marcher Lords were vassals of the King of England, expected to help him defend and expand his realm. Such a lord's demesne was called a march (compare the English county palatine). The Marcher Lords were a conspicuous exception to the general structure of English feudalism as set up by William the Conqueror, who made a considerable effort to avoid having too powerful vassals with a big contiguous territory and a strong local power base; the needs of fighting the Welsh and Scots made it necessary to have exactly this kind of vassal in the Marches, who did develop their territorial ambitions (for example those of Chester). The late medieval commanders, fiefholders, of Vyborg Castle in Finland (see Fief of Viborg), the bulwark of the then Swedish realm, at the border against Novgorod/Russia, did, in practice, function as margraves. They had feudal privileges and kept all of the crown's income from the fief to use for the defence of the realm's eastern border. Its fiefholders were (almost always) descended from, or married to, the noble family of Bååt from Småland in Sweden. Marggrabowa is an example of a town whose name comes from a margrave. Located in the Masurian region of East Prussia, Marggrabowa was founded in 1560 by Albert, Duke of Prussia, Margrave of Brandenburg. It has since been renamed to the Polish Olecko. The German word Mark also has other meanings than the margrave's territorial border area, often with a territorial component, which occurs more numerously than margraviates; so its occurrence in composite place names does not necessarily imply that it was part of a margraviate as such. Uses of Mark in German names are commonly more local, as in the context of a Markgenossenschaft, which means a partially self governing association of agricultural users of an area; the German name component Mark can also be a truncated form of Markt 'market', as in the small town of Marksuhl in the Eisenach area of Thuringia, meaning 'market town on the river Suhl'. The non margravial origin even applies to the County of Mark and the country of Denmark (meaning 'march of the Danes', in the sense of border area, yet never under a Margrave but the Danish national kingdom, outside the Holy Roman Empire). The Sassanid Persian position of marzban (marz means border, and [[ban (title) means lord) or Kanarang was a position given to officials or generals who were trusted by the king and that had land, villages, and towns in far reaches of the empire. In return for their position and privilege to collect taxes, they were responsible for defending the empire from foreign intrusion. The Byzantine Empire had a number of fortified passes in the mountainous frontier districts called [[kleisoura (Byzantine district) or kleisarchy, particularly along its eastern border with the Caliphate, each headed by a kleisourarches who controlled access to inner lands. However an Exarch in the late Roman, early Eastern Roman Empire era, was the military commander and imperial governor of a region at the brink of the controlled territories, not an aristocratic lord in his own (hereditary) right. The Turkish title and position of uç beyi ("frontier lord"), used in early Turkish Anatolia and during the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, is also often rendered as "margrave". The wife of a Margrave is called a Margravine.