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Atabeg or Atabey is a title of nobility of Turkic origin, indicating a governor of a nation or province who was subordinate to a monarch.

The word atabeg means "father of the prince." When a Seljuk prince died, leaving minor heirs, a guardian would be appointed to protect and guide the young princes. These guardians would often marry their ward's widowed mothers, thus assuming a sort of surrogate fatherhood.

The title of Atabeg was common during the Seljuk rule of the Near East starting in the 12th century. It was common in Mesopotamia (Iraq) The beginning of the 12th century was the age of the atabegs (regents or stadtholders). The atabegs formed a number of dynasties, which displaced the descendants of the Seljukian amirs in their various principalities. These dynasties were founded by emancipated mamelukes, who had held high office at court and in camp under powerful amirs, and who, on their death, first became stadtholders for their descendants, and then usurped the throne of their masters. There was an atabeg dynasty in Damascus founded by Tughtigin (1103-1128): there was another to the N.E., that of the Ortokids, represented by Sokman, who established himself at Kaifa in Diarbekr about 1101, and by his brother Ilghazi, who received Mardi. from Sokman about 1108, and added to it Aleppo ill 1117.1 But the greatest of the atabegs were those of Mosul on the Tigris Maudud, who died in 1113; Aksunkur, his successor; and finally, greatest of all, Zengi himself, who became Atabeg of Mosul in 1128 and soon established himself as an independent ruler of much of northern Mesopotamia and Syria (including Aleppo), opposing the Crusaders. After the end of Seljuk rule, the title was used only intermittently.

Amongst the Turkmen tribes, as in Persia, the rank was senior to a Khan.

It was also used in the Persian Empire (Iran).

• Azerbaijan
• The northern part of Luristan, which was formerly known as Lurikuchik ('Little Luristan'), is inhabited by the Feili Lurs and these are divided into the Pishkuh 'cis-montane' Lurs in the east and Pushtkuh 'ultra-montane' Lurs in the west adjoining Turkish territory. They number about 350,000. Little Luristan was governed by a race of independent princes of the Khurshidi dynasty, styled atabegs, from *55 to the beginning of the 17th century when the last atabeg, Shah Verdi Khan, was removed by Shah Abbas I and the government of the province given to Husain Khan, the chief of a rival tribe, with the gubernatorial title of vali instead of atabeg. The descendants of Husain Khan retained the title but sience governed only the Pushtkuh Lurs, to whom only the denomination of Feili applied.
• The southern part of Luristan was formerly known as Lur i Buzurg (great Luristan) and is composed of the Bakhtiari division of the Arabistan province and the districts of the Mamasennis and Kuhgilus which belong to Fars. The Bakhtiaris number about aoo,qoo, the others 40,000. Great Luristan was an independent state under the Fazlevieh atabegs from 1160 until 1424, and its capital was Idaj, no~ represented by mounds and ruins at Malamir 60 m- S.E. of Shushter.

The title atabeg was also in use for ?officers in Mameluk Egypt; some of them even were proclaimed Sultan before the incorporation into the Ottoman empire.

• In Persian, the style Atabeg-e-Azam ('Supreme Atabeg) was occasionally used as an alternative title for the Shah's Vazir-e-Azam (Grand Vizier), notably in 1916 for a Qajar prince, Major-General Shahzada Sultan 'Abdu'l Majid Mirza.

Sources

• the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica (passim; details not yet worked in)
• Amin Maalouf. Crusades Through Arab Eyes, 1984
• Royal Ark - Qajar dynasty in Iran

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• Heads of government
• Noble titles
• Gubernatorial titles