Bebutov or Bebutashvili was a Georgian

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 noble family of Armenian

Armenians

Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....

 ethnicity which played an important role in the economical and social life of the city of Tiflis (now Tbilsis) throughout the 17th and 18th century, and later served in the military of the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 in the 19th century.

The family is known from the early 17th century when they migrated from Armenia

Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...

 to Georgia, and settled down in Tiflis. By the mid-17th century, they had emerged as one of the wealthiest mercantile families in the kingdom of Kartli

Kartli

Kartli is a historical region in central-to-eastern Georgia traversed by the river Mtkvari , on which Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, is situated. Known to the Classical authors as Iberia, Kartli played a crucial role in ethnic and political consolidation of the Georgians in the Middle Ages...

. In the 18th century, they served as ethnarchs of the Armenians of Tbilisi (with the title of melik

Melik

Мelik , from malik ) was a hereditary Armenian noble title, in various Eastern Armenian principalities known as melikdoms encompassing modern Yerevan, Kars, Nakhchivan, Sevan, Lori, Artsakh, Tabriz and Syunik starting from the Late Middle Ages until the end of the nineteenth century...

-mamasakhlisi), and later also as Grand Masters of the Hunt (mishkarbash) at the Georgian court. In 1783, King Heraclius II of Georgia elevated the family to the title of Princes Bebutov and included it in the list of Georgian nobility attached to the Treaty of Georgievsk

Treaty of Georgievsk

The Treaty of Georgievsk was a bilateral treaty concluded between the Russian Empire and the east Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti on July 24, 1783. The treaty established Georgia as a protectorate of Russia, which guaranteed Georgia's territorial integrity and the continuation of its reigning...

 with the Russian Empire. After Russian annexation of Georgia (1801), the Bebutov family was received among the princely nobility (knyaz

Knyaz

Kniaz, knyaz or knez is a Slavic title found in most Slavic languages, denoting a royal nobility rank. It is usually translated into English as either Prince or less commonly as Duke....

) of the empire in 1826.