Margraves - Variations

Variations

• 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 own 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 having feudal privileges and keeping all the crown's incomes 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 in 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 occur 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 means lord) 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 frontier districts called kleisourai, particularly along its eastern border with the Caliphate, each headed by a kleisourarches.
• 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".