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32-523: His name and origin are differently given by the medieval Georgian chronicles. While The Conversion of Kartli calls him Azo(y) and makes him the scion of a preexisting dynasty in Arian Kartli , The Life of Kartli knows him as Azon and brands him a Macedonian outsider. Azo and Azon unquestionably represent the same figure and both sources credit his position to Alexander’s mythic expedition into inner Georgia. According to The Conversion of Kartli , Azo

64-564: A city on the Mtkvari; it was called Kartli (probably at the latter-day Armazi ), a name which generalized to the country ruled by Kartlos and his progeny. Kartlos seems to be a medieval contrivance and his being the eponymous founder of Kartli is not convincing. The medieval chronicler characteristically renders this name with the Greek nominative suffix –ος ( os ), as Stephen H. Rapp of Georgia State University ( Atlanta ) assumes, "in order to impart

96-451: A large number of Georgian manuscripts mainly dated to the 9th/10th century. They have not yet been completely studied, though. The Shatberdi and Chelishi codices are basically linguistically similar and nearly contemporaneous. The latter, however, contains substantial variations including a number of elaborated passages. Its narrative is longer, but somewhat disfigured orthographically and phonetically by an anonymous copyist. Many passages of

128-410: A particular focus on Christianization of Georgians by Saint Nino early in the 4th century. The autograph of The Conversion of Kartli (CoK) has not survived and until recently there were only two manuscripts which have been extensively studied. These are the codices of Shatberdi and Chelishi. The Shatberdi Codex, the oldest of the extant CoK manuscripts, was copied in 973 under the supervision of

160-568: Is a historical region in central-to-eastern Georgia traversed by the river Mtkvari (Kura), on which Georgia's capital, Tbilisi , is situated. Known to the Classical authors as Iberia , Kartli played a crucial role in the ethnic and political consolidation of the Georgians in the Middle Ages . Kartli had no strictly defined boundaries and they significantly fluctuated in the course of history. After

192-450: Is the capital) and Kvemo Kartli (with its capital at Rustavi ), but also of Samtskhe-Javakheti (of which Akhaltsikhe its capital), and Mtskheta-Mtianeti (Mtskheta is the capital). A significant portion of Zemo Kartli is now part of Turkey . With the fragmentation of the kingdom of Georgia during the 15th century, the kings of Georgia were left with Kartli alone, having Tbilisi as their capital. The kings of Kartli did not relinquish

224-418: Is the earliest surviving medieval Georgian historical compendium, independent from The Georgian Chronicles , the major corpus historicum of medieval Georgia. Written in the 10th century, this chronicle follows the history of Kartli (a core Georgian region known to the Classical authors as Iberia , which is sometimes archaically referred to all of Georgia) from the earliest times to the 7th century, making

256-637: The Byzantine and Iranian civilizations, Kartli developed a Christian culture , aided by the fact that it was the only Kartvelian area with its own written language. With the consolidation of Arab rule in Tbilisi during the 8th century, the political capital of Kartli shifted to its southwest, but the Georgian literati of that time afforded to Kartli a broader meaning to denote all those lands of medieval Georgia that were alike by religion, culture, and language. In one of

288-688: The Jason of the Argonautic cycle. According to the Roman historian Tacitus , the Iberians "claimed Thessalian origin, dating from the time when Jason, after leaving with Medea and their children, returned to the empty palace of Aeëtes and the kingless Colchians ". The Conversion of Kartli The Conversion of Kartli ( Georgian : მოქცევაჲ ქართლისაჲ moktsevay kartlisay , Asomtavruli : ႫႭႵႺႤႥႠჂ ႵႠႰႧႪႨႱႠჂ, IPA: [mɔkʰtsɛvɑj kʰɑrtʰlɪsɑj] )

320-454: The partition of the kingdom of Georgia in the 15th century, Kartli became a separate kingdom with its capital at Tbilisi. The historical lands of Kartli are currently divided among several administrative regions of Georgia. The Georgians living in the historical lands of Kartli are known as Kartleli (ქართლელი) and comprise one of the largest geographic subgroups of the Georgian people. Most of them are Eastern Orthodox Christians adhering to

352-420: The 18th century. Beginning from 1550, and more strictly since 1614, the Georgian rulers pursued the "politics of compromise" with their Persian overlords. This implied that Persia allowed Kartli or any other region ruled by them to retain a considerable autonomy and the Georgian dynasty of Bagratids to possess the royal throne provided they adopted Islam and remained subordinate to the shah. In Georgian documents,

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384-507: The 3rd century BC, Kartli and its original capital Mtskheta (succeeded by Tbilisi during the 5th century) formed a nucleus around which the ancient Georgian kingdom known to the Greco-Romans as Iberia evolved. The role of Kartli as a core ethnic and political unit which would form a basis for the subsequent Georgian unification further increased as a result of its Christianization early in the 4th century. Located in an area influenced by both

416-493: The Georgian rulers continued to be styled as kings, while Persian official documents referred to them as the wāli ("viceroy") of Gorjestān, emphasizing their subservience to the shah. Many members of the aristocratic elite of Kartli had important positions in the Persian military and administration and several noble women entered the shah's harems . This situation changed in 1745, when, with the permission of Nāder Shah , Teimuraz II

448-656: The Georgians. Professor Giorgi Melikishvili has drawn several parallels between the stories of the Azon of the Georgian chronicles and the Mithridates of the Armenian tradition. Several modern scholars believe Azo’s story indirectly suggests the migration of the early Georgian tribes to the northwest and blending of Anatolian elements with the tribes living in Kartli proper. On the other hand,

480-477: The Kartveli (ქართველი) is poorly documented. The infiltration of several ancient, chiefly Anatolian , tribes into the territory of modern-day Georgia and their fusion with the autochthons played a decisive role in this process. This might have been reflected in the story of Arian-Kartli , the semi-legendary place of the aboriginal Georgian habitat found in the early medieval chronicle Conversion of Kartli . During

512-618: The Shatberdi Codex are more informative, but these details are probably later insertions as suggested by the occurrence of the word Baghdad , a post-8th century toponym . The Shatberdi codex cites some of its sources (such as "a brief account of the conversion of Kartli" by Grigol the Deacon) most of which did not survive and are otherwise unknown. Modern specialists have also proposed Pseudo-Callisthenes’ apocryphal Alexander romance and Alexander of Cyprus ’ Chronica as possible sources used by

544-630: The account with a sense of antiquity". The term itself ultimately derives from Proto-Kartvelian root *kart- ("Georgian"), which is considered an ancient inner-Kartvelian formation by modern linguists. See ქართლი and ქართველი for more. However, professor Giorgi Melikishvili has linked the toponym Kartli with a word karta (ქართა), found in Mingrelian (a Kartvelian language related to Georgian) and in some western Georgian dialects and meaning "a cattle pen" or "an enclosed place". The root kar occurs in numerous placenames across Georgia and, in

576-621: The authors of CoK. The work itself was exploited and some of its components were reworked by the later Georgian authors such as Leontius of Ruisi (11th century) and Arsenius the Metaphrast (12th century). For all its contradictions – the elements of folklore, and religious reminiscences – The Conversion of Kartli is an essential historical source. It further possesses a detailed relative and absolute chronology, unparallel in hagiographic and patristic literature of Georgia. The noticeable influence of CoK on subsequent Georgian historical works proves

608-419: The corpus derives its title, relates the story of proselytizing mission by St. Nino, who is also the subject of the last component of CoK, the hagiographic Life of Nino (ცხოვრება წმიდა ნინოსი, ts’xovreba ts’mida ninosi ). The basic text is accompanied by the lists of the kings , presiding princes and prelates of Kartli. Kartli Kartli ( Georgian : ქართლი [ˈkʰaɾtʰli] )

640-467: The crucial role this work played in establishing a sense of Christian identity of medieval Georgia. The Conversion of Kartli consists of two major components. The first one is conventionally known as The Chronicle (ქრონიკა, k’ronika ), a brief history of Kartli from the mythic expedition by Alexander the Great into Georgian lands down to the 7th century. Its core text, The Conversion of Kartli, from which

672-569: The kingdom of Georgia early during the 11th century, the names "Kartli" and "Kartveli" became a basis of the Georgian self-designation Sakartvelo . The Georgian circumfix sa -X- o is a standard geographic construction designating "the area where X dwell", where X is an ethnonym . During the Middle Ages, Kartli was traditionally divided, approximately along the river Mtkvari, into the three principal regions: Most of these lands are now part of Georgia's regions of Shida Kartli (of which Gori

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704-415: The member of the local ruling clan ( P’arnavaziani ), whose father and uncle were killed by Azon. The identification of Azo/Azon is one of the most complex and contentious enigmas of early Georgian history. His rule is conventionally dated by the Georgian scholar Sergi Gorgadze to 330–272 BC, though this chronology lacks precision. Despite their differences, the two medieval traditions concur that kingship

736-582: The monk John at the Georgian monastery of Shatberdi in what is now northeastern Turkey . It was discovered in 1888 and published in 1890 by the Georgian scholar Ekvtime Taqaishvili . The second variant, Chelishi Codex, so named after a monastery in Georgia where it was found in 1903, was copied in the 14th or 15th century. Following the 1975 fire at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in Egypt , at least two hitherto unknown variants of CoK were discovered among

768-472: The most-quoted passages of medieval Georgian literature, the 9th-century writer Giorgi Merchule asserts: "And Kartli consists of that spacious land in which the liturgy and all prayers are said in the Georgian language. But [only] the Kyrie eleison is said in Greek , [the phrase] which means in Georgian "Lord, have mercy" or "Lord, be merciful to us". After the unification of various Georgian polities into

800-490: The national Georgian Orthodox Church and speak a dialect which is the basis of the modern Georgian literary language. The toponym "Kartli" first emerges in written accounts in the 5th-century Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik , the earliest surviving piece of Georgian literature. According to the medieval Georgian Chronicles , Kartli derives its name from Kartlos , the mythic Georgian ethnarch , who built

832-580: The opinion of Melikishvili, displays semantic similarity with the Indo-European prototype; cf. Germanic gardaz ("enclosure", "garden"), Lithuanian gardas ("enclosure", "hurdle", "cattle pen"), Old Slavic gradu ("garden", also "city"), and Hittite gurtas ("fortress"). Relationships have also been sought with the Khaldi and Carduchi of the Classical sources. The formation of Kartli and its people,

864-585: The titles of the all-Georgian monarchs whose legitimate successors they claimed to be. The Europeans , thus, knew it as "Georgia proper" and later also as Kartalinia via the Russian Карталиния [kartalinʲɪjə] . Similarly, the toponym Gorjestān (Georgia) was usually used in Persian in the narrower sense of Kartli. The kingdom of Kartli was a battleground of the Ottoman - Safavid wars, conflicts among neighboring Georgian and Caucasian rulers, and of its own civil wars into

896-498: The version of The Life of Kartli , which anachronistically refers to Azon's entourage as "Romans", might well have reflected the Roman activities in Iberia, presumably those of the Flavian period (AD 69–96), which have surprisingly been ignored by the Georgian annals. Some modern historians have also attempted to equate Azon (note that the name terminates in the Greek suffix –ου) with

928-529: Was crowned as king of Kartli according to Christian customs. In 1748, Kartli became essentially independent, with only formal side of Persian vassalage still observed. In 1762, Kartli was united with the neighboring eastern Georgian kingdom of Kakheti into a single state , which became a Russian protectorate in 1783, but it suffered a devastating Persian invasion in 1795, when Agha Mohammad Khan of Persia's newly established Qajar dynasty sought to bring Georgia again under Persian hegemony. The weakened kingdom

960-595: Was established in Mtskheta in the early Hellenistic period and this is verified in non-Georgian sources. The legend of Alexander's Iberian campaign has also been preserved in Armenian historical tradition, particularly in The History of the Armenians by Moses of Chorene (probably the 5th century). Moses speaks of "Mithridates, satrap of Darius " (identifiable with Mithridates II of Cius ) installed by Alexander to rule over

992-498: Was neither a king nor even a Georgian. He is reported to have conquered Mtskheta with 100,000 Macedonians ("Romans"). In addition, Alexander commanded Azon to worship seven celestial bodies (the Sun , the Moon , and five "stars", i.e., planets ) and to serve the "invisible God, the creator of the universe". This version has Azon, depicted as a tyrant, subsequently deposed and killed by Pharnavaz ,

Azo of Iberia - Misplaced Pages Continue

1024-474: Was the son of an unnamed king of Arian Kartli, who was brought, together with followers, to Kartli proper by Alexander and installed as the first king ( mep'e , მეფე) at Mtskheta after the conquest of this city. He also transplanted the cults of Gatsi and Gaim to Kartli. The Life of Kartli enshrines no such tradition. Rather, it maintains that Azon, son of Iaredos (unattested in The Conversion of Kartli),

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