![]() Dates for events in Georgian history are often disputable or vague, at least until the end of the eighteenth century. Similarly, substantial minorities of Armenians and of Azeris and other Turkic peoples, as well as distinct communities, such as the Georgian Jews, have played their part in the formation of Georgia. A history of Georgia is therefore, at times, a history of Abkhazia and Ossetia. For most of Georgian history, those Ossetians (formerly Alanians, an Iranian people, remnants of the Scythians) who live in Transcaucasia have also been subjects of the Georgian state. Most Mingrelians and Svans are (and have long been) bilingual in Georgian.įor long periods in Georgian history, Abkhazia (whose indigenous language is a northwest Caucasian language unrelated to Georgian) has been part of the Georgian state. Svan is an archaic member of the Kartvelian group, further from Georgian than, say, Romanian from French. The fourth member of the Kartvelian group is Svan, now spoken by 50,000 people in the high mountains of the central Caucasus. Two thousand years ago, the differences may have been merely dialectal. Both Mingrelian and Laz are as close to Georgian as, say, Portuguese is to Spanish, so that there is a degree of mutual intelligibility. Sometimes known as the Zan languages, Mingrelian and Laz are so close as to be dialects of the same language, differentiated largely by the fact that the Laz have long been influenced by Islam and Turkish language and culture. The Georgian language belongs to the Kartvelian group of languages (a group never proven to be cognate with any other language group): to this group also belongs Mingrelian (Georgian megruli) and Laz. To Georgians, a Georgian has always been both someone whose native language is Georgian, as well as any native of Georgia, regardless of ethnicity. In the tenth century, Georgia was defined by Giorgi Merchule (ecclesiastical lawyer) as anywhere where Mass was said in Georgian. His is a history of Georgia firstly politically, as a country in its modern (de jure) boundaries secondly, geographically, as the region of Transcaucasia between the Black Sea to the junction of the Iori and Mtkvari (or Kura) rivers, and between the high Caucasus to the little Caucasus around the lower reaches of the Çoruh and the upper reaches of the Mtkvari (or Kura) rivers finally, historically, with boundaries which at periods reached far into today’s Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Saki (‘The Jesting of Arlington Stringham’) The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally. + references 402 chronology 417 Maps and dynastic trees 426 select Bibliography 446 Photo Acknowledgements 447 Index 449 Introduction 7 1 The Emergence of the Kartvelians 11 2 The Origins of the Kingdom of Kartli 22 3 Conversion 38 4 The Arab Conquest 55 5 Unification 73 6 Davit the Builder 85 7 Demetre and Giorgi iii 98 8 Queen Tamar 107 9 Mongol Invasion 118 10 The Fractured State 132 11 Timur Lang and the Destruction of Georgia 147 12 Fratricide 164 13 King Teimuraz i 187ġ4 Teimuraz Dispossessed 207 15 The Eighteenth Century 222 16 The Russian Conquest of Kartli-Kakhetia 250 17 King Solomon’s End 265 18 Vice-regency 284 19 Reaction and Revolution 306 20 Independence 323 21 Soviet Annexation 339 22 After Stalin 366 23 Independence Restored 381 Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Rayfield, Donald, 1942– Edge of empires : a history of Georgia. Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 33 Great Sutton Street London EC1V 0DX First published 2012 Copyright © Donald Rayfield 2012 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. EDGE OF EMPIRES A HISTORY OF GEORGIA Donald Rayfield ![]()
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