The Iranian Heritage of Georgia: Breathing New Life Into the Pre-Bagratid Historiographical Tradition1
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Iranica Antiqua, vol. XLIV, 2009 doi: 10.2143/IA.44.0.2034389 THE IRANIAN HERITAGE OF GEORGIA: BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO THE PRE-BAGRATID HISTORIOGRAPHICAL TRADITION1 BY Stephen H. RAPP, Jr. (Russian State Humanities University, Moscow) Abstract: Traditionally, scholars have considered extant medieval Georgian his- toriography as having been produced exclusively during the millennium of Bagratid rule. This essay identifi es a separate historiographical phase just preced- ing the rise of Bagratid rule in the Georgian domains in the early ninth century. Pre-Bagratid historiographical texts are distinguished fi rst and foremost by their Iranian fl avor, which is a refl ection of the longstanding membership of the whole of southern Caucasia in the Iranian cultural world. Keywords: Georgia, K¨art¨li, Caucasia, Iran, Byzantium, K¨art¨lis c¨xovreba Late in the year 555 two Roman commanders successfully orchestrated the assassination of the monarch of Lazika in western Georgia. Answering an imperial inquiry, Martin and Rusticus justifi ed their action as a neces- sary measure which had prevented King Gubazes II from forging an alli- ance with Sasanid Iran. According to the Roman historian Agathias, our chief contemporary source for the incident, subjects of the fallen ruler assembled in a remote gorge in the Caucasus Mountains to contemplate their future. The Lazian nobleman Aeëtes, whose name appropriately evoked the mythical king of Colchis (who himself had been abused by the 1 This essay recasts one of the principal arguments of Rapp 1997 and elaborates upon Rapp 2001 and Rapp 2004. I am indebted to many friends and colleagues who have com- mented upon various incarnations of this essay over the past decade. A special debt is grati- tude is owed to J. Fine, R. Lindner, A. Eastmond, J. Colarusso, K. Tuite, G. Tsetskhladze, C. Holmes, L. Neville, and K. Church. The views expressed and any inaccuracies are my own. With a few slight modifi cations, Georgian has been transliterated according to the system devised by the Library of Congress, USA. Aspirated consonants are suffi xed ¨ while glottalized ones are unmarked. Georgian x is roughly equivalent to Russian kh and Georgian c to Russian ts. On the thorny designations “Georgia” and “Georgians,” see fn. 5 below. 11504-08_Iran_Antiqua_44_16504-08_Iran_Antiqua_44_16 664545 220-03-20090-03-2009 113:24:453:24:45 646 S.H. RAPP, JR. Greek Argonauts), advocated cooperation with Iran. Aeëtes censured the Romans for their inexcusable slaughter of Gubazes and accused the emperor of being “utterly unscrupulous” and of fomenting “tension and instabil- ity.” At the same time he applauded the respect and honor the Iranians had shown their allies. Not everyone, however, was persuaded by Aeëtes’ elo- quent appeal. Voicing his sharp disagreement, the Lazian aristocrat Phar- tazes insisted that the ruthless act had been perpetrated by renegade sol- diers and not by Justinian I or his agents2. The alliance with the Roman Empire should be maintained, Phartazes reasoned, for “there can be no real fellowship and lasting bond between men of different religion not even under the stimulus of fear or of some previous act of kindness.” Agathias interjected: “What made [the people of Lazika] relent was chiefl y the fear that a change of allegiance would deprive them of the right to practice their [Christian] religion.” Indeed, imperial diplomatic initiatives often exploited shared Christian affi liation and the Empire’s special position within Chris- tendom. To the relief of the Roman government, the Lazians renewed their association with Constantinople and the emperor subsequently confi rmed Tzathes II as the king of Lazika (Agathias, 3.8-14). Although this debate is almost certainly the contrivance of Agathias, it refl ects contemporary Roman imaginations and attitudes (Braund 1994: 268-314) as well as the political and cultural choices available to the aris- tocracy of southern Caucasia in Late Antiquity. Close proximity to the commonwealths of western Eurasia, imperial contests for hegemony over the strategic isthmus, and physical geography have contributed to Cauca- sia’s vibrant cosmopolitan condition and its status as a preeminent Eura- sian crossroads. While observers since ancient times have often regarded the towering peaks of the Caucasus Mountains as a barrier that inhibited the movement of peoples and ideas, a recent study offers a welcome cor- rective: “by forcing travelers into a few pathways, [Caucasia’s] topogra- phy may encourage greater communication than a broad open plain” (Rubinson & Smith 2003: 5). In his landmark Studies in Christian Cauca- sian History the late Cyril Toumanoff aptly described the ribbon of land between the Black and Caspian Seas as an integrated zone where a wide spectrum of Eurasian cultures encountered, interacted, collided, and blended with local ones. He further observed that: 2 Ironically, the name Phartazes is based on a Persian root (Gignoux 1986: II/80-86; Justi 1895: 98). 11504-08_Iran_Antiqua_44_16504-08_Iran_Antiqua_44_16 664646 220-03-20090-03-2009 113:24:463:24:46 IRANIAN HERITAGE OF GEORGIA 647 Few areas of the world, whose contribution to history has been as great as Caucasia’s, have suffered as much from neglect by histo- riography. As an integral part of the Mediterranean world, Cauca- sia shared in the pan-Mediterranean cultural unity and particularly in Byzantine Civilization. It is impossible, therefore, to deal with Christian Caucasia — as is not seldom done by modern Caucasiol- ogy — without regard to the closely related East Mediterranean, that is, Byzantine, but also Iranian and Syro-Mesopotamian, con- text. Yet at the same time Christian Caucasia was endowed with an individuality and a unity that made it distinct from the related other components of pan-Mediterranean Civilization… (Toumanoff 1963: 7)3 Sadly, Toumanoff’s innovative studies have not attracted the attention they deserve. Taken as a whole, Roman and Byzantine investigators per- sist in their neglect of Caucasia or, at the very least, in their treatment of the region as isolated, as an aberration, or as a backwater and a trouble- some periphery (Toumanoff 1956 and 1971; cf. Meißner 2000)4. Some patriotic scholars in the Republic of Georgia, ripping a page from the political playbook of the Saakashvili regime to connect Georgia with (pre- dominately Christian) Western Europe, have likewise shrouded, ignored, and, in extreme cases, even denied eastern Georgia’s and Caucasia’s inti- mate bond to the Iranian world in pre-modern times, instead exaggerating the region’s historical ties to the Mediterranean (e.g., Dundua 1999, 1999- 2001, and 2003). In a similar vein, specialists of the Near and Middle East have tended not to acknowledge Caucasia’s intimate linkage to the Meso- potamian, Iranian, and Islamic worlds. What is more, a great many schol- ars have ignored or rejected Toumanoff’s pan-Caucasian perspective, clinging instead to artifi cially divisive ethnocentric and national master narratives. Though this essay tackles medieval historiographical traditions in a par- ticular language, Georgian, it locates and analyzes them in relation to the the whole of Caucasia and the larger Eurasian world (Rapp 2005). It was 3 Among Toumanoff’s numerous other publications, see esp. Toumanoff 1966 and 1990. For the metageographical issues raised by “interstitial zones” like Caucasia, see Lewis & Wigen 1997: 203-204. 4 There are, of course, some exceptions, including: Fowden 1993; Whittow 1996; and the commentary in Sebeos 1999. 11504-08_Iran_Antiqua_44_16504-08_Iran_Antiqua_44_16 664747 220-03-20090-03-2009 113:24:463:24:46 648 S.H. RAPP, JR. the Christianization of the eastern Georgian kingdom of K¨art¨li5 — itself a transregional, cross-cultural phenomenon involving Armenia, eastern Ana- tolia, and Syria — that enabled original Georgian literature. An outgrowth of the centuries-long process of conversion was the deliberate Christian invention of a Georgian script through a pan-Caucasian effort at the start of the fi fth century. Consequently, all Georgian manuscripts were produced and all specimens of original Georgian literature were written down after that time. Christianity is thus a formidable presence on the Georgian histo- riographical stage: even traditions which existed orally long before the local triumph of Christianity must be considered in relation to it. Moreover, it is routinely asserted that eastern Georgia’s Christianization, and especially the baptism of King Mirian III ca. 3376, was accompanied by a second trans- formation: the defi nite integration of its society and culture into the Medi- terranean world dominated by the Roman and then Byzantine Empires. But if the various Christian Georgian peoples were participants in the Byzantine Commonwealth7, as at some point they unquestionably were, why is the sharpest fl avor of the earliest Georgian historiographical literature — com- posed nearly fi ve centuries after Mirian’s conversion — Iranian and not 5 This essay is concerned chiefl y with the written medieval historiography that was expressed in the K¨art¨velian idiom of Georgian and that imparts a privileged status to eastern Georgia and especially K¨art¨li. With regards to pre-modern times, the English/ European terms “Georgia” and “Georgian” are saturated with problems. Neither occurs in local languages and both impose a sense of political unity that, over the long course of their history, has not usually existed among the K¨art¨velians and their neighbors. Prior to the political unifi cation of “Georgia” in the fi rst decade of the eleventh century AD, K¨art¨li (Gk. Iberia) and Kaxet¨i were the eastern hubs, while Egrisi (Colchis, Lazika) and then Ap¨xazet¨i (Abasgia) were of special importance in the west. The southwestern domains of Tao/Tayk¨, Klarjet¨i, Shavshet¨i, Javaxet¨i, etc. were nodes of contact between the eastern and western sectors and between the various Georgians and Armenians. Before the unifi cation engineered by the Bagratid dynasty in the eleventh century, I usually refer to the individual regions or to the broad cultural-political zones of eastern and western Georgia.