Folio IHistory & Faith
Three thousand years, written in its own alphabet.
Georgia has been a kingdom, a province of empires, a battlefield for Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Ottomans and Russians, and a republic twice. Through all of it the country kept two things that no army took: its Church, one of the oldest in Christendom, and a script that looks like nothing else on earth.
Begin readingFolio IIThe Chronicle
From the Golden Fleece to the ninth of April.
Entries marked with the vine cross belong to the Church’s story. In Georgia the two are hard to tell apart.
c. 13th–1st c. BC
Colchis, and the Golden Fleece
On the Black Sea coast, the kingdom of Colchis worked gold well enough that the Greeks built a myth around it and sent Jason to steal it. The gold found in the graves at Vani is not a myth.
Medea, in the Greek telling, was a Colchian princess.
c. 3rd c. BC
The Kingdom of Kartli
Inland, Pharnavaz I is remembered as the first king of Kartli - the Iberia of the Greeks and Romans - ruling from Mtskheta where the Aragvi meets the Mtkvari. Kartli is the root of the country's own name for itself: Sakartvelo.
c. 330s AD
St Nino, and a Christian king
A woman from Cappadocia named Nino came to Mtskheta carrying a cross made of vine. After she healed Queen Nana, King Mirian III converted and made Christianity the religion of the kingdom - one of the first states anywhere to do so.
Only Armenia, next door, is generally held to have been earlier.
5th c.
An alphabet of its own
The oldest dated Georgian inscriptions - in a Georgian monastery near Bethlehem, and on the Bolnisi Sioni church in Kartli - are written in a script found nowhere else. The earliest surviving Georgian book, the Martyrdom of St Shushanik, follows before the century is out.
5th–6th c.
Vakhtang Gorgasali and Tbilisi
King Vakhtang Gorgasali founded Tbilisi over the hot springs, and under his son Dachi the capital moved there from Mtskheta. The Church of Kartli gained its own head, the Catholicos, in the same era.
Tbili means warm. The sulphur baths of Abanotubani still sit on those springs.
736–1122
The Emirate of Tbilisi
Arab armies took Tbilisi and held it as an emirate for nearly four hundred years, while Georgian princes held out in the west and the mountains, and monks kept writing in the monasteries of Tao-Klarjeti.
1008
One kingdom
Bagrat III of the Bagrationi dynasty inherited both the western and the eastern thrones and became the first king of a united Georgia. His dynasty would rule, in one branch or another, for eight centuries.
1121
David the Builder at Didgori
King David IV beat a far larger Seljuk army at Didgori, retook Tbilisi the following year and made it the capital again. He had already founded Gelati, a monastery and an academy for the scholarship of the whole Orthodox world.
He asked to be buried under Gelati's gate, so that everyone who entered would step on him.
1184–1213
Queen Tamar
The golden age. Tamar's Georgia ran from the Black Sea to the Caspian, Vardzia was cut into its cliff, and Shota Rustaveli wrote The Knight in the Panther's Skin, the national epic, and dedicated it to her.
She was styled mepe - king - not queen.
1226
The bridge in Tbilisi
When the Khwarazmian shah Jalal ad-Din sacked Tbilisi, tradition says the icons were laid on the bridge over the Mtkvari and the townspeople were told to walk across them. Those who refused were killed.
The Church keeps their day as the Hundred Thousand Martyrs of Tbilisi.
13th–15th c.
Mongols, plague and Timur
The Mongol invasions broke the kingdom, the Black Death thinned it, and Timur came through eight times. By the end of the fifteenth century one Georgia had become several kingdoms and principalities.
1624
Queen Ketevan
Between Safavid Persia and the Ottoman Empire, the Georgian kingdoms were fought over for three centuries. Queen Ketevan of Kakheti, a hostage of Shah Abbas I, was tortured to death in Shiraz for refusing to give up her faith.
She is venerated as a saint and martyr.
1795
Krtsanisi
King Erekle II had placed Kartli-Kakheti under Russian protection by treaty in 1783. When Agha Mohammad Khan's army came, no Russian help did. Tbilisi was burned.
Three hundred men from the Aragvi valley died covering the king's retreat.
1801–1811
Annexed, and silenced
Russia abolished the Georgian kingdom it had promised to protect. In 1811 it abolished the independence of the Georgian Church too, after nearly fourteen centuries, and put Church Slavonic in its liturgy.
1917–1921
The First Republic
The Church restored its own independence in 1917. The Democratic Republic of Georgia was declared on 26 May 1918, with a constitution, universal suffrage and an elected assembly.
Five women sat in its Constituent Assembly.
1921
The Red Army
Soviet Russia invaded in February 1921. Churches were closed or wrecked, and clergy were shot or exiled. Catholicos Ambrose, who wrote to the Genoa Conference asking the world to notice, was put on trial.
9 April 1989
Rustaveli Avenue
Soviet troops broke up a peaceful hunger strike and demonstration outside the government building in Tbilisi with shovels and gas. Twenty-one people were killed, most of them women.
9 April is now the Day of National Unity.
9 April 1991
Independence, again
Two years to the day later, Georgia declared its independence restored. A year before that, the Patriarchate of Constantinople had recognised the Georgian Church's autocephaly. What came next in Abkhazia and Samachablo has its own page.
Read about the occupied territories
Folio IIIThe Alphabet
One language, three hands.
Georgian is written in an alphabet of its own, and it has been written three ways - each grown out of the last over fifteen centuries. Pick one and watch the country’s name change shape.
ႱႠႵႠႰႧႥႤႪႭ
Sakartvelo - “the land of the Kartvelians”
The capitals. Round, monumental letters carved into church walls and used for the oldest inscriptions and manuscripts.
The first seven letters
| Name | Asom. | Nusk. | Mkhe. |
|---|---|---|---|
| an | Ⴀ | ⴀ | ა |
| ban | Ⴁ | ⴁ | ბ |
| gan | Ⴂ | ⴂ | გ |
| don | Ⴃ | ⴃ | დ |
| en | Ⴄ | ⴄ | ე |
| vin | Ⴅ | ⴅ | ვ |
| zen | Ⴆ | ⴆ | ზ |
Three alphabets for the same language, letter for letter - and no capitals and lower case in the modern one. In 2016 UNESCO inscribed the living culture of all three scripts on its list of the intangible heritage of humanity.
Folio IVThe Vine Cross
A cross made of grapevine, tied with a woman’s hair.
The story goes that Nino set out for Georgia carrying two lengths of vine, and bound them into a cross with her own hair. Its arms still droop the way a vine does, and the Georgian Church has kept that shape ever since - on domes, on gravestones, carved over church doors.
The cross is kept in Sioni Cathedral in Tbilisi. That the first symbol of the faith here was cut from a vine surprises nobody who has seen a Georgian table: wine is in the liturgy, in the toasts, and in the ground under every monastery in Kakheti.
The eight thousand years of wine before itFolio VPlates
The stones that kept the faith.
Ten places where the chronicle can still be walked into. Most are working churches and monasteries, not museums.
Gergeti Trinity
გერგეთის სამებაStepantsminda, Kazbegi · 14th c.
A church at 2,170 metres under the glaciers of Kazbek. In times of invasion, the treasures of Mtskheta - St Nino's cross among them - were carried up here for safekeeping.
Svetitskhoveli
სვეტიცხოვლიMtskheta · 1010s–1020s
The cathedral of the Living Pillar, raised where tradition says Christ's robe is buried. Georgian kings were crowned and buried here.
Jvari
ჯვარიAbove Mtskheta · c. 600
Built on the hilltop where Nino is said to have raised her cross, over the meeting of two rivers. Its plan was copied across the Caucasus.
Sioni Cathedral
სიონიOld Tbilisi · rebuilt many times since the 6th c.
Burned and raised again by almost every army that took the city. It keeps the grapevine cross of St Nino.
Ananuri
ანანურიAragvi valley · 17th c.
Two churches inside the walls of a fortress on the Military Highway, the stone of the larger one carved with vines and a great cross.
Upper Svaneti
სვანეთიMestia and Ushguli · 9th–13th c.
The mountains that were never conquered became the country's strongroom. Icons and manuscripts from the lowlands were hidden here, and families still keep church treasures in their towers.
Gelati
გელათიKutaisi · founded 1106
David the Builder's monastery and academy, with some of the finest mosaics and frescoes in the country.
Vardzia
ვარძიაJavakheti · late 12th c.
A monastery of hundreds of rooms cut into a cliff face under Tamar, with a fresco of the queen herself still on the church wall.
David Gareja
დავითგარეჯაKakheti semi-desert · 6th c.
Cave monasteries in bare hills on the border, founded by one of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers.
Bodbe
ბოდბეNear Sighnaghi · 9th c., on an older site
The convent over the grave of St Nino, looking out across the Alazani valley.
Folio VIOther Faiths
A synagogue, a mosque and two cathedrals, a few streets apart.
Georgia is an Orthodox country, but it has never been only that. Jews have lived here for something like twenty-six centuries, by their own tradition since the Babylonian exile, and in all that time the community has almost no history of persecution by Georgians - a record few countries in Europe can claim.
Muslims are Georgia’s second faith: Georgians in Adjara, Azerbaijanis in Kvemo Kartli, Kists in the Pankisi valley. Armenian churches have stood in Tbilisi for as long as the city has been a city. In the old town, under Narikala fortress, the Great Synagogue, the Juma mosque - where Sunni and Shia pray in the same hall - and the Armenian and Georgian cathedrals are all within a ten-minute walk.
By faith, 2014 census
- Georgian Orthodox
- 83.4%
- Muslim
- 10.7%
- Armenian Apostolic
- 2.9%
- Catholic
- 0.5%
Share of the population. The Jewish community is small today - most emigrated to Israel from the 1970s on, and many still keep the Georgian table there.
Folio VIIFor the Traveller
Before you step inside.
- i.
Women cover their hair and wear a skirt. Most churches keep scarves and wraps by the door for anyone who arrives without.
- ii.
Shoulders and knees covered for everyone. Men take their hats off.
- iii.
Quiet inside, and no crossing in front of people praying at an icon.
- iv.
Ask before photographing - some churches forbid it, and never during a service.
- v.
Light a candle if you like. Services are long and people come and go; standing, not sitting, is normal.
Kalendari · feast days
- 7 JanuaryShoba - ChristmasAlilo processions through the streets
- 19 JanuaryNatlisghebeba - Epiphany
- Spring, movableAghdgoma - EasterOrthodox date, red eggs and a midnight liturgy
- 28 AugustMariamoba - Dormition
- 14 OctoberSvetitskhovlobaThe day of Mtskheta's cathedral
- 23 NovemberGiorgoba - St George
The Georgian Church keeps the old Julian calendar, which is why Christmas falls in January. Monasteries and churches get very busy on these days - and very beautiful.
Colophon
Here ends the folio. The country goes on.
Scribes in Georgian monasteries used to finish a book by asking the reader to remember them. Everything else on this site - the mountains, the coast, the wine - is the same country this chronicle is about. Go and see it, and remember the people who kept it.
Back to Georgia OverviewDrawn from Kartlis Tskhovreba (the Georgian Chronicles), the UNESCO World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage listings, the National Statistics Office of Georgia’s 2014 census, and the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate’s calendar. Dates before the fifth century are traditional or approximate.