The Introduction to Kartlis Tskhovreba and its Historical - Territorial Conception

Abstract

The Karthlis Tskhovreba, a corpus of writings of historiographic character, occupies a central place in medieval Georgian historiographic tradition reflecting the history of Georgia from the beginning to the 17th century inclusive. The corpus comprises historical writings of different periods, among which most controversial in modern scholarship is its opening part, in which, traditionally, historical narrative is identified as from the beginning to the 5th century, and from the 5th to the 8th century inclusive. Both these parts are also referred to in the specialist literature as the opening part of the Karthlis Tskhovreba . The first work is entitled The Life of the Kings and Forefathers and Descendants (in brief: The Life of the Kings). According to the view accepted in Georgian scholarly circles, its author is Leonti Mroveli (11th cent.), while the other _ entitled The Life of Vakhtang Gorgasali _ is attributed to Ilarion Juansheri, an author of the same century. Notwithstanding the established view, both the composition of the opening part of the KTs, the dates of its writing and editing, as well as the attribution of the text is still the subject of debate among scholars. Some researchers date it to the 8th century (Manana Sanadze, Giorgi Anchabadze, Edisher Khoshtaria-Brosset), but there are attempts to date individual sections of this source to a still earlier period (Vakhtang Goiladze, Manana Sanadze). I believe that such divergence of opinions is due to the lack of consideration of the genre specificity of the KTs as an integral and continuous historiographic tradition and inadequate research into the ideological and world view aspects of its individual sections.