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FORMATION
OF THE GEORGIAN NATION (excerpt from the
book ”The Making of the Georgian Nation”/Indianopolis/1994) and Ronald Grigor Suny / 1994 |
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A favorite story of modern Georgians
relates how God came upon the Georgians only after he had parceled out all
the countries of the world to other nationalities. The Georgians were in a
typically festive mood and invited the Creator to Join them in wine and song.
The Lord so enjoyed himself that He decided to give these merry and carefree
people the one spot on the earth that He had reserved for Himself—the valleys
and hills that lie to the south of the great Caucasus Mountains.
The entire area of Transcaucasia and
eastern
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for better resolution
Other tribes mentioned in the Assyrian
inscriptions may also have been proto-Georgian tribes, notably the Kashkai
and the Tibal (the biblical Thubal), who lived in eastern Tempting as this theoretical model of
Georgian social evolution may be, it must be remembered that there is little
available evidence to illuminate thesocial structure of the tribal societies
of this ancient period. It is known that the proto-Georgian tribes (then
centered in the Chorokhi basin north of Erzerum) and the proto-Armenian
tribes (probably located to the south in th region bordering the Murad-su)
were not under a central, unified political authority once the Cimmerians had
swept throughout the area. 20 The second half of the seventh century B.C.
marked the rise of significant political formations that can be identified
with proto-Georgian tribes. Some of these tribes, living in the upper reaches
of the Chorokhi River, were united under the name sasperi.21 Based in
the former territory of the Diauehi, the Sasperi had much of southern
Transcaucasia under their sway bythe early sixth century and participated in
the destruction of the Urartian empire, only to disintegrate under the
expansionist thrusts of the Medes in the east. The Sasperi merged with the Urartians in
their lands, and, Melikishvili conjectures, borrowed Urartian words that
found their way into the Georgian language.22 At approximately the same time, a
new “kingdom” of Colchis was formed in western Early in the sixth century, the Urartian
empire fell to the Medes, Scythians, and Sasperi, and the Median empire
replaced it as the principal political power in
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for better resolution
In his descriptions of the military dress
of the “Asian" peoples, Herodotus mentions that the various
proto-Georgian tribes were similar in uniform and weaponry: The
Moschi wore wooden helmets on their heads, and carried shields and small
spears with long points. The Tibareni and Macrones and Mossynoeci in the army
were equipped like the Moschi ... The Mares wore on their heads the plaited
helmets of their country, carrying small shields of hide and javelins. The
Colchians had wooden helmets and small shields of raw oxhide and short
spears, and swords withal.29 The Persian hold over these Georgian tribes
was fairly firm until the second half of the fifth century B.C. Georgians
marched in the Persian campaigns against the Greeks, and Persian terms in Georgian
political vocabulary are eloquent testimony to the depth of Iranian influence
in government. Not included in the empire as a satrapy, the
By the time Xenophon marched through Asia
Minor to the Without many prisoners but with great
numbers of oxen, asses, and sheep, Xenophon moved on through 150 miles of the
country of the Chalybes. These
were the most valiant of all the peoples they passed through, and would come
to hand-to-hand encounter. They had corselets of linen, reach¬ing down to the
groin, with a thick fringe of plaited cords instead of flaps. They had
greaves also and helmets, and at the girdle a knife about as long as a
Laconian dagger, with which they might be able to vanquish; then they would
cut off their [enemies'] heads and carry them along their march, and they
would sing and dance whenever they were likely to be seen by the enemy. They
carried also a spear about five cubits long, with a point at only one end.
These people would stay within their towns, and when the Greeks had pushed
by, they would follow them, always ready to fight. Their dwellings were in
strongholds, and therein they had stored away all their provisions; hence the
Greeks could get nothing in this country, but they subsisted on the cattle
they had taken horn the Taochians.34 After ravaging the country of the
Colchians, Xenophon moved on to the west and entered the land of the
Mossynoeci, where the Greeks allied themselves with one tribal alliance
against another. Xenophon's report about the peculiar activities of the upper
class deserves to be mentioned: And
when the Greeks, as they proceeded, were among the friendly Mossynoecians,
they would exhibit to them fattened children of the wealthy inhabitants, whom
they had nourished on boiled nuts and were soft and white to an extraordinary
degree, and pretty nearly equal in length and breadth, with their backs
adorned with many colours and their fore parts all tattooed with flower
patterns. These Mossynoecians wanted also to have intercourse openly with the
women who accompanied the Greeks, for that was their own fashion. And all of
them were white, the men and the women alike. They were set down by the
Greeks who served through the expedition, as the most uncivilized people
whose country they traversed, the furthest removed from Greek customs. For
they habitually did in public the things that other people would do only in
private, and when they were alone they would behave just as if they were in
the company of others, talking to themselves, laughing at themselves, and
dancing in whatever spot they chanced to be, as though they were giving an
exhibition to others.35 From Xenophon's Anabasis it is possible to
piece together a picture of the western Georgian tribes at the end of the
fifth century B.C. Free from IVrsian authority (except for the Mossynoeci), they lived in hostile relations with the Greek merchant
ports. The various tribal alliances fought with one another, and therefore
their lands were covered with fortified settlements. There were no major
towns in the area and, in the words of Melikishvili,
people “lived in conditions characteristic of the political fragmentation of
a primitive communal society, in which separate tribal formations warred
constantly with one another."36
Click on the map
for better resolution In the first half of the fourth century
B.C., the Persians may have to reassert their suzerainty over the western Georgian
tribes, for it is known that the Greek cities of Sinope and Amis came under
their authority. But the Achaemenid hold over the western satraps was
tenuous, and during the reign of Artaxerxes II (405—359 B.C.) several
provincial subordinates, including Orontes of Armenia and Datam of
Cappadocia, revolted against Persian authority.37 With the campaigns of
Alexander the Great and his decisive victory over the Persians at Arbela
(Gaugamela) in 331 B.C., Persian power collapsed in Asia Minor. The Greek expansion
not only drove back the ftrsians but introduced a new cultural and political
hegemony over eastern Anatolia. The dominance of Persian and Mesopotamian
political culture was both inhibited and complemented by the Greek in a new
Hellenistic syn¬thesis, though the influence of Iranian culture remained
strong in Georgia and Armenia. Through the two centuries of Achaemenid
dominion over eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasia (546—331 B.C.), several
proto-Georgian tribes had migrated north from Anatolia into the Pontic
regions along the Black Sea coast, where Xenophon found them, and to the east
into the Kura valley. The Tibal and Mushki had moved into eastern Georgia,
where they merged with local tribes to form the Georgian people. To the
Greeks they were known as Iberoi (Iberians), a name that Melikishvili
believes came from the land from which they had migrated, Speri. D. M. Lang
mentions the hypothesis that the toot Tibar in Hbareni (Hbal) gave rise to
the form Iber from which the Greeks
derived their name for the eastern Georgians. From the Mushki (Meskhi,
Moskhi) came the name of the chief city of ancient Iberia, Mtskheta. Even
more important, the Mushki brought with them from the west the pantheon of
Hittite gods, headed by Armazi, the moon god, and Zaden, the god of
fruitfulness.38 With the elimination of Achaemenid
authority the eastern Georgian tribes might have fallen under Macedonian
rule, but early in the third century B.C. the ruling dynast of Armazi-Mtskheta
in eastern Georgia established his primacy over the other Iberian princes.
The Georgian chronicles, Kartlis
Tskhovreba, provide the tradition of the first king of Kartli-lberia,
Parnavazi (Farnavazi, Pharnabazus), who, they claim, was a descendant of Kartlosi,
the eponymous ancestor of the Georgians. The chronicles state that Parnavazi
united Georgians of the east with those of Colchis-Fgrisi to drive the
"Greeks" from Mtskheta. The overthrow of Azon, founder of the
Mtskheta state, and the expulsion of the Macedonians left Parnavazi the most
powerful ruler in Transcaucasia, and he soon brought western Georgia under
his rule. The hegemony of Kartli-Iberia over Colchis-Egrisi meant that the
Georgian tribes consolidated around eastern Georgia. Although an older state
than Kartli, Egrisi's independence did not prove as durable, and it was
successively ruled by Achaemenid Persia, Hellenistic Pontus, Rome, and
Byzantium. Parnavazi's new state, on the other hand, soon demonstrated an
enviable independence and energy. Kartli not only expanded into western
Georgia (with the exception of its northern mountainous regions), but held
Zemo Kartli (Mtskheta), Kvemo Kartli, Shida Kartli, and Kakheti.40 Parnavazi
maintained friendly relations with the heirs of Alexander the Great, and his
successors continued this policy and paid tribute to the rulers of the
Seleucid empire. Toumanoff suggests that once Seleucid overlordship had been
established in Armenia it may have been necessary for the Seleucids to set up
a vassal state in Kartli-Iberia to provide pressure on Armenia from the
north. In his view, Parnavazi, whose reign he estimates at 299 to 234 B.C.,
probably operated as such a Seleucid vassal.41
Click on the map
for better resolution Parnavazi is credited by the Georgian
chronicles with introducing a military-administrative organization into his
kingdom that both Soviet scholars and W. E. D. Allen see as the beginnings of
a feudal system.42 The king appointed a military governor (eristavi) to each of the seven major
provinces (Argveti, Kakheti, Gardabani, Tashir-Abotsi,
Javakheti-Kolas-Artani, Samtskhe-Ajara, and Kvarjeti) while keeping the central
district of Shida Kartli under the administration of his highest official,
the spaspeti. Western Georgia was
not made into a saeristavo
(province) but was a vassal state ruled by Kuji, the man who had aided
Parnavazi against the so-called Greeks. The political patterns adopted by the
Iberian state were those of its powerful neighbor, Persia, and the term used
for a local administrator, pitiaskhshi,
was borrowed directly from Persian.43 Toumanoff sees the new administration
as an attempt to impose royal power over the still quite independent tribal
leaders. "To ensure its control of the dynastic aristocracy of the sep'ecul-s or mt'avar-s ('royal children,' 'princes'), the youthful Crown
instituted the feudal order of the erist'av-s
('dukes') . . . This was not so much a supersedure of the princes, who
remained too powerful for that, as the conversion of the more important among
them into officers of the State entrusted with the control of others. In this
way, the Crown, which was to claim the fulness of sovereignty for itself
alone, was able gradually to deprive of it the lesser princes, sharing it,
under the guise of delegation, with only a few among them."44 Georgia's economy was based on free peasant
agriculturalists, though there was apparently some slaveholding. At the top
of society stood the royal family, the military nobility, and the pagan
priesthood. But the formation of the cast Georgian state not only laid the
foundation of Georgian social hierarchy but also in its initial stages
encouraged the consolidation of separate tribes into a larger ethnic
conglomerate. Barriers between tribes writ- eliminated as a consequence of
the political organization established by the Kartveli. "Standing at the
head of a powerful state formation, the Kartveli bewail to assimilate the
other tribes who entered into the makeup of the state of Kartli."45 With the conquest of Persia by Alexander
the Great, a "new epoch of lively commercial and industrial
activity" began in Asia Minor. Whereas in the exclusively agricultural
economy of Achaemenid times the peoples of Transcaucasia had not been
familiar with monetary transactions, at least not until the end of the age,
in the Seleucid period money was widely introduced into commercial dealings.
Alexandrine drachmas and tetradrachmas were used in western Georgia and
Armenia, though not in eastern Georgia, and gold staters of Alexander were
used in all three regions. The economic advance of the Hellenistic period was
especially keenly felt by the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast. The world
trade route from India ran through Media and the Ararat plain to Colchis.46
This western Georgian state was federated to Kartli-Iberia, and its kings
ruled through skeptukhi (royal
governors) who received a staff from the king. But Iberian power over western
Georgia had waned by the late second century B.C., and Colchis-Egrisi proved
an easy target for the vigorous ruler of Pontus, Mithradates VI Eupator
(111—63 B.C.). Western Georgia thus passed out of the Persian and Iberian
spheres of influence into the Greco-Roman culture of the classical cities of
the Black Sea littoral. A new political force entered Asia Minor
late in the second century B.C. and changed the balance of forces in eastern
Anatolia. In 190 B.C. Roman legions defeated Antiochus III (222-186 B.C.),
the Seleucid king of Persia, at the Battle of Magnesia. The weakened Persians
were unable to offer opposition when the Armenian kings, Artashes (Artaxias;
189-161 B.C.) of Greater Armenia and Zareh (Zariadres) of Sophene, declared
their autonomy from the Seleucid empire. Artashes, founder of an Armenian
empire, pushed his border out in a vain attempt to take Sophene. He did
succeed in incorporating the southern Georgian regions of Gogarene, Chorzene,
and Paryadres. His empire reached the Kura in the north and the Caspian Sea
in the east. The Iberian king, Parnajom, fought the Armenians but was killed
in battle. His throne was taken by Arshak, son of Artashes, and the Armenian
hegemony over eastern Georgia and the trade routes to Colchis lasted well
into the first century B.C.47
Click on the map
for better resolution In commercial and cultural contact with
Colchis and Pontus, Greater Armenia benefited from the Hellenistic currents
from the west. Armenia achieved her greatest expanse in the mid-first century
B.C. under the warrior-king Tigran II, "the Great" (95-55 B.C.). In
alliance with his father-in-law, Mithradates Eupator of Pontus, Tigran fought
the Romans and Persians and conquered Sophene. Disaster befell Armenia when
Rome sent Pompey to bring Transcaucasia into submission. In 66 B.C. Tigran
was forced to make peace, and Pompey turned north to deal with the Georgians,
who had allied themselves with the Armenians. Pompey marched first into
Colchis, where he was attacked in the rear by Iberians and Caucasian
Albanians. In the spring of 65 B.C., he entered Iberia to fight King Artog
(Arloces). Plutarch reports that Pompey subdued the Iberians "in a great
battle, in which nine thousand of them were slain and more than ten thousand
taken prisoner."48 As a result of Pompey's expedition, Kartli-lberia,
Armenia, and Caucasian Albania became dependent states of Koine, and
Colchis-Egrisi) was integrated directly into the empire as part of the
province of Pontus.49 As Toumanoff puts it, "In the years 66-64 B.C.,
the whole of Caucasia entered the orbit of the nascent pax romana."50
Click on the map
for better resolution Roman power was never very firm in eastern
Georgia, and by the second half of the first century B.C. the growing strength
of the Parthian successors to the Persian Seleucids was being felt throughout
Transcaucasia. For three centuries Romans and Parthians fought over the
Armenian and Georgian lands that stood between their rival empires, and the
Transcaucasian peoples alternatively sided with one or the other power to
maintain their autonomy or to benefit from association with a powerful
neighbor. A pattern of Anatolian and Caucasian political maneuvering
developed by which the lesser local rulers shifted allegiances, not on the
basis of ethnicity or religion, but in desperate attempts to maintain local
power in the face of constant threats from larger states. Security could be
achieved only temporarily and only in alliance with one of the dominant
powers. Rather than an undiluted and consistent struggle for national
independence or religious integrity, as is often proposed by modern
historians, the struggles of the Armenian, Georgian, and Albanian kings and
princes should be seen as a series of constantly changing political
orientations. In a treacherous and precarious situation, their lodestar was
survival. Often this meant that princes gravitated toward one great power
while their monarchs moved toward another.
Roman legionnaire
(left) and Parthian warrior (right) Gradually, in the second half of the first
century B.C., Kartli-Iberia and Albania detached themselves from Roman
dominion. When Marc Antony campaigned against Parthia in 36 B.C., neither
Iberians nor Albanians joined him. Indeed, in the years 37 and 36 B.C.,
revolts against Roman authority broke out, first in Albania, then in
Kartli-Iberia. The Roman legions under Publius Canidius Crassus entered
Georgia to put down the revolt, but Crassus's campaign proved to be the last
Roman effort to subdue Georgia. By the last decade of the first century B.C.,
Kartli-Iberia and Albania were completely free from Rome. The Emperor
Augustus recognized Iberia as an ally and lifted Roman taxes from the region.
In contrast, Armenia remained a bone of contention between Parthia and Rome
into the first century A.D., and as a result Kartli-Iberia emerged as a more
powerful state and partook of the spoils to be had in divided and conquered
Armenia. In A.D. 35 Parsman I (Farsman, Pharasmanes) of Iberia, an ally of
the Romans, defeated the Parthian king of Armenia and placed his brother
Mithradates (A.D. 35-51) on the throne. In A.D. 51 Parsman's son, Rhadamistes,
defeated his uncle Mithridates at Garni and briefly became king of Armenia,
only to be executed by his father. Armenia was taken by the Parthians, who
gave the crown to Trdat, the founder of the Parthian Arsacid dynasty in
Armenia. Iberia and Rome fought Parthia and Armenia until the Peace of
Rhandeia (A.D. 63), when Roman suzerainty over Armenia was recognized by the
Parthians in exchange for Roman acceptance of the Arsacid king, Trdat
(Tiridates). The terms of the peace destroyed Iberia’s chances for
aggrandizement at the expense of Armenia, at least in alliance with Rome, and
probably influenced Mihrdat (Mithradates) of Iberia, Parsman's son, to ally
himself with the fierce Alans, nomads from the north, with whom he campaigned
several times into Armenia.51
With the vital issues of security and
legitimacy in the balance, the struggle for control of the Iberian and
Armenian territories led to almost constant warfare in the first three
centuries A.D. between Rome and Parthia, Armenia and Kartli. Toumanoff
illuminates the causes of the Roman-Iranian rivalry over Caucasia: Juridically,
there was the fact that Caucasia had been part of the Achaemenid empire and
that, on the other hand, it had subsequently accepted the suzerainty of Rome.
Practically, there was the fact that it was necessary to both. Caucasia
formed a great natural fortress between the two empires from which each of
the rivals could control the delicate frontier-line that lay between them in
the south. From it each could strike at the other's sensitive points,
Ctesiphon, the "Roman Lake," later, Constantinople.52 While Colchis was administered as a Roman
province, eastern Georgia generally accepted imperial protection. A stone
inscription discovered at Mtskheta speaks of the first-century ruler, Mihrdat
I (A.D. 58—106), as "the friend of the Caesars" and the king
"of the Roman-loving Iberians."53 Moreover, Emperor Vespasian
fortified Armazi for the Iberian king in the year 75. Rome seemed content for
the most part to recognize Kartli-Iberia and Armenia as client states.54 Once the Arsacids had firmly established
their hold on the Armenian throne in the second century A.D., they extended
their rule to Kartli-Iberia. Rev I (martali,
"the Just"; 189-216), overthrew his wife's brother, Amazaspus II,
last of the Pharnabazids. But even as Arsacids triumphed in l lie Caucasian
kingdoms, that dynasty fell from power in its original homeland, Persia, when
the dynamic Ardashir overthrew the Parthian dynasty and founded the
four-hundred-year empire of the Sassanids (224—651). Led by their
warrior-kings, the Sassanids forced Armenia to succumb to their authority,
drove back the Romans, captured Emperor Valerian, and invaded pro-Roman
Kartli-Iberia and Albania.55 Shapur I (242—272) placed a vassal, Amasaspus
III (260-265), on the throne of Kartli-Iberia, possibly a rival or antiking
of Mihrdat II. The Romans regained Caucasia briefly under Emperor
Aurelian (270-275) and again when Carus defeated Iran in 283. The Arsacid
line in Kartli-Iberia ended the next year, and the Iranians took advantage of
internal strife In the Roman empire to establish their candidate, Mirian III
(Meribanes, 284-361), son of the Great King of Iran, on the throne of eastern
Georgia.56 In l^H, after a great Roman victory, Iran and Rome signed the
Peace of Nisibis, and Mirian was recognized as king, though suzerain rights
over Hiiiih-lhcria and Armenia passed to the Romans. Albania came under
Iranian control. With King Mirian the classical period of Georgian history
came to an end, for this monarch was the first of his line to adopt
Christianity. The Greek geographer, Strabo, writing in
the first century A.D., permits us to penetrate the military-political veneer
of ancient Caucasian history to examine the structure of Colchian and Iberian
society. Of the lands around Phasis in Colchis, Strabo writes: The
country is excellent both in respect to its produce—except its honey, which
is generally bitter—and in respect to everything that pertains to
ship-building; for it not only produces quantities of timber but also brings
it down on rivers. And the people make linen in quantities, and hemp, wax,
and pitch. Their linen industry has been famed far and wide; for they used to
export linen to outside places.57 It is clear that by Strabo's time the
period of greatness and prosperity associated with Mithradates Eupator had
passed. Some of the tribes near the Hellenistic ports were living in squalor
and filth—one received the name phtheirophagi
("lice-eaters")—but others reportedly used fleecy skins to pan .for
gold in the mountain streams (perhaps, as Strabo suggests, the origin of the
myth of the golden fleece).58 Turning to Iberia, Strabo is full of praise
for the country ("fruitful," "exceedingly good pasture"),
its towns ("their roofs are tiled, and their houses as well as their
market-places and other public buildings are constructed with architectural
skill"), and the people. "The plain of the Iberians is inhabited by
people who are rather inclined to farming and to
peace, and they dress after both the Armenian and the Median fashion; but the
major, or warlike, portion occupy the mountainous territory, living like the
Scythians and the Sarmatians, of whom they are both neighbors and kinsmen;
however, they engage also in farming." Most revealing of all in Strabo's
account of eastern Georgian society is his brief description of its four
strata: There
are . . . four castes among the inhabitants of Iberia. One, and the first of
all, is that from which they appoint their kings, the appointee being both
the nearest of kin to his predecessor and the eldest, whereas the second in
line administers justice and commands the army. The second caste is that of
the priests, who among other things attend to all matters of controversy with
the neighboring peoples. The third is that of the soldiers and the farmers.
And the fourth is that of the common people, who arc slaves of the king and
perform all the services that pertain to human livelihood. Their possessions
are held in common by them according to families, although the eldest is
ruler and steward of each estate.59 Using Strabo and later Georgian and
Armenian sources, scholars have developed a picture of Georgian society in
classical time*. Al the top, according to Toumanoff, stood "the dynastic
aristocracy of Iberia," which included the royal family (sepe) as well as the supreme judge of
the land and the commander in chief of the army. Immediately below the
aristocracy was the pagan priesthood, which played a diplomatic and probably
a judicial role but disappeared with the conversion of Kartli-Iberia to
Christianity in the early fourth century. The third class was made up of free
agriculturalists and soldiers, the class that in time became the Georgian
nobility or aznaureba.60 Akin to the Armenian azat class, these small landholders and warriors survived, along
with the dynastic aristocracy, well into the twelfth century. The freemen,
who lived in territorial communes and held their land as individuals,
provided military service and were later known in Georgian as eri. For a long
time this term meant both "people" and "armed force."61 The lowest stratum of society was, in
Strabo's terms, laoi, semidependent
agriculturalists who lived in tribal communes and held their land in common.
Both Toumanoff and Melikishvili contend that these people were not slaves in
the full juridical sense of that word. They were not the chattel or property
of their overlords but were obliged to pay dues in cash and kind and to
provide the muscle required by the primitive agrarian economy. They were the glekhni, the peasants. Toumanoff
asserts that "the rural peasantry, obviously the largest group in
Iberian society, had, exactly as in Armenia, come by this time to depend on
great landed proprietors, as tenants or coloni,
and had started on the way towards serfdom." Strabo does not mention
artisans, merchants, or real slaves, and it may be that these groups,
particularly the latter two, were largely comprised of foreigners.62 Although there was some trade between
Kartli-Iberia and neighboring countries, the major transit route of Roman
times "ran from Southern Russia it long the eastern shore of the Black
Sea through Colchis and Artaxata-Artasat to Media and thence to the
East."63 The Soviet economic historian, Manandian, does not consider
Kartli-Iberia to have been very significant in the transit trade of the first
centuries A.D., but Melikishvili takes issue with (his view, contending that
Manandian underestimates the importance of kartli in classical trade. Since
this was a period of difficulty for Armenia, which was caught between Rome
and Parthia, Kartli-Iberia found itself freer to
take advantage of transit commerce and developed an interest in trade that
probably motivated efforts to control the routes to the south, across
Armenia. In Kartli the major trading artery was the Kura, and it is
noteworthy that the military-administrative center of eastern Georgia, Mtskheta,
was situated at t he confluence of the Kura and the Aragvi. Other
towns—Kaspi, Uplistsikhe, Irbnisi, Odzrakhe, and Nekresi—were also foci for
artisans and merchants (vachari),
as well as governmental officials and the military.64 The first centuries A.D. were the period in
which the distinctive features of Caucasian society were molded. Caught
between the Roman and Persian worlds, Armenia and Kartli-Iberia were clearly
influenced culturally by both, hut in the formation of their societies
Persian norms played the dominant role.65 Nicholas Adontz points out the
differences from the development of the West, where the state rose from urban
settlements to city-states to empires (which in many ways were city-states
writ large). In the East, "family relations remained the basic
generative principle of political life."66 Originally a tribal
confederation, the Persian empire had evolved by Parthian times into a class
society, though one that remained characterized by tribal underpinnings. The
Arsacids were kings of kings, rulers of other semiautonomous rulers who paid
tribute and gave military service to their overlords.
Click on the map
for the full image While Adontz refers to the Arsacid period
in Armenia as "feudal," Toumanoff makes an important distinction
between "feudalism" and what he calls "dynasticism."
Disagreeing with Adontz that the Caucasian social structure was essentially
the same as that of Western feudalism, Toumanoff argues that in the Armenian nakharar system the princes held their
lands absolutely and had much greater local power than did West European
nobles, whose tenure was conditional and based on service. Caucasian society
was at first dynastic and only later did it approach feudal forms.
Toumanoff's dynasticism is marked by princely independence, allodial land
tenure, and the primacy of the tribe rather than the state. In Armenia under
the Artaxiad dynasty, feudal forms were introduced into a basically dynastic
sociopolitical structure. Local princes, whose landholdings existed before
their loyalty to the king, became bound to the monarch by ties of political
subordination. "As in Artaxiad Armenia, no doubt
under the same imperial influences and probably simultaneously with it,
Iberia now evolved that symbiosis of the feudalistic and the dynastic regime
which characterizes Caucasian so-ciety. The king of Iberia stood at the
summit of the two orders, dynasticist and feudal, both as the superdynast and
as the theoretical sole source of sovereignty." Toumanoff goes on to
explain that "the feudal aspect of the princely class stemmed, in
Armenia as in Iberia, from the attempt of the High Kings to involve the
dynasts in the service mechanism of the monarchy."67 A mixture of
dynasticism and feudalism emerged in eastern Georgia. Whereas in Armenia the
dynastic aspects proved indestructible and prevented the kings from ever
fully subordinating the nakharars
(princes), in Kartli-Iberia monarchical power was exercised more completely
and feudal ties were more secure. The Iberian kings were more fortunate than
those in Armenia in welding their nobility into a system of service to the
monarch, and Iberian monarchs were able at times to unite with their petty
nobles against the power of the great princes, something the Armenian kings
were unable to do.
Map by R.G. Suny The king (mepe) of Kartli-Iberia appointed the spaspeti (erismtavari),
or high constable, to whom all provincial and local officials were
subordinated. This office, in contrast to its Armenian counterpart, was not
hereditary in one family, though it was usually occupied by a member of the
first class, the dynastic aristocracy. The king also recruited some nobles to
serve as his royal officer* at court (ezoismodzqvari)
or in the province* to keep the other nobles in line. In each province an eristavi or pitiaskhshi governed (the two terms were interchangeable).68 Most
of them came from the highest class. Below the provincial governors were the spasalarni (generals) and the khliarkhni (atasistavni), who collected taxes and gathered troops. A few eristavni came from the aznaureba or nobility, a class that
evolved in time from the third class, the free agriculturalists. As warfare
increasingly became a matter for mounted warriors (tskhentartsani) rather than common foot soldiers (mkvirtskhlebi), military estates were
required to support these cavalrymen. The aznaumi thus became distinguished
from the tsvrilieri or "petty
people." Already by the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., the aznaumi of Kartli-Iberia were becoming
a separate social group and were clearly superior to the tadzdreulni, the free agriculturists who held allotments on royal
lands and served in the king's army.69 In its most permanent sociopolitical forms,
Georgia was a reflection of Iranian organization rather than Roman. The king
of Kartli-Iberia was a hereditary monarch, like the Iranian Great King, not
an elected or appointed ruler as in the Roman tradition. Kartli early
developed a privileged and hereditary nobility based
on the land, just as her neighbor to the east, Iran, had done. In
Rome-Byzantium the "ruling class" was an imperial officialdom,
nonhereditary and largely the creature of the emperor. As Toumanoff sums up:
"Socially the Caucasian polities were similar to the Iranian and utterly
unlike the Romano-Byzantine. Armenia and Iberia were even more aristocratic
in character than Iran, being, in fact, federations of dynastic princes—each
the overlord of a body of lesser nobility—presided over by kings."70 Yet
at the end of the classical period the conversion of Georgia and Armenia to
Christianity committed these states to an orientation toward the Romans.
Socially akin to the East, Christian Caucasia filtered the medieval period
with a new cultural and religious allegiance to the West.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Notes 1. Cyril Toumanoff, "The Bagratids of Iberia from the VIII to the XI century," Le Museon 74 (1961): 234-38, and Studies in Christian Caucasian History (hereafter, Studies) (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1963), pp. 437-40.
Today standard Georgian serves as a lingua
franca for the mountaineers, who in each major valley have their own dialect.
In eastern
23. Burney and Lang, Peoples of the Hills, pp. 193-94.
46. Ia. A. Manandian, O torgovle i gorodakh Armenii v sviazi s mirovoi torgovlei drevnikh
vremen (Erevan, 1945). References are to the English translation by Nina
Garsoian: H. A. Manandian, The Trade
and Cities of Armenia in Relation to Ancient World Trade (Lisbon, 1965),
pp. 29, 38-39. 47. Ibid., pp. 50—52; on Artaxias's
origins in Media, and Iranian influences on Armenia, see Anahit Perikhanian,
"Une inscription arameenne du roi Artases trouvee a Zangezour
(Siwnik)," Revue des etudes
armeniennes, n.s., 3 (1966): 17—29, and "Les Inscriptions arameennes
du roi Artaches (A propos d'une recente trouvaille epigraphique en
Armenie)," ibid., n.s., 8 (1971): 169-74. 48. Bernadotte Perrin, trans., Plutarch's Lives, vol. 5, Loeb
Classical Library (New York, 1917), p. 207. 49. Some Western scholars, like D. Magie,
argue that the Romans aimed at con¬trolling the northern Transcaucasian
transit trade route (Kura-Phasis), but Manan¬dian and other Soviet scholars
believe that the northern route was much less important than the southern,
which ran through Artaxata in Armenia (Manandian, Trade and Cities, pp.
48-49). 50. Toumanoff, Studies, p. 83. 51. Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii, pp. 337, 344—45; and Berdzenishvili et
al., Istoriia Gruzii, p. 61. 52. Cyril Toumanoffj "Caucasia and
Byzantium," Traditio 27
(1971): 114. Con¬trol over the Caucasus meant control over the northern
passes through which raiders from the steppe could move down into Iran or the
eastern Roman holdings. 53. Allen, History of the Georgian People, p. 75. 54. The ambivalence of Roman-Iberian
relations is well illustrated in what we know of the reign of the most celebrated
of the east Georgian monarchs of the second century A.D., Parsman II (called
kveli, the "good" or "valiant"), who ruled from 116 to
132. Parsman was a friend of the Emperor Hadrian, who honored him with the
gift of an elephant. The Georgian monarch sent gold-embroidered cloaks in
return. In 129, however, Parsman refused to pay homage to Hadrian on the
occasion of the emperor's visit to the East. Tensions with Rome prompted
Kartli-Iberia to ally with the Alans and campaign against the great empires
to the south (Toumanoffj "Chronology of the Kings of Iberia," p.
16; Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei
Gruzii, pp. 353- 62). Half a century later, Parsman III (135-185) was the
guest of Emperor Antonius Pius and was honored by being permitted to make
offerings in the Capitol. His equestrian statue was erected in the Temple of
Bellona, and the territory of Iberia was increased (Toumanoff,
"Chronology of the Kings of Iberia," p. 17). 55. Ibid., p. 18. On the Sassanids, see A.
Christensen, Iran sous les Sassanides
(Copenhagen, 1944). 56. Toumanoffj "Chronology of the
Kings of Iberia," pp. 21-22. 57. Jones, Geography of Strabo, p. 211. 58. Ibid., p. 215. 59. Ibid., pp. 217-21. 60. Toumanoff, "Introduction to
Christian Caucasian History: The Formative Centuries," pp. 43, 45, and Studies, pp. 91, 93-94. 61. Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii, p. 315; and Berdzenishvili et al.,
Istoriia Gruzii, p. 68. The coincidence of identical terms far
"people" and "armed force" was widespread in the early
societies; c£ the Indo-European languages: the German Volk and the Slavic polk. 62. Toumanoff, Studies, pp. 94—95; and
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
pp. 312-13. 63. Manandian, Trade and Cities, p. 73. 64. Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii, 439-40, 443-44. Vajari is an Iranian loanword from the Persian vazar (bazaar). 65. For a penetrating study of the Iranian
influence in ancient Armenia, see Nina Garsoian, "Prolegomena to a Study
of the Iranian Aspects in Arsacid Armenia," Handes Amsorya 90 (1976): 177-234. 66. N. Adontz, Armenia in the Period of Justinian: The Political Conditions Based on
the Naxarar System (Louvain-Lisbon, 1970), p. 291. This is a translation
by Nina Garsoian of Adontz's classic Armeniia
v epokhu lustiniana: Politicheskoe sostoianie na osnove nakhararskogo stroia
(St. Petersburg, 1908). 67. Toumanoff, "Introduction to
Christian Caucasian History: The Formative Centuries," pp. 50, 62. 68. Georges Charachidze, Introduction a
I'etude de la fiodalite georgienne (Le Code de Georges le Brillant)
(Paris, 1971), p. 97. 69. Toumanoff, Studies, pp. 96-98; and Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
pp. 67-68, 474-75. 70. Toumanoff, "Christian Caucasia
Between Byzantium and Iran: New Light from Old Sources," Traditio 10 (1954): 123-24. |
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