LIFE OF EGRISI, ABKHAZETI OR IMERETI

     Vakhushti Bagrationi (excerpts from ”The History of the  Georgian Kingdom” 
     Translated by Andrew Andersen

 

 

 

And when Egros, the son of Tharghamos came to the land inherited among other brothers, found that Egros a place for himself in the mountains east of the sea coast. Thus erected he a town there and named it Egri after himself. And from that Egros his sons and the sons of his sons were spreading around and thus filled the whole country of Egros being subordinate to the Sheriff of Mtskheta and sometimes rebelled against him as it was described above.

And after the arrival of Persian Earl Ardamos and the conquest of Georgia and after the Georgians seceded from Persia, then the [folk] living west of Egrisi River asked the Greeks for help, seceded from Georgia, wiped out the Persians and joined the Greeks because they did it with Greek force and thus stayed under to the Greeks. And the [folk] living east of Egrisi River remained under the Sheriff of Mtskheta.

And then when the first King Pharnaozos slaughtered Earl Azonos and took over the whole Georgia, the [folk] living west of Egrisi River did not join him but stayed with the Greeks. And the [folk] living east of Egrisi River remained under Pharnaozus.

This Pharnaozus divided subordinate to him Egrisi into two earldoms and put Kuji an Earl of [that] Egrisi that had been erected by Egros, and named that land Bedia because he found his good fortune there [Bedi = good fortune, luck (georg.)] and gave Kuji  all the [lands] to the west and to the north of Rioni until the sea and Egrisi River including Svaneti. And the second [earl] was put in Shorapani and given the rest f Egrisi that is east and west between Rioni and the sea and Likhi Mountain. And they were all obedient and tributary to the Georgian kings. [220]  

But in the childhood days ov Vakhtangus Gorghasali captured the Greeks [the land of] Egrisi and the sea coast until Tsikhe-Goji. But later that Vakhtangus came from Oseti and with his own hand took back from the Greeks his frontier lands – Jiqeti and Abkhazeti. The same Vakhtangus gave Leon the Emperor of the Greeks the frontier lands of the Greeks across Egrisi, and later gave the Emperor to the wife of Vakhtangus [the lands] across Egrisi as her dowry, and it was ruled by the Khosrovanides (and according to A. Baroni, the Greeks took back the lands across Egrisi in 526 again. And Bichvinta was erected in the time of Pharsman). And later under Stephanos Bagration, Emperor Herecleus took back [the lands] across Egrisi again, and the Greeks put their own erl in Anacopia and called him the Earl of Abkhazia, and so stayed those earls there one after another.

And when [the Arabs with] Mervan-the-Deaf came, the earl in Anacopia was Leon. That Leon accepted the kings Mirus and Archil with royal honor and served them as the kings. And after Mervan left, the Emperor gave to that Leon his earldom forever, and Archil gave [him] the daughter of King Mirus as a wife, and Imperial Crown [also gave to Leon] in exchange for the oath of obedience.

And afte the death of that Leon his nephew whose name was also Leon became an earl there. That Leon was a son of a daughter of the King of the Khazars. And while the Greeks were exhausted in their fight against the Agarians, he enforced his earldom with the help of the Khazars, and thus all of Egrisi was obedient to him for his relation to the king and honored him. And after the death of Johannes and Juansher, seceded this second Leon and with the help of the same Khazars and with the obedience of [the folk] of Egrisi, captured the whole of Egrisi from the Likhi Mountain to the sea coast and to the Khazarian frontier and proclaimed himself the King of the Abkhazians and gave the name of his earldom to Egrisi the year 786 Domini, tha is the Georgian 6th year, and these kings ruled in Abkhazia until the 11th Bagration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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