1.
Khorashan of Kartli
–
Khorashan was a member of the Georgian Bagrationi dynasty, a daughter of King George X of Kartli and a consort of Teimuraz I of Kakheti, whom she married as his second wife in 1612. She spent more than four decades of her life with Teimuraz, Khorashan accompanied him in his flights and comebacks. She was involved in diplomacy and patronized Catholic missionaries, Khorashan was a daughter of George X of Kartli by his wife Mariam Lipartiani. Among her four siblings was Luarsab II, George Xs successor to the throne of Kartli and, eventually and this breach of faith offended the ducal family and brought trouble to Luarsab in the following years. A younger brother of Khorashans former fiancé, Zurab, would marry her daughter Darejan in spite of Khorashans opposition to this union. Teimurazs marriage to Khorashan was encouraged and even insisted upon by Abbas I, the Safavid shah of Iran, Teimuraz was initially reluctant as Khorashan was his relative through their common great-grandfather Levan of Kakheti, but he eventually bowed to the shahs will and wed her at Gremi. Khorashan thus became a consort of Teimuraz and his faithful companion for 47 years of the kings turbulent life. Four times, in 1614,1616,1633, and in 1648, the couple was forced into flight from their kingdom as a result of Teimurazs obstinate resistance to the Iranian hegemony. Twice, in 1625 and again in 1633, was Teimuraz able to extend his rule over Kartli, the kingdom of his brother-in-law, Luarsab. In the course of events, Kakheti was devastated and the population shrank significantly as a result of war. At least on one occasion, Khorashan nearly fell into the hands of the Iranian soldiers, according to the Georgian chronicles, Khorashan had a dream that she was attacked and robbed by soldiers. The queen was so alarmed that she retired, with her people. Amirgune Khan appeared at dawn, but he failed to find the fugitives and this description of events is similar to that provided by the contemporary Portuguese Augustinian monk Ambrósio dos Anjos in his account of the martyrdom of Teimurazs mother, Queen Ketevan, in Iran. According to Ambrósio dos Anjos, Shah Abbas intended to take Teimurazs wife Khorashan as his own in order to humiliate the recalcitrant Georgian ruler. The couple eventually ended up in exile in the Kingdom of Imereti in western Georgia in 1648, having lost their son, Prince David. The latest downfall of Teimuraz, which proved to be permanent, was occasioned by the enthronement of Rostom of Kartli, the beleaguered king Teimuraz sent Khorashan to parley, Rostom treated the queen with honor and magnanimously allowed his adversary a safe passage to Imereti. Teimurazs last hopes rested on Russia, whither he departed in 1656 and he returned to Imereti in 1659, with no tangible results, finding his queen already dead. Russian embassies to the Georgian kings, histoire de la Géorgie depuis lAntiquité jusquau XIXe siècle
2.
Roman Catholic
–
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church or the Universal Church, is the largest Christian church, with more than 1.28 billion members worldwide. As one of the oldest religious institutions in the world, it has played a prominent role in the history, headed by the Bishop of Rome, known as the Pope, the churchs doctrines are summarised in the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed. Its central administration is located in Vatican City, enclaved within Rome, the Catholic Church is notable within Western Christianity for its sacred tradition and seven sacraments. It teaches that it is the one church founded by Jesus Christ, that its bishops are the successors of Christs apostles. The Catholic Church maintains that the doctrine on faith and morals that it declares as definitive is infallible. The Latin Church, the Eastern Catholic Churches, as well as such as mendicant orders and enclosed monastic orders. Among the sacraments, the one is the Eucharist, celebrated liturgically in the Mass. The church teaches that through consecration by a priest the sacrificial bread and wine become the body, the Catholic Church practises closed communion, with only baptised members in a state of grace ordinarily permitted to receive the Eucharist. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Catholic Church as Queen of Heaven and is honoured in numerous Marian devotions. The Catholic Church has influenced Western philosophy, science, art and culture, Catholic spiritual teaching includes spreading the Gospel while Catholic social teaching emphasises support for the sick, the poor and the afflicted through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and medical services in the world, from the late 20th century, the Catholic Church has been criticised for its doctrines on sexuality, its refusal to ordain women and its handling of sexual abuse cases. Catholic was first used to describe the church in the early 2nd century, the first known use of the phrase the catholic church occurred in the letter from Saint Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans, written about 110 AD. In the Catechetical Discourses of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, the name Catholic Church was used to distinguish it from other groups that call themselves the church. The use of the adjective Roman to describe the Church as governed especially by the Bishop of Rome became more widespread after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and into the Early Middle Ages. Catholic Church is the name used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church follows an episcopal polity, led by bishops who have received the sacrament of Holy Orders who are given formal jurisdictions of governance within the church. Ultimately leading the entire Catholic Church is the Bishop of Rome, commonly called the pope, in parallel to the diocesan structure are a variety of religious institutes that function autonomously, often subject only to the authority of the pope, though sometimes subject to the local bishop. Most religious institutes only have male or female members but some have both, additionally, lay members aid many liturgical functions during worship services
3.
Rostom of Kartli
–
Rostom or Rustam Khan was a king of Kartli, eastern Georgia, from 1633 until his death. Appointed by a Persian shah as a Wāli of Kartli, he styled himself king of kings, a son of Daud Khan, a Georgian prince and convert to Islam, by a concubine, he was born Khosro Mirza and brought up Muslim at the Persian court. An intelligent and resolute in his decisions, he attracted the attention of Shah Abbas I of Safavid who appointed him, in 1618. In 1626, Khosro Mirza was recalled from Georgia and appointed a commander of the Shahs guard Quli, in 1630, Abbas, lying on a deathbed, urged him to protect a grandson and heir Sam Mirza, the future Shah Safi, whom Khosro served faithfully. In 1630, he led a Persian army which defeated the Ottoman forces, in the early 1630s, he took part in sidelining and destruction of the Undiladze family which had dominated the Saffavid court for years. He adopted a name Rustam and came to Georgia with a large Persian army commanded by his fellow Georgian Rustam Khan and he soon took control of Kartli and garrisoned all major fortresses with Persian forces, bringing them, however, under his tight control. His willingness to cooperate with his suzerain won for Kartli a larger degree of autonomy, a period of relative peace and prosperity ensued, with the cities and towns being revived, many deserted areas repopulated and commerce flourished. Although Muslim, Rostom helped to restore a major Georgian Orthodox cathedral of Living Pillar at Mtskheta, however, Islam and Persian habits predominated at his court. He ruthlessly crushed an opposition of local nobles, putting to death the catholicos Eudemus I of Georgia, throughout his reign, a question of succession appeared to be a challenging task. As he had no children, Rostom intended to make the Imeretian prince Mamuka his heir, the latter, however, was soon suspected to have been involved in a plot, and he had to return to his native Imereti. In 1642, Rostom adopted his kinsman Luarsab, the late Simon Khans grandson, another candidate for the succession, Rostoms stepson Otia, also died young, in 1646. Only in 1653 was able Rostom to choose his successor, Rostom was buried in Qum, Persia, close to his late suzerain Abbas I. After his return to Kartli, he wed c.1635 Ketevan, Marie-Félicité Brosset, followed by Cyril Toumanoff, erred in identifying her surname as Abashidze. The Abashishvili was a branch of the Baratashvili family, the wedding was celebrated in Christian and Muslim rites and Ketevan added a Persian name, Guldukhtar. The marriage was childless and Ketevan died shortly thereafter, in 1638, Rostom concluded a strategic marital alliance with the Dadiani princely dynasty of Mingrelia. His second wife was Mariam, sister of Levan II Dadiani, the reigning Prince of Mingrelia, after Rostoms death, Mariam was married his adopted son and successor, Vakhtang V. Iranian Georgians Brosset, Marie-Félicité. Histoire de la Géorgie depuis lAntiquité jusquau XIXe siècle, S. -Pétersbourg, A la typographie de lAcademie Impériale des Sciences. Edge of Empires, A History of Georgia, iranian-Georgian Relations in the 16th- 19th Centuries Georgians in the Safavid administration
4.
Gorgan
–
Gorgan pronunciation (Persian, گرگان, formerly Astrabad or Astarabad, is the capital of Golestan Province, Iran. It lies approximately 400 kilometres to the north east of Tehran, in the 2006 census, its population was 269,226, in 73,702 families. The region is mentioned in Avesta as Vəhrkāna. The name is derived from the Proto-Iranian word *vrka-, meaning wolf, in post-Islamic Persia the city was known as Jurjān, the Arabized form of the Persian word. The Caspian form of the name is Wergen, there are several archaeological sites near Gorgan, including Tureng Tepe and Shah Tepe, in which there are remains dating to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic eras. According to the Greek historian Arrian, Zadracarta was the largest city of Hyrcania, the term means the yellow city, and it was given to it from the great number of oranges, lemons, and other fruit trees which grew in the outskirts of that city. Hyrcania became part of the Achaemenid Empire during the reign of Cyrus the Great, its founder, the Great Wall of Gorgan, the second biggest defensive wall in the world, was built in the Parthian and Sassanian periods. At the time of the Sassanids, Gurgan appeared as the name of a city, province capital, Gurgan maintained its independence as a Zoroastrian state even after Persia was conquered by the invading Arab Muslims in 8th century. In 1210, the city was invaded and sacked by the army of Kingdom of Georgia under command of the brothers Mkhargrdzeli. The Old Gorgan was destroyed during the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, and the center of the region was moved to what was called Astarabad, Gurgan with its surrounding regions was sometimes considered as part of the Parthia or the Tabaristan regions. Astarabad was an important political and religious city during the Qajar dynasty, the wide Dasht-e Gorgan are located north of the city and geographically bounded by 37°00 - 37°30 north latitude and 54°00 - 54°30 east longitude, covering an area of about 1,700 square kilometres. Some 150 km east of Gorgan is the Golestan National Park, according to Köppen climate classification, Gorgan has a Cfa humid subtropical climate. In general, Golestan has a moderate and humid climate known as the moderate Caspian climate, as a result of the above factors, three different climates exist in the region, plain moderate, mountainous, and semi-arid. Gorgan valley has a semi-arid climate, the average annual temperature is 17.7 °C and the annual rainfall is 601 millimetres. The population of the city has been 329,536 as of 2011, majority of people of Gorgan speak Persian. A big portion of the city are migrants from nearby regions, including Mazanderanis, Azeris, people from Semnan and Khorasan provinces, as well as some Turkmens, and a small population of Kazakhs. Gorgani, a dialect of Mazanderani language, was spoken in the city, but it is extinct now. House of Karen, a feudal family first attested in the Arsacid era
5.
Iran
–
Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
6.
Alaverdi Monastery
–
Alaverdi Monastery is a Georgian Eastern Orthodox monastery located 25 km from Akhmeta, in the Kakheti region of Eastern Georgia. While parts of the date back to 6th century, the present day cathedral was built in the 11th century by Kvirike III of Kakheti. The monastery was founded by the Assyrian monk Joseph Alaverdeli, who came from Antioch and settled in Alaverdi, then a small village and former pagan religious center dedicated to the Moon. At a height of over 55 meters, Alaverdi Cathedral is the second tallest religious building in Georgia, after Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi and its overall size is also smaller than the cathedral of Svetitskhoveli in Mtskheta. The monastery is the focus of the religious celebration Alaverdoba. Situated in the heart of the worlds oldest wine region, the monks also make their own wine, ketevan of Kakheti Teimuraz I of Kakheti
7.
House of Gurieli
–
The House of Gurieli was a Georgian princely family and a ruling dynasty of the southwestern Georgian province of Guria, which was autonomous and later, for a few centuries, independent. A few ducal rulers of the dynasty also rose in the 17th-18th centuries to be kings of the whole western Caucasus in place of the hereditary Bagrationi kings of Imereti. Bearing a hereditary title for governors of Guria since the century, Gurieli was adopted as a dynastic name by the Vardanisdze family. The other notable branch of the Vardanisdze was the Dadiani of Samegrelo, both of these branches occasionally used double names, Gurieli-Dadiani or Dadiani-Gurieli. If the couple had issue, possibly the subsequent ruler Kakhaber, in the 17th and 18th centuries, as many as four Gurieli rulers managed to be chosen kings of the whole Western Caucasus in place of hereditary Bagrationi kings of Imereti. Gurieli kings however are usually characterized as usurpers, or as counter-monarchs of a rival dynasty, on several occasions powerful neighbors also managed to divert the rule of Guria to members of rival branches of the Gurieli dynasty. With the death of David in 1839, his cousin David Gurieli, 1385–1410 – Kakhaber I, son of Giorgi II Dadiani, eristavi of Guria and Svaneti c. 1410–1430 – Giorgi I, son of Kakhaber I c, 1430–1450 – Mamia I, son of Giorgi I c.1780 – Kaikhosro IV, son of Giorgi V, abdicated, died after 1820 c
8.
Prince David of Kakheti
–
David also known by the hypocorism Datuna was a prince of the royal house of Kakheti, a kingdom in eastern Georgia. He was the son of King Teimuraz I of Kakheti to have survived into adulthood. He fathered the future King Heraclius I of Kakheti, who continued the line of the Kakhetian Bagrationi. From 1627 until his death in battle with the pro-Persian Georgian ruler Rostom of Kartli, he held sway over the fief of Mukhrani and he was the youngest of Teimurazs sons and the kings only male offspring to have survived into adulthood. In 1633, Teimuraz was overthrown by the seasoned Muslim Georgian prince Rostom Khan, David was able, for the time being, to retain his hold of Mukhrani, and endeavored to meet Rostom for negotiations at Surami, but he suspected treachery and quickly withdrew to his estate. Having taken command of his fathers troops, David was attacked and defeated by Rostoms Persian auxiliaries at Magharo, David himself was killed in battle at the hand of the Kazakh officer Jamal Khan. Davids severed head was delivered to Rostom, Teimuraz lost the crown of Kakheti at once. Through Rostoms magnanimity, he was able to retire to his in-laws in the western Georgian kingdom of Imereti and also have his last son, David, Mukhrani was restored to a member of its earlier princely family, Vakhtang II. David married, in 1628, Princess Elene, former wife of Duke David of Aragvi and daughter of Prince Levan Diasamidze, after Davids death, Elene followed her father-in-law in his Muscovite exile, bringing the son Nikoloz with her in 1653. She died in Georgia and was buried at the Alaverdi cathedral in Kakheti, the couple had four sons and two daughters, Prince Luarsab. Prince Giorgi, he was adopted and designated as heir apparent by his aunts husband, King Alexander III of Imereti, in 1649, Prince Nikoloz, the future king of Kakheti and Kartli under the name of Heraclius I or Nazar Ali Khan. Prince Ioseb, he was affianced in 1646 to a sister of Tsar Alexis of Russia, Princess Anastasia Princess Ketevan, she was married, successively, to King Bagrat V of Imereti, Prince Gogoberidze, and thirdly, to Archil, King of Kakheti and Imereti. She died in Moscow and was buried at the Donskoy Monastery
9.
Darejan of Kakheti, Queen of Imereti
–
Darejan or Nestan-Darejan was a daughter of King Teimuraz I, a ruler of Kakheti in eastern Georgia, with a notable role in the contemporary politics of Georgia. Her three marriages represented a component of her familys and her own political machinations and her first husband, Zurab, Duke of Aragvi, was put to death at the behest of Darejans father in 1630. She was eventually murdered by members of the party in Kutaisi. Darejan was a daughter of Teimuraz I of Kakheti and his second wife Khorashan, the marriage secured Zurabs support to Teimuraz against the warlord Giorgi Saakadze, in 1626, although Saakadze was himself married to Zurabs sister. Rid of Saakadze, Teimuraz then instigated Zurab to assassinate the rival pro-Persian ruler Simon II of Kartli in 1630, Teimuraz invited his son-in-law to dinner and had him beheaded. He then sent Zurabs severed head to the Persian shah Safi to prove his loyalty, on 14 May 1631, at Saportseli near Gori, Teimuraz married his widowed daughter to Crown Prince Alexander of Imereti. On this occasion, Teimuraz was presented with Shah Safis decree confirmed him as a king of Kartli and Kakheti. Having married Darejan to the Imeretian heir apparent, Teimuraz could now lay a foundation for unification of Georgias three kingdoms, Alexander became king of Imereti in 1638 and died on 1 March 1660. Prior to his death, Alexander, thus, had to recall his son Bagrat from Guria, queen Dowager Darejan crowned Bagrat, but she had no intention of giving up her power. Although both were in their forties, Bagrat had to reckon with his step-mothers ambitions, three days after Alexanders funeral, Darejan made Bagrat marry her niece Ketevan. All documents issued in Imereti during these years bore first Darejans name, as the conflict was brewing, the nobles became divided in two parties. Papuna, duke of Racha, urged Bagrat to employ the Ottoman force to remove Darejan, the matters headed to an open confrontation when Darejan persuaded Bagrat to divorce her niece Ketevan and suggested to the king that he should now marry her. On Bagrats refusal, he was seized by Darejans supporters and blinded, Darejan then offered the crown to her father Teimuraz, who had been ousted from eastern Georgia by the Persians and was then living in the Skanda castle in Imereti. Teimuraz, astounded by his daughters vices, refused, Darejan then seized power, married an insignificant nobleman, Vakhtang Tchutchunashvili, who claimed a Bagrationi descent, and had him crowned king. The people of Imereti were outraged, the nobles of Lower Imereti invited Vameq III Dadiani, Prince of Mingrelia, and those of Upper Imereti called for Vakhtang V of Kartli to intervene and overthrow Darejan and her husband. Vameq took the prisoner, had Vakhtang blinded, and usurped the throne of Imereti. Darejan appealed to Vakhtang V of Kartli for help, offering her now divorced niece Ketevan for Vakhtang Vs son Archil, Vakhtang of Kartli moved into Upper Imereti in 1661 and Imereti became a battleground for the rulers of Kartli and Mingrelia. Imereti remained in a state of anarchy, the royal couple did not long survive their restoration
10.
Dynasty
–
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a feudal or monarchical system but sometimes also appearing in elective republics. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a house, historians periodize the histories of many sovereign states, such as Ancient Egypt, the Carolingian Empire and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties. As such, the dynasty may be used to delimit the era during which the family reigned and to describe events, trends. The word dynasty itself is often dropped from such adjectival references, until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty, that is, to increase the territory, wealth, and power of his family members. The longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. Succession through a daughter when permitted was considered to establish a new dynasty in her husbands ruling house, however, some states in Africa, determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mothers dynasty when coming into her inheritance. It is also extended to unrelated people such as poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team. The word dynasty derives via Latin dynastia from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to power, dominion and it was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, power or ability, from dýnamai, to be able. A ruler in a dynasty is referred to as a dynast. For example, following his abdication, Edward VIII of the United Kingdom ceased to be a member of the House of Windsor. A dynastic marriage is one that complies with monarchical house law restrictions, the marriage of Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, to Máxima Zorreguieta in 2002 was dynastic, for example, and their eldest child is expected to inherit the Dutch crown eventually. But the marriage of his younger brother Prince Friso to Mabel Wisse Smit in 2003 lacked government support, thus Friso forfeited his place in the order of succession, lost his title as a Prince of the Netherlands, and left his children without dynastic rights. In historical and monarchist references to formerly reigning families, a dynast is a member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchys rules still in force. Even since abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Max and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position. The term dynast is sometimes used only to refer to descendants of a realms monarchs. The term can therefore describe overlapping but distinct sets of people, yet he is not a male-line member of the royal family, and is therefore not a dynast of the House of Windsor. Thus, in 1999 he requested and obtained permission from Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco. Yet a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time and that exclusion, too, ceased to apply on 26 March 2015, with retroactive effect for those who had been dynasts prior to triggering it by marriage to a Catholic
11.
Bagrationi dynasty
–
The Bagrationi dynasty is a royal family that reigned in Georgia from the Middle Ages until the early 19th century, being among the oldest extant Christian ruling dynasties in the world. In modern usage, this line is often referred to as the Georgian Bagratids. The common origin with the Armenian Bagratuni dynasty has been accepted by scholars, the family, in the person of Ashot I, the great-grandson of the presiding prince of Armenia Ashot III Bagratuni, gained the principate of Iberia at the end of the 8th century. His descendants restored, in 888, the Georgian monarchy and united various native polities into the Kingdom of Georgia, which prospered from the 11th to the 13th century. This period of time, particularly the reigns of David IV the Builder, the dynasty persisted within the Russian Empire as an Imperial Russian noble family until the 1917 February Revolution. The earliest Georgian forms of the name are Bagratoniani, Bagratuniani and Bagratovani. These names as well as the Armenian Bagratuni and the modern designation Bagratid mean the children of Bagrat or the house of/established by Bagrat. A successor, Guaram, was installed as a prince of Kartli under the Byzantine protectorate. Thus, according to version, began the dynasty of the Bagratids. This tradition enjoyed a general acceptance until the early 20th century, the Jewish origin, let alone the biblical descent, of the Bagratids has been discounted by modern scholarship. Adarnase’s son, Ashot I, acquired the principality of Kartli in 813, although certain, the generation-by-generation history of the Bagrationi dynasty begins only in the late 8th century. The Odzrkhe line, known in the annals as the Bivritianis. They cannot, however, be considered the ancestors of the later Bagratids who eventually restored Georgian royal authority. In 813, the new dynasty acquired, with Ashot I, despite the revitalization of the monarchy, Georgian lands remained divided among rival authorities, with Tbilisi remaining in Arab hands. The sons and grandsons of Ashot I established three separate branches – the lines of Kartli, Tao, and Klarjeti – frequently struggling with each other, the Kartli line prevailed, in 888, with Adarnase I, it restored the indigenous Georgian royal authority dormant since 580. In spite of repeated incidents of dynastic strife, the continued to prosper during the reigns of Demetrios I, George III. With the death of George III the main line became extinct. The invasions by the Khwarezmians in 1225 and the Mongols in 1236 terminated Georgia’s golden age, the struggle against the Mongol rule created a dyarchy, with an ambitious lateral branch of the Bagrationi dynasty holding sway over western Georgia
12.
David I of Kakheti
–
David I, of the Bagrationi dynasty, was a king of Kakheti in eastern Georgia from October 1601 until his death in October 1602. David was a son of Alexander II of Kakheti by his wife Tinatin Amilakhvari, in mid-1601, he capitalized on the illness of his father and gained an effective control of the government, sidelining his younger brother George. When Alexander recovered, David refused to relinquish his powers and forced his father into abdication in October 1601, David was crowned king of Kakheti, but his brother, George, masterminded a plot which quickly collapsed and led to repressions. David had George imprisoned while seventeen of his supporters were executed, david’s foreign policy was a continuation of his father’s line. In 1602, he received a Russian embassy and reaffirmed his loyalty to the tsar and he then marched against Nugzar, the defiant lord of the Aragvi and forced him into submission. David suddenly died on October 21,1602, and Alexander II recovered the crown, David is also remembered as a translator of a portion of the Tales of Kalila and Dimna from Persian. 1581, Ketevan, daughter of Ashotan I, Prince of Mukhrani and they were the parents of, Teimuraz I of Kakheti, King of Kakheti Prince Vakhtang Princess Helene, given in marriage to Abbas I of Persia
13.
Ketevan the Martyr
–
Ketevan the Martyr was a queen of Kakheti, a kingdom in eastern Georgia. She was killed at Shiraz, Iran, after prolonged tortures by the Safavid suzerains of Georgia for refusing to give up the Christian faith and convert to Islam. Ketevan was born to Prince Ashotan of Mukhrani and married Prince David of Kakheti, after David’s death, Ketevan engaged in religious building and charity. According to the Safavid official and chronicler, Fażli Ḵuzāni, Ketevan showed characteristic mercy to Constantines surviving supporters and she ordered that the wounded enemy soldiers be treated accordingly and accepted in service if they desired. The Muslim merchants, who suffered in the war, were compensated, Ketevan had Constantines body laid in rest and sent to Ardebil. After the uprising she negotiated with Shah Abbas I of Iran who was the suzerain over Georgia, to confirm her underage son, Teimuraz I, as king of Kakheti, while she assumed the function of a regent. Portions of her relics were taken by the St. Augustine Portuguese Catholic missioners, eyewitnesses of her martyrdom. The rest of her remains were said to have been buried at the St. Augustine Church in Goa, after several expeditions to Goa in the 21st century to search for the remains, they were believed to be found in late 2013. Queen Ketevan was canonized by Patriarch Zachary of Georgia, and September 13 was instituted by the Georgian Orthodox Church as the day of her commemoration, the Scottish poet William Forsyth composed the poem The Martyrdom of Kelavane, based on Jean Chardins account of Ketevans death. The importance of Queen Ketevan for the Georgian people has led to a hunt during the last decades. These efforts were thwarted because the teams were unable to interpret the Portuguese documents that provided clues as to Ketevans burial place. These historical sources stated that Ketevans palm and arm bone fragments were kept inside a stone urn beneath a window within the Chapter Chapel of the Augustinian convent. Although the stone urn itself was missing, its coping stone, the investigations of the remains revealed an unusual mtDNA haplogroup U1b, which is absent in India, but present in Georgia and surrounding regions. Since the genetic analysis corroborates archaeological and literary evidence, it is likely that the bone belongs to Queen Ketevan of Georgia. Therefore, it would be crucial to determine the sex and the kind of bone of the fragments tested in order to have conclusive results, according to a story in Indias Mint on Sunday newspaper, additional tests confirmed that the U1b bone came from a woman. So, in 2013, it was established that the found in two pieces in 2005 was consistent with being from a Georgian woman. General sources Media related to Ketevan the Martyr at Wikimedia Commons Lang, lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints
14.
Georgian Orthodox Church
–
The Georgian Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church in full communion with the other churches of Eastern Orthodoxy. It is Georgias dominant religious institution, and a majority of Georgian people are members and it asserts apostolic foundation, and its historical roots can be traced to the Christianization of Iberia by Saint Nino in the 4th century AD. As in similar autocephalous Orthodox churches, the Churchs highest governing body is the Holy Synod of bishops, the church is headed by the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, currently Ilia II, who was elected in 1977. The current Constitution of Georgia recognizes the role of the Georgian Orthodox Church in the countrys history. Government relations are defined and regulated by the Concordat of 2002. The church is the most trusted institution in Georgia, according to a 2013 survey 95% respondents had a favorable opinion of its work. It is highly influential in the sphere and is considered Georgias most influential institution. According to Georgian Orthodox Church tradition, the first preacher of the Gospel in Colchis and Iberia was the apostle Andrew, the First-called. However, modern historiography considers this account mythical, and the fruit of a late tradition, similar traditions regarding Saint Andrew exist in Ukraine, Cyprus and Romania. The Church also claims the presence in Georgia of the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus, the propagation of Christianity in present-day Georgia before the 4th century is still poorly known. The first documented event in this process is the preaching of Saint Nino and its consequences, Saint Nino, honored as Equal to the Apostles, was according to tradition the daughter of a Roman general from Cappadocia. She preached in the kingdom of Iberia in the first half of the 4th century, cyril Toumanoff dates the conversion of Mirian to 334, his official baptism and subsequent adoption of Christianity as the official religion of Iberia to 337. From the first centuries C. E. the cult of Mithras, pagan beliefs, the royal baptism and organization of the Church were accomplished by priests sent from Constantinople by Constantine the Great. Conversion of the people of Kartli proceeded quickly in the plains, the conversion of Kartli marked only the beginnings of the formation of the Georgian Orthodox Church. In the next centuries, different processes took place that shaped the Church, and gave it, by the beginning of the 11th century, the main characteristics that it has retained until now. In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Church of Kartli was strictly subordinate to the Apostolic See of Antioch, in 1010, the Catholicos of Kartli was elevated to the honor of Patriarch. From then on, the hierarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church carried the official title of Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia. At the beginnings of the Church history, what is now Georgia was not unified yet politically, such division was reflected in major differences in the development of Christianity
15.
Georgia (country)
–
Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. The capital and largest city is Tbilisi, Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres, and its 2016 population is about 3.72 million. Georgia is a unitary, semi-presidential republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy, during the classical era, several independent kingdoms became established in what is now Georgia. The kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia adopted Christianity in the early 4th century, a unified Kingdom of Georgia reached the peak of its political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Thereafter the kingdom declined and eventually disintegrated under hegemony of various powers, including the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire. Russian rule over Georgia was eventually acknowledged in various treaties with Iran. Since the establishment of the modern Georgian republic in April 1991, post-communist Georgia suffered from civil, the countrys Western orientation soon led to the worsening of relations with Russia, culminating in the brief Russo-Georgian War in August 2008. Georgia is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and it contains two de facto independent regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which gained limited international recognition after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Georgia and a part of the international community consider the regions to be part of Georgias sovereign territory under Russian military occupation. Georgia probably stems from the Persian designation of the Georgians – gurğān, in the 11th and 12th centuries adapted via Syriac gurz-ān/gurz-iyān, starting with the Persian word gurğ/gurğān, the word was later adopted in numerous other languages, including Slavic and West European languages. This term itself might have established through the ancient Iranian appellation of the near-Caspian region. The self-designation used by ethnic Georgians is Kartvelebi, the medieval Georgian Chronicles present an eponymous ancestor of the Kartvelians, Kartlos, a great-grandson of Japheth. However, scholars agree that the word is derived from the Karts, the name Sakartvelo consists of two parts. Its root, kartvel-i, specifies an inhabitant of the core central-eastern Georgian region of Kartli, ancient Greeks and Romans referred to early western Georgians as Colchians and eastern Georgians as Iberians. Today the full, official name of the country is Georgia, before the 1995 constitution came into force the countrys name was the Republic of Georgia. The territory of modern-day Georgia was inhabited by Homo erectus since the Paleolithic Era, the proto-Georgian tribes first appear in written history in the 12th century BC. The earliest evidence of wine to date has found in Georgia. In fact, early metallurgy started in Georgia during the 6th millennium BC, the classical period saw the rise of a number of early Georgian states, the principal of which was Colchis in the west and Iberia in the east
16.
Kingdom of Kakheti
–
The Second Kingdom of Kakheti was a late medieval/early modern monarchy in eastern Georgia, centered at the province of Kakheti, with its capital first at Gremi and then at Telavi. A previous Kingdom of Kakheti was created in the 8th century following the rebellion of the mountainous tribes of Tzanaria. The reemergence of the Kingdom of Kakheti was the first step towards the partition of Georgia which had been embroiled in wars since the mid-15th century. Overwhelmed by these difficulties, Constantine II, king of a reduced Georgia, was obliged to sanction the new order of things, in this way the tripartite division of the Kingdom of Georgia was consummated. Unlike other Georgian polities, Kakheti was spared, for the time being, from foreign incursions. Furthermore, it had the advantage over other parts of Georgia of flanking the important Ghilan-Shemakha-Astrakhan “silk route. ”The Kakhetian government sponsored this trade and actively participated in it, closely tying the kingdom to the life of eastern Transcaucasia. This relative stability for a time strengthened the power and increased the number of his supporters among the nobility. Nevertheless, in 1589, Alexander II of Kakheti officially pledged his allegiance to Tsar Feodor I of Russia, with Alexander’s murder in an Iranian-sponsored coup staged by his own son, a Muslim convert Constantine I, in 1605, the fortunes of Kakheti began to reverse. Thus began Teimuraz’s long and difficult reign in conflict with the Safavids, in the mid-1610s, Shah Abbas I renewed his effort to bring Georgia more completely into the Safavid empire and subjected Kakheti to repeated invasions in 1614,1615 and 1616. In a series of Georgian insurrections and Iranian reprisals, sixty to seventy people were killed. The population of Kakheti dropped by two-thirds, once flourishing towns, like Gremi and Zagemi, shrank to insignificant villages, agriculture declined, by 1648, the indefatigable Taimuraz had finally been ousted from Kakheti. The Safavid government tightened its control of Kakheti, implemented a policy of replacing the native population with nomadic Turkic tribes, at the same time, the Dagestani mountaineers started to attack and colonize the Kakhetian marchlands. For a time, the two kingdoms of eastern Georgia were virtually united under Shah-Nawaz and his son, and a period of peace ensued. Making the town of Telavi his capital, in place of Gremi which was ruined by the Iranian invasions, however, the promising situation was of short duration. This latter house finally succeeded, at the expense of their apostasy to Islam, in reestablishing themselves in 1703 and this proved to be of little benefit, however, and the kingdom continued to be plagued by the incessant Dagestani inroads. From 1724 to 1744, Kakheti was subjected to the successive Ottoman and Iranian occupations. Teimuraz II’s cooperation with Nader enabled him to secure his power in both Kakheti and Kartli, and to recognition for himself as king of Kartli, and for his son, Erekle II. Both monarchs were crowned in accordance to a Christian tradition in 1745 and they exploited the turmoil in Iran that followed Nader’s assassination in 1747 and established themselves as virtually independent rulers
17.
Kartli
–
Kartli is a historical region in central-to-eastern Georgia traversed by the river Mtkvari, on which Georgias capital, Tbilisi, is situated. Known to the Classical authors as Iberia, Kartli played a role in the ethnic. Kartli had no defined boundaries and they significantly fluctuated in the course of history. After the partition of the kingdom of Georgia in the 15th century, the historical lands of Kartli are currently divided among several administrative regions of Georgia. The Georgians living in the lands of Kartli are known as Kartleli. Most of them are Eastern Orthodox Christians adhering to the national Georgian Orthodox Church and speak a dialect, the toponym Kartli first emerges in written accounts in the 5th-century Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik, the earliest surviving piece of Georgian literature. Kartlos seems to be a medieval contrivance and his being the founder of Kartli is not convincing. The term itself derives from Proto-Kartvelian root *kart-, which is considered an ancient inner-Kartvelian formation by modern linguists. See ქართლი and ქართველი for more, parallels have also been sought with the Khaldi and Carduchi of the Classical sources. The formation of Kartli and its people, the Kartveli is poorly documented, the infiltration of several ancient, chiefly Anatolian, tribes into the territory of modern-day Georgia and their fusion with the autochthons played a decisive role in this process. This might have been reflected in the story of Arian-Kartli, the place of the aboriginal Georgian habitat found in the early medieval chronicle Conversion of Kartli. In the 3rd century BC, Kartli and its original capital Mtskheta formed a nucleus around which the ancient Georgian kingdom known to the Greco-Roman world as Iberia evolved. The role of Kartli as an ethnic and political unit which would form a basis for the subsequent Georgian unification further increased as a result of its Christianization early in the 4th century. Located on the crossroads of the Byzantine and Iranian influences, Kartli developed a vibrant Christian culture, but the Kyrie eleison is said in Greek, which means in Georgian Lord, have mercy or Lord, be merciful to us. After the unification of various Georgian polities into the kingdom of Georgia early in the 11th century, the Georgian circumfix sa-X-o is a standard geographic construction designating the area where X dwell, where X is an ethnonym. Most of these lands are now part of Georgias regions of Shida Kartli and Kvemo Kartli, but also of Samtskhe-Javakheti, a significant portion of Zemo Kartli is now part of Turkey. With the fragmentation of the kingdom of Georgia in the 15th century, the kings of Kartli did not relinquish the titles of the all-Georgian monarchs whose legitimate successors they claimed to be. The Europeans, thus, knew it as Georgia proper and later also as Kartalinia via the Russian Карталиния, similarly, the toponym Gorjestān was usually used in Persian in the narrower sense of Kartli
18.
Safavid dynasty
–
The Safavid dynasty was one of the most significant ruling dynasties of Iran, often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history. The Safavid shahs ruled over one of the so-called gunpowder empires, the Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safaviyya Sufi order, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Azerbaijan region. The Safavids have also left their mark down to the present era by spreading Shia Islam in Iran, as well as parts of the Caucasus, Anatolia. The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be Seyyeds, family descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, There seems now to be a consensus among scholars that the Safavid family hailed from Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, finally settling in the 11th century CE at Ardabil. Traditional pre-1501 Safavid manuscripts trace the lineage of the Safavids to the Kurdish dignitary, a massive migration of Oghuz Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries not only Turkified Azerbaijan but also Anatolia. The Azeri Turks are Shiʿites and were founders of the Safavid dynasty, by the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of the family were native Turkish-speaking and Turkicized, and some of the Shahs composed poems in their native Turkish language. Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly intermarried with both Pontic Greek as well as Georgian lines, Safavid history begins with the establishment of the Safaviyya by its eponymous founder Safi-ad-din Ardabili. In 700/1301, Safi al-Din assumed the leadership of the Zahediyeh, due to the great spiritual charisma of Safi al-Din, the order was later known as the Safaviyya. The Safavid order soon gained great influence in the city of Ardabil, after Safī al-Dīn, the leadership of the Safaviyya passed to Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā. The leadership of the order passed from Sadr ud-Dīn Mūsā to his son Khwādja Ali, when Shaykh Junayd, the son of Ibrāhim, assumed the leadership of the Safaviyya in 1447, the history of the Safavid movement was radically changed. Savory, Sheikh Junayd was not content with spiritual authority and he sought material power, Junayd sought refuge with the rival of Kara Koyunlu Jahan Shah, the Aq Qoyunlu Khan Uzun Hassan, and cemented his relationship by marrying Uzun Hassans sister, Khadija Begum. Junayd was killed during an incursion into the territories of the Shirvanshah and was succeeded by his son Haydar Safavi, Haydar married Martha Alamshah Begom, Uzun Hassans daughter, who gave birth to Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty. Marthas mother Theodora—better known as Despina Khatun—was a Pontic Greek princess and she had been married to Uzun Hassan in exchange for protection of the Grand Komnenos from the Ottomans. After Uzun Hassans death, his son Yaqub felt threatened by the growing Safavid religious influence, Yaqub allied himself with the Shirvanshah and killed Haydar in 1488. By this time, the bulk of the Safaviyya were nomadic Oghuz Turkic-speaking clans from Asia Minor, the Qizilbash were warriors, spiritual followers of Haydar, and a source of the Safavid military and political power. After the death of Haydar, the Safaviyya gathered around his son Ali Mirza Safavi, according to official Safavid history, before passing away, Ali had designated his young brother Ismail as the spiritual leader of the Safaviyya. After the decline of the Timurid Empire, Persia was politically splintered, the demise of Tamerlanes political authority created a space in which several religious communities, particularly Shi’i ones, could come to the fore and gain prominence. Among these were a number of Sufi brotherhoods, the Hurufis, Nuqtawis, of these various movements, the Safavid Qizilbash was the most politically resilient, and due to its success Shah Isma’il I gained political prominence in 1501
19.
Persian Empire
–
Persian Empire refers to any of a series of imperial dynasties centered in Persia. The first of these was the Achaemenid Empire established by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC with the conquest of Median, Lydian and Babylonian empires and it covered much of the Ancient world when it was conquered by Alexander the Great. Several later dynasties claimed to be heirs of the Achaemenids, Persia was then ruled by the Parthian Empire which supplanted the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, and then by the Sassanian Empire which ruled up until mid 7th century. It is important to note that many of these empires referred to themselves as Persian, they were often ethnically ruled by Medes, Babylonians. Iranian dynastic history was interrupted by the Arab Muslim conquest of Persia in 651 AD, establishing the even larger Islamic Caliphate, the main religion of ancient Persia was the native Zoroastrianism, but after the seventh century, it was replaced by Islam. Since 1979 and the downfall of the Pahlavi dynasty during Iranian Revolution, Persia has had a Shiah theocratic government
20.
Persian literature
–
Persian literature is one of the worlds oldest literatures. It spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the material has been lost. For instance, Mowlana Rumi, one of best-loved Persian poets, born in Balkh or Vakhsh, wrote in Persian, the Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, not all Persian literature is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the following the Islamic conquest of Iran c.650 CE. After the Abbasids came to power, the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic empire and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons——the early Iranian dynasties such as Tahirids and Samanids were based in Khorasan, Iranians wrote in both Persian and Arabic, Persian predominated in later literary circles. Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Sadi, Hafiz, Attar, Nezami, Rumi, very few literary works of Achaemenid Iran have survived, due partly to the destruction of the library at Persepolis. Most of what remains consists of the inscriptions of Achaemenid kings, particularly Darius I. Many Zoroastrian writings were destroyed in the Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th century, the Parsis who fled to India, however, took with them some of the books of the Zoroastrian canon, including some of the Avesta and ancient commentaries thereof. Some works of Sassanid geography and travel also survived, albeit in Arabic translations, no single text devoted to literary criticism has survived from Pre-Islamic Iran. However, some essays in Pahlavi, such as Ayin-e name nebeshtan, some researchers have quoted the Shoubiyye as asserting that the Pre-Islamic Iranians had books on eloquence, such as Karvand. No trace remains of such books, there are some indications that some among the Persian elite were familiar with Greek rhetoric and literary criticism. While initially overshadowed by Arabic during the Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphates, New Persian soon became a literary language again of the Central Asian, in short, the ability to write in verse form was a pre-requisite for any scholar. For example, almost half of Avicennas medical writings are in verse, works of the early era of Persian poetry are characterized by strong court patronage, an extravagance of panegyrics, and what is known as سبک فاخر exalted in style. The tradition of patronage began perhaps under the Sassanid era. The Qasida was perhaps the most famous form of panegyric used, khorasani style, whose followers mostly were associated with Greater Khorasan, is characterized by its supercilious diction, dignified tone, and relatively literate language. The chief representatives of this lyricism are Asjadi, Farrukhi Sistani, Unsuri, panegyric masters such as Rudaki were known for their love of nature, their verse abounding with evocative descriptions
21.
House of Mukhrani
–
The family has since been known as Mukhran-Batoni, that is, Princes of Mukhrani. An elder branch of the house of Mukhrani, now extinct and its descendants bore the Imperial Russian titles of Prince and Princes Bagration. David Bagration of Mukhrani has been the head of this house since January 16,2008, over time, the princes of Mukhrani exploited the weakness of royal authority and converted their fiefdom into an autonomous seigneury, satavado, that is a holding of tavadi. They formed two lines in exile, both accepted among the ranks of Russian princely nobility, knyaz, one of these, Princes Gruzinsky, descended from Vakhang VI’s son Bakar and died out in 1892. The throne of Kartli eventually passed to their distant cousins from the Bagrationi dynasty of Kakheti and this new royal house united both Kartli and Kakheti into a single monarchy. Constantines scions, the branch of the house of Mukhrani, chose to stay in Kartli rather than follow Vakhtang VI to Russia. After Russias annexation of Georgia in 1801, Georgia and Mukhrani ceased to exist as autonomous territories and this line became the genealogically senior representatives of the Bagrationi dynasty, as the elder branch of the house of Mukhrani had gone extinct in its male line by 1920. After the Bolshevik takeover of Georgia, the relocated to Europe in 1930. A rival claim, based on male primogeniture descent from the last kings of Georgia, comes from Prince Prince Nugzar, head of the Bagration-Gruzinsky family, although some Georgian monarchists support the Gruzinsky branchs claim, others support that of the re-patriated Mukhrani branch. Both branches descend in unbroken, legitimate male line from the kings of Georgia down to Constantine II of Georgia who died in 1505. The bridegroom is the member of his branch who retains Georgian citizenship and residence since the death of his father. Since Nugzar and his cousin, Prince Eugene Bagration-Gruzinsky, are the last patrilineal males descended from King George XIII, but the marriage between Nugzar Gruzinskys heiress and the Mukhrani heir resolves their rivalry for the claim to the throne, which has divided Georgian monarchists. The son born of marriage, prince George Bagration-Bagrationi is apt to eventually become both the heir male of the House of Bagrationi and the heir general of George XIII of Georgia
22.
Kingdom of Georgia
–
The Kingdom of Georgia, also known as the Georgian Empire, was a medieval monarchy which emerged in circa 1008 AD. It reached its Golden Age of political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV, a predominantly Christian, Georgian-speaking realm, it was the principal historical precursor of present-day Georgia. Lasting for several centuries, the fell to the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. The Kingdoms geopolitical situation further worsened after the Fall of Constantinople, as a result of these processes, by the end of the 15th century Georgia turned into an isolated, fractured Christian enclave, surrounded by hostile Turco-Iranic neighbors. The ascendancy of the Bagrationi dynasty can be traced to the 8th century, the restoration of the Georgian kingship begins in AD888, when Adarnase IV of Iberia took the title of King of Georgians. The United Kingdom of Georgia was established in 1008, in this year, Bagrat III, son of Gurgen II, became the ruler of the Kingdom of Western Georgia, including the Principalities of Imereti, Samegrelo, Abkhazeti, Guria and Svaneti. Bagrats mother was Queen Gurandukht, a daughter of George II of Abkhazia, the first decades of the 9th century saw the rise of a new Georgian state in Tao-Klarjeti. Ashot Courapalate of the family of Bagrationi liberated from the Arabs the territories of former southern Iberia. In practice, however, the region functioned as an independent country with its capital in Artanuji. The hereditary title of Curopalates was kept by the Bagrationi family, the first united Georgian monarchy was formed at the end of the 10th century when Curopalate David invaded the Earldom of Kartli-Iberia. Three years later, after the death of his uncle Theodosius the Blind, King of Egrisi-Abkhazia, in 1001 Bagrat added Tao-Klarjeti to his domain as a result of Davids death. In 1008–1010, Bagrat annexed Kakheti and Hereti, thus becoming the first king of a united Georgia in both the east and west, in 1071, the Seljuq army destroyed the united Byzantine-Armenian and Georgian forces in the Battle of Manzikert. By 1081, all of Armenia, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Syria, in Georgia, only the mountainous areas of Abkhazia, Svaneti, Racha, and Khevi–Khevsureti remained out of Seljuq control and served as a relatively safe havens for numerous refugees. The rest of the country was dominated by the conquerors who destroyed the cities and fortresses, looted the villages, in fact, by the end of the 1080s, Georgians were outnumbered in the region by the invaders. The Golden Age began with the reign of David IV, the son of George II and Queen Helena, in 1121, he decisively defeated much larger Turkish armies during the Battle of Didgori, with fleeing Seljuq Turks being run down by pursuing Georgian cavalry for several days. A huge amount of booty and prisoners were captured by Davids army, David IV made particular emphasis on removing the vestiges of unwanted eastern influences, which the Georgians considered forced, in favor of the traditional Christian and Byzantine overtones. As part of this effort he founded the Gelati Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, David also played a personal role in reviving Georgian religious hymnography, composing the Hymns of Repentance, a sequence of eight free-verse psalms. In this emotional repentance of his sins, David sees himself as reincarnating the Biblical David, with a relationship to God
23.
Sphere of influence
–
Similarly, a formal alliance does not necessarily mean that one country lies within anothers sphere of influence. High levels of exclusivity have historically been associated with levels of conflict. In more extreme cases, a country within the sphere of influence of another may become a subsidiary of that state, the system of spheres of influence by which powerful nations intervene in the affairs of others continues to the present. It is often analyzed in terms of superpowers, great powers, for example, during the height of its existence in World War II, the Japanese Empire had quite a large sphere of influence. The Japanese government directly governed events in Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, sometimes portions of a single country can fall into two distinct spheres of influence. The term is used to describe non-political situations, e. g. a shopping mall is said to have a sphere of influence which designates the geographical area where it dominates the retail trade. Many areas of the world are considered to have inherited culture from a sphere of influence. According to a protocol attached to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939, Northern and Eastern Europe were divided into Nazi. In the North, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere, poland was to be partitioned in the event of its political rearrangement—the areas east of the Narev, Vistula, and San Rivers going to the Soviet Union while Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, adjacent to East Prussia, would be in the German sphere of influence, another clause of the treaty stipulated that Bessarabia, then part of Romania, would join the Moldovan ASSR and become the Moldovan SSR under the control of Moscow. The Soviet invasion of Bukovina on 28 June 1940 violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, from 1941 and the German attack on the Soviet Union, the Allied Coalition operated on the unwritten assumption that the Western Powers and the Soviet Union had each its own sphere of influence. Western Europe, Oceania, Japan, and South Korea, among other places, were said to lie under the sphere of influence of the United States. However, the level of control exerted in these varied and was not absolute. For instance, France and Great Britain were able to act independently to invade the Suez Canal, later, France was also able to withdraw from the military arm of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. With the end of the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc fell apart, then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, replaced by the Russian Federation and several ex-Soviet Republics became independent states. According to Ulrich Speck, writing for Carnegie Europe, After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Western nations implicitly treated the post-Soviet countries as Russias sphere of influence. In 2009, Russia asserted that the European Union desires a sphere of influence, in March 2009, Swedens foreign minister Carl Bildt stated that The Eastern Partnership is not about spheres of influence. The difference is that these countries themselves opted to join, -all in the name of defending a sphere of influence on its borders
24.
Tsardom of Russia
–
From 1551 to 1700, Russia grew 35,000 km2 per year. After a military victory over Sweden and Poland, he implemented substantial reforms and proclaimed the Russian Empire in 1721. While the oldest endonyms of the Grand Duchy of Moscow used in its documents were Rus and the Russian land, in the 1480s Russian state scribes Ivan Cherny and Mikhail Medovartsev mention Russia under the name Росиа, Medovartsev also mentions the sceptre of Russian lordship. In England of the 16th century, it was both as Russia and Muscovy. In Northern Europe and at the court of the Holy Roman Empire, however, muscovites refute this, saying that their country was originally called Russia. When they are asked what nation they are, they respond Russac, which means Russians, and when they are asked what place they are from, by the 16th century, the Russian ruler had emerged as a powerful, autocratic figure, a Tsar. By assuming that title, the sovereign of Moscow tried to emphasize that he was a ruler or emperor on par with the Byzantine emperor or the Mongol khan. At first, the Byzantine term autokrator expressed only the meaning of an independent ruler. Ivan IV was crowned Tsar and thus was recognized, at least by the Russian Orthodox Church and that concept was to resonate in the self-image of Russians in future centuries. The development of the Tsars autocratic powers reached a peak during the reign of Ivan IV, Ivan strengthened the position of the Tsar to an exceptional degree, demonstrating the risks of unrestrained power in the hands of a mentally unstable individual. Although apparently intelligent and energetic, Ivan suffered from breakdowns of paranoia and depression, Ivan IV became Grand Prince of Moscow in 1533 at the age of three. The Shuysky and Belsky factions of the boyars competed for control of the regency until Ivan assumed the throne in 1547, reflecting Moscows new imperial claims, Ivans coronation as Tsar was a ritual modeled after those of the Byzantine emperors. With the continuing assistance of a group of boyars, Ivan began his reign with a series of useful reforms, in the 1550s, he declared a new law code, revamped the military, and reorganized local government. These reforms undoubtedly were intended to strengthen the state in the face of continuous warfare, the key documents prepared by the so-called Select Council of advisors and promulgated during this period are as follows. Muscovy remained a fairly unknown society in Western Europe until Baron Sigismund von Herberstein published his Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii in 1549 and this provided a broad view of what had been a rarely visited and poorly reported state. In the 1630s, the Russian Tsardom was visited by Adam Olearius, whose lively, further information about Russia was circulated by English and Dutch merchants. One of them, Richard Chancellor, sailed to the White Sea in 1553, upon his return to England, the Muscovy Company was formed by himself, Sebastian Cabot, Sir Hugh Willoughby, and several London merchants. Ivan the Terrible used these merchants to exchange letters with Elizabeth I, despite the domestic turmoil of the 1530s and 1540s, Russia continued to wage wars and to expand
25.
Isfahan
–
Isfahan, historically also rendered in English as Ispahan, Sepahan, Esfahan or Hispahan, is the capital of Isfahan Province in Iran, located about 340 kilometres south of Tehran. The Greater Isfahan Region had a population of 3,793,104 in the 2011 Census, the counties of Isfahan, Borkhar, Najafabad, Khomeynishahr, Shahinshahr, Mobarakeh, Falavarjan, Tiran o Karvan, Lenjan and Jay all constitute the metropolitan city of Isfahan. Isfahan is located on the main north–south and east–west routes crossing Iran and it flourished from 1050 to 1722, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries under the Safavid dynasty, when it became the capital of Persia for the second time in its history. Even today, the city retains much of its past glory and it is famous for its Persian–Islamic architecture, with many beautiful boulevards, covered bridges, palaces, mosques, and minarets. This led to the Persian proverb Esfahān nesf-e- jahān ast, the Naghsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan is one of the largest city squares in the world. It has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, the city also has a wide variety of historic monuments and is known for the paintings, history and architecture. Isfahan City Center is also the 5th largest shopping mall in the world, see also, Names of Isfahan The name of the region derives from Middle Persian Spahān. Spahān is attested in various Middle Persian seals and inscriptions, including that of Zoroastrian Magi Kartir, the present-day name is the Arabicized form of Ispahan. The region appears with the abbreviation GD on Sasanian numismatics, in Ptolemys Geographia it appears as Aspadana, translating to place of gathering for the army. It is believed that Spahān derives from spādānām the armies, Old Persian plural of spāda, the history of Isfahan can be traced back to the Palaeolithic period. In recent discoveries, archaeologists have found artifacts dating back to the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze and Iron ages. It is said that after Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from Babylon some Jews returned to Jerusalem whereas some others decided to live in Persia, but, actually this happened later in the Sasanid period when a Jewish colony was made in the vicinity of the Sasanid. They did not settle anywhere or in any city without examining the water. They did all along until they reached the city of Isfahan, there they rested, examined the water and soil and found that both resembled Jerusalem. Upon they settled there, cultivated the soil, raised children and grandchildren, under the Parthians, Arsacid governors administered a large province from Isfahan, and the citys urban development accelerated to accommodate the needs of a capital city. The next empire to rule Persia, the Sassanids, presided over changes in their realm, instituting sweeping agricultural reform and reviving Iranian culture. The city was called by the name and the region by the name Aspahan or Spahan. The city was governed by Espoohrans or the members of seven noble Iranian families who had important royal positions, extant foundations of some Sassanid-era bridges in Isfahan suggest that the kings were also fond of ambitious urban planning projects
26.
Abbas I of Persia
–
Shāh Abbās the Great or Shāh Abbās I of Persia was the 5th Safavid Shah of Iran, and is generally considered the strongest ruler of the Safavid dynasty. He was the son of Shah Mohammad Khodabanda. Although Abbas would preside over the apex of Irans military, political and economic power, under his weak-willed father, the country was riven with discord between the different factions of the Qizilbash army, who killed Abbas mother and elder brother. Meanwhile, Irans enemies, the Ottoman Empire and the Uzbeks, in 1588, one of the Qizilbash leaders, Murshid Qoli Khan, overthrew Shah Mohammed in a coup and placed the 16-year-old Abbas on the throne. But Abbas was no puppet and soon seized power for himself, under his leadership, Abbas created numerous opportunities for thousands of Circassians, Georgians, and Armenians to join the civil administration and the military. These actions, as well as his reforms of the Iranian army, enabled him to fight the Ottomans and Uzbeks and he also took back land from the Portuguese and the Mughals and expanded Iranian rule and influence in the North Caucasus, beyond the traditional territories of Dagestan. Abbas was a builder and moved his kingdoms capital from Qazvin to Isfahan. In his later years, following a court intrigue involving several leading Circassians, at the time of his birth, Abbas grandfather Shah Tahmasp I was the Shah of Iran. Abbas parents gave him to be nursed by Khani Khan Khanum, when Abbas was four, Tahmasp sent Abbas father to stay in Shiraz where the climate was better for his fragile health. In 1578, Abbas father became Shah of Iran, Abbas mother soon came to dominate the government, but she had little time for Abbas, preferring to promote the interests of his elder brother Hamza. Mohammad was a sovereign, incapable of preventing Irans main rivals, the Ottoman Empire. The young prince, Hamza, was promising and led a campaign against the Ottomans. At the age of 14, Abbas had come under the guardianship of Murshid Qoli Khan, when a large Uzbek army invaded Khorasan in 1587, Murshid decided the time was right to overthrow Shah Mohammad. He rode to the Safavid capital Qazvin with the young prince, Mohammad made no objection against his deposition and handed the royal insignia over to his son during the following year on 1 October 1588. The kingdom Abbas inherited was in a desperate state, the Ottomans had seized vast territories in the west and the north-west and the Uzbeks had overrun half of Khorasan in the north-east. Iran itself was riven by fighting between the factions of the Qizilbash, who had mocked royal authority by killing the queen in 1579. First, Abbas settled his score with his mothers killers, executing three of the ringleaders of the plot and exiling four others and his next task was to free himself from the power of Murshid Qoli Khan. Murshid made Abbas marry Hamzas widow and a Safavid cousin, and began distributing important government posts among his own friends, meanwhile, the Uzbeks continued their conquest of Khorasan
27.
Muslim
–
A Muslim is someone who follows or practices Islam, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion. Muslims consider the Quran, their book, to be the verbatim word of God as revealed to the Islamic prophet. They also follow the teachings and practices of Muhammad as recorded in traditional accounts, Muslim is an Arabic word meaning one who submits. Most Muslims will accept anyone who has publicly pronounced Shahadah as a Muslim, the shahadah states, There is no god but the God and Muhammad is the last messenger of the God. The testimony authorized by God in the Quran that can found in Surah 3,18 states, There is no god except God, which in Arabic, is the exact testimony which God Himself utters, as well as the angels and those who possess knowledge utter. The word muslim is the active participle of the verb of which islām is a verbal noun, based on the triliteral S-L-M to be whole. A female adherent is a muslima, the plural form in Arabic is muslimūn or muslimīn, and its feminine equivalent is muslimāt. The Arabic form muslimun is the stem IV participle of the triliteral S-L-M, the ordinary word in English is Muslim. It is sometimes transliterated as Moslem, which is an older spelling, the word Mosalman is a common equivalent for Muslim used in Central Asia. Until at least the mid-1960s, many English-language writers used the term Mohammedans or Mahometans, although such terms were not necessarily intended to be pejorative, Muslims argue that the terms are offensive because they allegedly imply that Muslims worship Muhammad rather than God. Other obsolete terms include Muslimite and Muslimist, musulmán/Mosalmán is a synonym for Muslim and is modified from Arabic. In English it was sometimes spelled Mussulman and has become archaic in usage, the Muslim philosopher Ibn Arabi said, A Muslim is a person who has dedicated his worship exclusively to God. Islam means making ones religion and faith Gods alone. The Quran states that men were Muslims because they submitted to God, preached His message and upheld His values. Thus, in Surah 3,52 of the Quran, Jesus disciples tell him, We believe in God, and you be our witness that we are Muslims. In Muslim belief, before the Quran, God had given the Tawrat to Moses, the Zabur to David and the Injil to Jesus, who are all considered important Muslim prophets. The most populous Muslim-majority country is Indonesia, home to 12. 7% of the worlds Muslims, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Egypt. About 20% of the worlds Muslims lives in the Middle East and North Africa, Sizable minorities are found in India, China, Russia, Ethiopia. The country with the highest proportion of self-described Muslims as a proportion of its population is Morocco
28.
Alexander II of Kakheti
–
Alexander II of the Bagrationi Dynasty, was a king of Kakheti in eastern Georgia from 1574 to 1605. In spite of an international situation, he managed to retain relative economic stability in his kingdom. Alexander fell victim to the Iran-sponsored coup led by his own son, Alexander was a son of King Levan of Kakheti by his first wife Tinatin Gurieli. Upon Levan’s death in 1574, Alexander secured his succession in a struggle with his half-brothers – El-Mirza and Kaikhosro –. Alexander II continued a policy of his predecessors aimed at keeping peace with the neighbors of Kakheti. This, for the time being, secured the economic stability and prosperity in the kingdom, however, he faced a difficult task of maneuvering between the Ottomans and Saffavid Iran as both empires vied for the hegemony in the Caucasus. The move did not prevent, however, Kakheti from being attacked by the subjects of the Shamkhal of Tarki who was apparently instigated by the Ottoman agents. Alexander decided to resume his father’s efforts to establish alliance with the Tsardom of Russia, after exchanging ambassadors in 1586–1587, Alexander received the protection of Tsar Feodor I of Russia, signing the Book of Pledge in 1589. Russian troops were sent against the shamkhal in a campaign of 1592. Little else came of the Russian promises, leading to a series of complaints by Alexander to the tsar’s ambassadors, in October 1601, Alexander’s son, David, revolted from the royal authority and seized the crown, forcing his father to retire to a monastery. David died a year later, on October 2,1602, meanwhile, Iran started to regain what had earlier been lost to the Ottomans. The energetic Shah Abbas I laid a siege to the Ottoman-held fortress of Erivan in November 1603, after months of hesitation, Alexander acceded and arrived at Erivan in April 1604. Early in 1605, Shah Abbas sent him back with orders to raid Shirvan and he was accompanied by his son, Constantine, who had been raised at the Saffavid court as a convert to Islam. Back in Kakheti, Alexander found a new Russian embassy requesting his support in a campaign against the shamkhal. The Russian envoys had already been received by Alexander’s son, George. Dissatisfied by this maneuver, Constantine demanded the execution of the shah’s orders. On March 12,1605, Alexander summoned a council at Zagem, within hours, Constantine led his Qizilbash entourage into a bloody coup against his own father, Alexander, George and several of their nobles were massacred. Constantine was made by the king of Kakheti, and the Saffavid suzerainty was, for the time being
29.
Ottoman Empire
–
After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
30.
Principality of Guria
–
The Principality of Guria was a historical state in Georgia. The principality emerged during the process of fragmentation of a unified Kingdom of Georgia, in 1463, Bagrat and his allies met and defeated the king at the Battle of Chikhori. As a result, George VIII lost all the western provinces, from this time on, the Gurieli also invested local bishops at Shemokmedi, Jumati, and Khinotsminda, nominally under the spiritual superintendence of the Georgian Orthodox Catholicos of Abkhazia. The polities of western Georgia fought one another for supremacy, particularly the Gurieli of Guria and they forged a temporary alliance and organized, in January 1533, an ultimately disastrous expedition against the piratical tribe of Zygii in the north of Abkhazia. This setback enabled the king of Imereti to reassert his hegemony over Guria, the situation became even more precarious after the allied army of Georgian dynasts suffered a defeat at the Battle of Sokhoista. Mamia II Gurieli managed to reconquer Adjara in 1609, but was forced to renounce, on December 13,1614, any claims to the region. The incessant feudal wars in western Georgia resulted in the decline of Guria, yet, several princes of Guria, most notably Giorgi III Gurieli, and Mamia III Gurieli, managed to occasionally attain to the crown of Mingrelia and even of Imereti. The princely vassals of the Gurieli included the houses of Gugunava, Machutadze, Maksimenishvili, Nakashidze, Tavdgiridze, Shalikashvili, Zedginidze, during the early 18th century, Guria faced an increasing political and economic downfall due to the Ottoman encroachments as well as repeated occasions of civil strife. Attempts by the Gurian princes to enter into alliances with other Georgian rulers, by 1723, the Gurieli had lost Batumi and Chakvi to the Ottomans and the whole coastline of Guria had been garrisoned by the Turks. The Gurian support to the Russians during the Russo-Turkish War caused a reaction from the Ottoman government. Kobuleti and the area were detached from Guria and subjected to Islamization. The rest of Christian population had to move to regions of Georgia. This, combined with extensive slave trade and Turkish inroads, resulted in a depopulation of several areas of Guria towards the late 18th century. The population of Guria was estimated by Güldenstädt at 5,000, the latter-day princes of Guria firmly chose a pro-Russian orientation. During the Russo-Turkish War, on June 19,1810, Mamia V Gurieli accepted Russian suzerainty, Guria joined the empire as an autonomous principality, retaining its self-governance and a local code. Very desirous of adopting European customs and habits, Mamia initiated a series of reforms and modernized administration, economy, when Mamia died on October 26,1826, his underage son, David succeeded him on the throne under the regency of Princess Dowager Sophia. Anxious to secure her autonomy from the Russian government, she sided with the Turks during the Russo-Turkish War, on September 2,1829, the Russian authorities deposed David and forced Sophia into exile to Turkey. Guria was annexed to the Russian Empire, first under a provisional governance, and then, in 1840, as the Ozurgeti uyezd within the Kutais Governorate
31.
Black Sea
–
The Black Sea is a body of water between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. It is supplied by a number of rivers, such as the Danube, Dnieper, Rioni, Southern Bug. The Black Sea has an area of 436,400 km2, a depth of 2,212 m. It is constrained by the Pontic Mountains to the south and by the Caucasus Mountains to the east, the longest east-west extent is about 1,175 km. The Black Sea has a water balance, that is, a net outflow of water 300 km3 per year through the Bosphorus. Mediterranean water flows into the Black Sea as part of a two-way hydrological exchange, the Black Sea drains into the Mediterranean Sea and then the Atlantic Ocean, via the Aegean Sea and various straits. The Bosphorus Strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and these waters separate Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The Black Sea is also connected to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch, the water level has varied significantly. Due to these variations in the level in the basin. At certain critical water levels it is possible for connections with surrounding water bodies to become established and it is through the most active of these connective routes, the Turkish Straits, that the Black Sea joins the world ocean. When this hydrological link is not present, the Black Sea is a basin, operating independently of the global ocean system. Currently the Black Sea water level is high, thus water is being exchanged with the Mediterranean. The Turkish Straits connect the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea, and comprise the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Black Sea as follows, On the Southwest. The Northeastern limit of the Sea of Marmara, a line joining Cape Takil and Cape Panaghia. Strabos Geographica reports that in antiquity, the Black Sea was often just called the Sea, for the most part, Graeco-Roman tradition refers to the Black Sea as the Hospitable sea, Εὔξεινος Πόντος Eúxeinos Póntos. This is a euphemism replacing an earlier Inhospitable Sea, Πόντος Ἄξεινος Póntos Áxeinos, strabo thinks that the Black Sea was called inhospitable before Greek colonization because it was difficult to navigate, and because its shores were inhabited by savage tribes. The name was changed to hospitable after the Milesians had colonized the southern shoreline and it is also possible that the epithet Áxeinos arose by popular etymology from a Scythian word axšaina- unlit, dark, the designation Black Sea may thus date from antiquity. A map of Asia dating to 1570, entitled Asiae Nova Descriptio, from Abraham Orteliuss Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, english-language writers of the 18th century often used the name Euxine Sea to refer to the Black Sea
32.
Luarsab II of Kartli
–
Luarsab II the Holy Martyr, of the Bagrationi dynasty, was a king of Kartli from 1606 to 1615. He is known for his martyr’s death at the hands of the Persian shah Abbas I, the Georgian Orthodox Church regards him as saint and marks his memory on the day of his death, July 1. Luarsab ascended the Kartlian throne at the age of 14 after his father, Giorgi X, during his minority, the government was actually run by a royal tutor Shadiman Baratashvili. It was when Abbas I succeeded in driving the Ottoman armies out of eastern Georgia, leaving a Persian force in Tbilisi, and confirming Luarsab as king of Kartli. The Ottomans attempted to remove Luarsab, sending in Georgia a large army, after this victory, Luarsab was granted again the control of the citadel of Tbilisi and the shah married his sister Tinatin,1610. Late in 1611, Luarsab himself married Makrine, a sister of a lower-class noble Saakadze, the great nobles of the realm led by Shadiman Baratashvili convinced the king that Saakadze was a Persian agent seeking a royal crown. They induced Luarsab to divorce Makrine and forced Saakadze into exile to Persia, shah Abbas indeed demanded more loyalty and obedience from the Georgians and encouraged a khan of Kazakh Mohammad to trouble the Kartlian lands. In 1612, Luarsab had Mohammad Khan assassinated and allied with another Georgian monarch, early in 1614, a large Persian army invaded Kakheti, destroying several settlements on its way, and moved into Kartli. Luarsab and Teimuraz fled to a western Georgian Kingdom of Imereti, george III of Imereti refused to surrender the refugees. Abbas threatened Kartli with ruin, promising that if Luarsab submitted, in October 1615, Luarsab surrendered to save his kingdom from being wiped out, and, refusing to convert to Islam, was incarcerated first in the fortress of Astarabad, and then in Shiraz. The Georgians attempted to free their king through the mediation of Tsar Mikhail I of Russia, however, the negotiations yielded no results and, in 1622, Luarsab was executed on the orders of the shah. Luarsab I Luarsab the Martyr, an essay by Ilia Chavchavadze,1886, the Orthodox Church in America website Kings of Kartli at Royal Ark website
33.
Giorgi Saakadze
–
Giorgi Saakadze the Grand Mouravi was a Georgian politician and military commander who played an important but contradictory role in the politics of the early 17th-century Georgia. He was also known as Grand Mouravi in Georgia, Mūrāv-Beg in Persia, saakadzes family came of the untitled nobility. His father, Siaush, rose in prominence through a service to King Simon I of Kartli. Under the young king Luarsab II, he was appointed a mourav of Tbilisi, Tskhinvali, Saakadze’s influence and prestige especially grew after he destroyed an Ottoman invasion force at the battle of Tashiskari in June 1609, thereby saving Luarsab from being dislodged. The animosity between the two nobles parties centered on the princes P’arsadan Tsitsishvili and Shadiman Baratashvili on one hand, the nobles convinced Luarsab that Saakadze was an Iranian traitor, prompting him to divorce Macrine and authorize a plot to kill him in May 1612. Saakadze escaped the trap and defected to Iran, in 1619, the shah appointed him a vekil to Bagrat Khan, the Iranian nominee to the throne of Kartli. Saakadze turned into a de facto ruler of Kartli, once the hostilities with the Ottomans resumed, Saakadze served as one of the leading commanders in the shah’s ranks from 1621 to 1623. His military exploits led Abbas to appoint him to the staff of Qarachaqay Khan who led a 35, Saakadze then discovered that the Shah planned to massacre all armed Kartlians, including himself. In an act of revenge, Shah Abbas put Saakadze’s younger son, Paata, to death, the punitive Iranian expedition followed soon thereafter, and won a costly victory over the Georgians at the battle of Marabda. Saakadze withdrew into the mountains, and organized a guerrilla resistance which forced Abbas I to recognize Teimuraz’s royal status. The unity of Georgian nobles quickly collapsed, however, Saakadze’s opposition to Teimuraz’s control of Kartli led to a bitter conflict which culminated in the fratricidal battle of Bazaleti in the fall of 1626. The royal army won a victory, driving Saakadze into exile to Istanbul where he entered the service of Sultan Ibrahim I and he briefly served as a governor of the Konya Vilayet and fought against the Iranians at Erzurum, and in Meskheti. Saakadzes last surviving son, Ioram, later attained to the rank in Georgia. Saakadze’s controversial career has always been a source of conflicting perceptions of his role in Georgia’s history, the first attempt at the rehabilitation of Saakadze was made by his relative Metropolitan Joseph of Tbilisi in his poem The Grand Mouravi. In the 1940s, Joseph Stalin’s wartime propaganda established Saakadze as a symbol of Georgian patriotism. It intentionally avoided any mention of Saakadze’s own adventures and illustrated him as a leader against the external aggressors. Ironically, Giorgi Saakadze was also the name of the Wehrmachts 797th Battalion, one of Georgian battalions formed by the Germans to fight the Soviet Union
34.
Imereti
–
Imereti is a region in Georgia situated along the middle and upper reaches of the Rioni river. Traditionally, Imereti is a region, known for its mulberries and grapes. The 800,000 Imeretians speak a Georgian dialect, they are one of the local culture-groups of the ethnically subdivided Georgian people, in late antiquity and early Middle Ages the ancient western Georgian kingdom of Egrisi existed on the territory of Imereti. Its king declared Christianity as a religion of Egrisi in 523 AD. In 975-1466 Imereti was part of the united Georgian Kingdom, since its disintegration in the 15th century, Imereti was an independent kingdom. In the 17th-18th centuries the kingdom of Imereti suffered frequent invasions by the Turks and paid patronage to the Ottoman Empire until 1810, the last King of Imereti was Solomon II. From 1918–1921, Imereti was part of the independent Democratic Republic of Georgia, within the USSR, the region was part of the Transcaucasian SFSR from 1922–1936, and part of the Georgian SSR from 1936–1991. Since Georgian independence in 1991, Imereti has been a region of Georgia with Kutaisi as the regional capital, Kingdom of Imereti Subdivisions of Georgia Imereti. com - The Guide to Imereti, Georgia, Sakartvelo Official website Civil. GE
35.
Islam
–
Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion which professes that there is only one and incomparable God and that Muhammad is the last messenger of God. It is the worlds second-largest religion and the major religion in the world, with over 1.7 billion followers or 23% of the global population. Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, and unique, and He has guided mankind through revealed scriptures, natural signs, and a line of prophets sealed by Muhammad. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, viewed by Muslims as the word of God. Muslims believe that Islam is the original, complete and universal version of a faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses. As for the Quran, Muslims consider it to be the unaltered, certain religious rites and customs are observed by the Muslims in their family and social life, while social responsibilities to parents, relatives, and neighbors have also been defined. Besides, the Quran and the sunnah of Muhammad prescribe a comprehensive body of moral guidelines for Muslims to be followed in their personal, social, political, Islam began in the early 7th century. Originating in Mecca, it spread in the Arabian Peninsula. The expansion of the Muslim world involved various caliphates and empires, traders, most Muslims are of one of two denominations, Sunni or Shia. Islam is the dominant religion in the Middle East, North Africa, sizable Muslim communities are also found in Horn of Africa, Europe, China, Russia, Mainland Southeast Asia, Philippines, Northern Borneo, Caucasus and the Americas. Converts and immigrant communities are found in almost every part of the world, Islam is a verbal noun originating from the triliteral root s-l-m which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, submission, safeness and peace. In a religious context it means voluntary submission to God, Islām is the verbal noun of Form IV of the root, and means submission or surrender. Muslim, the word for an adherent of Islam, is the active participle of the verb form. The word sometimes has connotations in its various occurrences in the Quran. In some verses, there is stress on the quality of Islam as a state, Whomsoever God desires to guide. Other verses connect Islām and dīn, Today, I have perfected your religion for you, I have completed My blessing upon you, still others describe Islam as an action of returning to God—more than just a verbal affirmation of faith. In the Hadith of Gabriel, islām is presented as one part of a triad that also includes imān, Islam was historically called Muhammadanism in Anglophone societies. This term has fallen out of use and is said to be offensive because it suggests that a human being rather than God is central to Muslims religion
36.
Shiraz
–
Shiraz is the sixth-most-populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars Province. At the 2011 census, the population of the city was 1,700,665, Shiraz is located in the southwest of Iran on the Roodkhaneye Khoshk seasonal river. It has a climate and has been a regional trade center for over a thousand years. Shiraz is one of the oldest cities of ancient Persia, the earliest reference to the city, as Tiraziš, is on Elamite clay tablets dated to 2000 BC. In the 13th century, Shiraz became a center of the arts and letters, due to the encouragement of its ruler. It was the capital of Persia during the Zand dynasty from 1750 until 1800, two famous poets of Iran, Hafez and Saadi, are from Shiraz, whose tombs are on the north side of the current city boundaries. Shiraz is known as the city of poets, literature, wine and it is also considered by many Iranians to be the city of gardens, due to the many gardens and fruit trees that can be seen in the city, for example Eram Garden. Shiraz has had major Jewish and Christian communities, the crafts of Shiraz consist of inlaid mosaic work of triangular design, silver-ware, pile carpet-weaving and weaving of kilim, called gilim and jajim in the villages and among the tribes. In Shiraz industries such as cement production, sugar, fertilizers, textile products, wood products, metalwork, Shirāz also has a major oil refinery and is also a major center for Irans electronic industries, 53% of Irans electronic investment has been centered in Shiraz. Shiraz is home to Irans first solar power plant, recently the citys first wind turbine has been installed above Babakoohi mountain near the city. The earliest reference to the city is on Elamite clay tablets dated to 2000 BCE, found in June 1970, the tablets written in ancient Elamite name a city called Tiraziš. Phonetically, this is interpreted as /tiračis/ or /ćiračis/ and this name became Old Persian /širājiš/, through regular sound change comes the modern Persian name Shirāz. The name Shiraz also appears on clay sealings found at a 2nd-century CE Sassanid ruin, by some of the native writers, the name Shiraz has derived from a son of Tahmuras, the third Shāh of the world according to Ferdowsis Shāhnāma. Shiraz is most likely more than 4,000 years old, the name Shiraz is mentioned in cuneiform inscriptions from around 2000 BC found in southwestern corner of the city. According to some Iranian mythological traditions, it was erected by Tahmuras Diveband. The oldest sample of wine in the world, dating to approximately 7,000 years ago, was discovered on clay jars recovered outside of Shiraz, in the Achaemenian era, Shiraz was on the way from Susa to Persepolis and Pasargadae. In Ferdowsis Shāhnāma it has said that Artabanus V, the Parthian Emperor of Iran. Ghasre Abu-Nasr which is originally from Parthian era is situated in this area, during the Sassanid era, Shiraz was in between the way which was connecting Bishapur and Gur to Istakhr
37.
Tsar
–
Tsar /zɑːr/ or /tsɑːr/, also spelled tzar, csar, or czar, is a title used to designate certain Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, occasionally, the word could be used to designate other secular supreme rulers. Simeon II, the last Tsar of Bulgaria, is the last person to have borne the title Tsar, the title Tsar is derived from the Latin title for the Roman emperors, Caesar. In the history of the Greek language, basileus had originally meant something like potentate and it gradually approached the meaning of king in the Hellenistic Period, and it came to designate emperor after the inception in the Roman Empire. Thus, tsar was not only used as an equivalent of Latin imperator but was used to refer to Biblical rulers. From this ambiguity, the development has moved in different directions in the different Slavic languages, thus, the Bulgarian language and Russian language no longer use tsar as an equivalent of the term emperor/imperator as it exists in the West European tradition. Currently, the term refers to native sovereigns, ancient and Biblical rulers, as well as monarchs in fairy tales. The title of king is sometimes perceived as alien and is by some Russian-speakers reserved for European royalty, foreign monarchs of imperial status, both inside and outside of Europe, ancient as well as modern, are generally called imperator, rather than tsar. Biblical rulers in Serbian are called цар and in Croatian kralj, in the Polish language however tsar is always used as imperator, never as king. The term tsar is very used to refer to the Russian rulers after Peter the Great. In 705 Emperor Justinian II named Tervel of Bulgaria Caesar, the first foreigner to receive this title, the sainted Boris I is sometimes retrospectively referred to as tsar, because at his time Bulgaria was converted to Christianity. However, the tsar was actually adopted and used for the first time by his son Simeon I. Since in Byzantine political theory there was place for two emperors, Eastern and Western, the Bulgarian ruler was crowned basileus as a spiritual son of the Byzantian basileus. In Latin sources the Emperor of Bulgaria is sometimes designated Emperor of Zagora, various additional epithets and descriptions apart, the official style read Emperor and autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks. During the five-century period of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, the sultan was referred to as tsar. This may be related to the fact that he had claimed the legacy of the Byzantine Empire or to the fact that the sultan was called Basileus in medieval Greek, after Bulgarias liberation from the Ottomans in 1878, its new monarchs were at first autonomous prince. With the declaration of independence, Ferdinand I of Bulgaria adopted the traditional title tsar in 1908. However, these titles were not generally perceived as equivalents of emperor any longer, in the Bulgarian as in the Greek vernacular, the meaning of the title had shifted
38.
Michael I of Russia
–
Michael I of Russia became the first Russian Tsar of the house of Romanov after the zemskiy sobor of 1613 elected him to rule the Tsardom of Russia. He was the son of Feodor Nikitich Romanov and of Xenia and he was also a nephew of Feodor I through his aunt Anastasia Romanovna and through marriage with Tsar Ivan IV of Russia. His accession marked the end of the Time of Troubles of 1598-1613, michaels grandfather, Nikita, was brother to the earlier Tsarina Anastasia and a central advisor to Ivan the Terrible. As a young boy, Michael and his mother had been exiled to Beloozero in 1600 and this was a result of the recently elected Tsar Boris Godunov, in 1598, falsely accusing his father, Feodor, of treason. This may have been partly because Feodor had married Ksenia Shestova against Boris wishes and he had been chosen after several other options had been removed, including royalty of Poland and Sweden. Initially, Martha protested, believing and stating that her son was too young and tender for so difficult an office, and in such a troublesome time. Michaels election and accession to the form the basis of the Ivan Susanin legend. He was crowned on 22 July 1613, the first task of the new tsar was to clear the land of the countries occupying it. Sweden and Poland were then dealt with respectively by the peace of Stolbovo, Tsar Michael suffered from a progressive leg injury, which resulted in his not being able to walk towards the end of his life. He was a gentle and pious prince who gave trouble to anyone. Sometimes they were relatively honest and capable men like his father, sometimes they were corrupted and bigoted and he was married off to Princess Maria Vladimirovna Dolgorukova in 1624, but she became ill, and died in early 1625, only four months after the marriage. In 1626, he married Eudoxia Streshneva, who bore him 10 children, of whom four reached adulthood, the future Tsar Alexis and the Tsarevnas Irina, Anna, the two government offices that were most important politically were Posolsky Prikaz and Razryadny Prikaz. Those offices could be pivotal in struggles between Boyar factions, so they were traditionally headed not by Boyars but by dyak, the first head of the Posolsky Prikaz under Michael was Pyotr Tretyakov until his death in 1618, he conducted policy of allying with Sweden against Poland. The next one, Ivan Gramotin had a reputation of a Poloniphile, in mid-20s Filaret began preparations for war with Poland, Gramotin fell in his disfavour and was fired and exiled in 1626. The same fate was shared by Efim Telepnev in 1630 and Fedor Likhachov in 1631 - they too tried to soothe Filarets belligerent approach, Ivan Gryazev, appointed in 1632, was promoted from second ranks of bureaucracy to fulfill Filarets orders. After Filarets and Gryazevs deaths the post was again assumed by Gramotin in 1634. Razryadny Prikaz was first headed by Sydavny Vasilyev, Filaret replaced him by his fellow in captivity Tomilo Lugovskoy, but the latter somehow caused Filarets anger and was exiled. In 1623 Fedor Likhachov was made head of Prikaz till his shift to Posolsky Prikaz, and in 1630 Razryad was given to Ivan Gavrenev, three other strategic offices were Streletsky Prikaz, Treasury, and Aptekarsky Prikaz
39.
Time of Troubles
–
In 1601–03, Russia suffered a famine that killed one-third of the population, about two million. At the time, during the Polish–Muscovite War, Russia was occupied by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Godunovs short reign was not as successful as his administration under the weak Feodor. Extremely poor harvests were encountered in 1601–03, with night temperatures in all summer months often below freezing, wrecking crops. The probable cause of changes was the eruption of Huaynaputina volcano in Peru in 1600. Under the influence of the nobles who had unsuccessfully opposed the election of Godunov. Rumours circulated that the tsars younger brother Dmitri, thought to be dead, was still alive. In 1603 a man calling himself Dmitri—first of the so-called False Dmitris—and professing to be the heir to the throne. He attracted support both in Russia and outside its borders, particularly in the Polish Commonwealth and the Papal States, False Dmitri was married per procura to Marina Mniszech, and immediately after Godunovs death in 1605, he made his triumphal entry into Moscow. The reign of False Dimitri was short, before a year had passed, Vasily Shuisky, an ambitious Rurikid prince, formed a conspiracy against him. His forces murdered False Dimitri soon after his marriage in the Moscow Kremlin, together with many of his supporters, Shuisky and his men were estimated to have killed 2,000 Poles. The reaction to the massacre in Poland was strong, but the government decided to postpone revenge against those responsible, like his predecessor, he enjoyed the protection and support of the Polish–Lithuanian magnates. After Shuisky signed an alliance with Sweden, the king of the Commonwealth, Sigismund III, seeing the Russian–Swedish alliance as a threat, resolved to intervene, Polish–Lithuanian troops crossed the Russian borders and laid siege to the fortress of Smolensk. After the combined Russo–Swedish forces were destroyed at the Battle of Klushino, before False Dmitri II could gain the throne, the Polish commander, voivode, and magnate Stanisław Żółkiewski, put forward a rival candidate, Sigismunds son, Władysław. Some people in Moscow swore allegiance to him on condition of his maintaining Orthodoxy, on this understanding, they allowed Polish troops to enter the city and occupy the Kremlin. The Polish king opposed the compromise, deciding to take the throne for himself, the contending factions were opposed and his plan aroused the anti-Catholic and anti-Polish feelings in Russia. The Swedes disapproved as they were rivals of the Poles on the Baltic coast and they declared war on Russia, supporting a false Dmitri of their choice in Ivangorod. Russia was in a critical condition, tens of thousands died in battles and riots, on 17–19 March 1611, the Poles and German mercenaries suppressed riots in Moscow, they massacred 7,000 Muscovites and set the city on fire. Many other cities were devastated or weakened
_%E2%80%93_Teimuraz_I_(1606-1648)_with_his_wife_Khoreshan_(Casteli,_drawing).JPG)
