Georgian Historiography of the 17th and 18th Century Modelling and 'Othering' Iran: Writing History in a Transottoman Context

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The 17th and 18th centuries were a highly complex period in the history of Georgia, in particular in its relationship with Iran, the Ottoman Empire and Russia. Officially divided since 1490, the two major Christian kingdoms and a number of smaller principalities were bound together by a nostalgic longing towards a unified realm, but had to face the strong opposition and controversial geo-political strive of these empires for dominance in the southern Caucasus. The intensifying relations between Safavid Iran and Georgia, with many high-ranking members of the Georgian elite taking up military and administrative positions in Iran and the nominal conversion of Georgian kings to Islam, led to a growing circulation and transfer of knowledge and the vivid exchange of ideas and values. These were mirrored, in an exemplary way, in the Georgian historiography of this time.As part of a wider intellectual movement, the Georgian elites of this time endeavoured to revive the tradition of Georgian historiography that had been dormant since the invasions of Timur in the early 15th century. Historiography became the central ideological instrument by which Georgian culture could distance itself from other cultural fields, especially from Iran and Iranian culture. All of these historical works actively negotiated questions of identity and – indeed one of the major characteristics of Georgian historiography of this period. Since most of them were authored in East Georgia, they mirror most strongly the issue of Iran-related alterity in their attempt to distance themselves from Iran and Iranian traditions and thus strengthening and developing their own identity.The present research project investigates and analyses seven central Georgian historiographical works stemming from this period. One can portray the renaissance of Georgian historiography as both a result of the process of trans-ottoman circulation of knowledge and as a critical reaction to it. This means that Georgian historiography was formed in a constant exchange with its Muslim neighbours Iran and the Ottoman Empire, conserving the existing knowledge of self and other in the historical memory for future generations in a narrative form. The leading question is in what way and how Georgian historiography managed to both reinvent itself and to create new identities, using the Iranian ‚other‘ as ideological template and Iranian forms of historiographical writing as stylistic model: the creation of new patterns of terminology, the sacralisation of imagined and abstract spaces, the creation of new historiographical models.