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

17世纪和18世纪是格鲁吉亚历史上非常复杂的时期，特别是它与伊朗、奥斯曼帝国和俄罗斯的关系。自1490年正式分裂以来，这两个主要的基督教王国和一些较小的公国由于对统一王国的怀旧渴望而联系在一起，但必须面对这些帝国在南高加索统治地位的强烈反对和有争议的地缘政治斗争。萨法维派伊朗和格鲁吉亚之间的关系不断加强，格鲁吉亚精英中的许多高级成员在伊朗担任军事和行政职位，格鲁吉亚国王名义上皈依伊斯兰教，导致知识的传播和转让越来越多，思想和价值观的交流也越来越生动。作为更广泛的知识运动的一部分，这一时期的格鲁吉亚精英们努力恢复自15世纪初帖木儿入侵以来一直处于休眠状态的格鲁吉亚史学传统。史学成为格鲁吉亚文化与其他文化领域，特别是与伊朗和伊朗文化保持距离的核心意识形态工具。所有这些历史著作都积极地就身份问题进行了谈判--这确实是这一时期格鲁吉亚史学的主要特征之一。由于它们大多是在东格鲁吉亚创作的，它们最强烈地反映了与伊朗有关的矛盾问题，他们试图与伊朗和伊朗传统保持距离，从而加强和发展自己的身份。本研究项目调查和分析了这一时期格鲁吉亚中部的七部史学著作。人们可以将格鲁吉亚史学的复兴描述为知识跨奥斯曼帝国传播过程的结果，也是对此的批判性反应。这意味着格鲁吉亚史学是在与其穆斯林邻国伊朗和奥斯曼帝国不断交流的过程中形成的，以叙事的形式将关于自己和他人的现有知识保存在历史记忆中供后代使用。主要问题是，格鲁吉亚史学以何种方式和方式成功地重塑了自身，并创造了新的身份，以伊朗人、他人‘为意识形态模板，以伊朗形式的史学写作作为文体模式：创造了新的术语模式，将想象和抽象的空间神圣化，创造了新的史学模式。

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.