Other Baddeley's works are "The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus" (1908), "Russia in the 'eighties', sport and politics" (1921) and "The rugged flanks of Caucasus" (1940); this posthumous work is dedicated to the geography, topography, history, archaeology, Natural history, and ethnology of the Caucasus, including the oil fields of Baku and some pages on Nadir Shah.


Filippo De Filippi (1869–1938) was an Italian medical doctor, scientist, mountaineer and explorer. De Filippo was born in Turin on 6 April 1869 to Giuseppe De Filippi, a lawyer, and Olimpia Sella.


As a doctor he specialised in physiological chemistry and in experimental aspects of surgery, lecturing at Bologna and Genoa universities.


He married Caroline Fitzgerald in 1901, a poet, daughter of William John Fitzgerald. In World War I he volunteered as a lieutenant colonel in the Red Cross and was posted to London from 1917 to 1919 where he ran the Italian office of propaganda and information. He was awarded the honorary knighthood of KCIE in 1916.


He was the editor of the travel and exploration section of the "Enciclopedia italiana". He died at Settignano near Florence on 23 September 1938.


Well known as an Alpine mountaineer, in 1897 he joined the Duke of the Abruzzi in an expedition to Alaska where they were the first people to climb Mount Saint Elias on 31 July. Then, in 1903, he explored Asia, crossing the Caucasus and entering Turkestan. In 1906 he wrote the book about (though did not take part in) Abruzzi's exploration of the Ruwenzori mountains on the Uganda–Congo border. In 1909 he again went with the Duke of the Abruzzi, this time in the Karakoram mountains, writing the book describing the expedition.


From 1913 to 1914, De Filippo organised and led a large and highly successful scientific expedition to Central Asia: Baltistan, Ladakh and Xinjiang. Accurate gravity and magnetic measurements were made and wireless signals were used to determine longitude. There were ethnological and anthropological, topographical and geological studies. The exploration determined that the Rimo Glacier formed the watershed of Central Asia. The work was written up in seventeen volumes.


Heinrich Julius Klaproth (11 October 1783 – 28 August 1835) was a German linguist, historian, ethnographer, author, orientalist and explorer. As a scholar, he is credited along with Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, with being instrumental in turning East Asian Studies into scientific disciplines with critical methods.


H.J. Klaproth was usually known as Julius or Julius von Klaproth. His name also erroneously appears as "Julius Heinrich Klaproth".


Klaproth was born in Berlin on 11 October 1783, the son of the chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who is credited with the discovery of four elements including uranium.


Young Klaproth devoted his energies in quite early life to the study of Asiatic languages, and published in 1802 his "Asiatisches Magazin" (Weimar 1802–1803). He was in consequence called to St. Petersburg and given an appointment in the academy there. In 1805 he was a member of Count Golovkin's embassy to China. On his return he was despatched by the academy to the Caucasus on an ethnographical and linguistic exploration (1807–1808), and was afterwards employed for several years in connection with the academy's Oriental publications. In 1812 he moved to Berlin.


In 1815 he settled in Paris, and in 1816 Humboldt procured him from the king of Prussia the title and salary of professor of Asiatic languages and literature, with permission to remain in Paris as long as was requisite for the publication of his works. He died in Paris on 28 August 1835.


Klaproth was an orientalist or an "Asiatologist," in that he had a good command not only of


Chinese, but also Manchu, Mongolian, Sanskrit, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and even Caucasian languages. His wide range of interests encompassed the study of the development of individual countries in their Asian context, which contrast with the 21st century focus on specialization.


Klaproth's 1812 "Dissertation on language and script of the Uighurs" ("Abhandlung über die Sprache und Schrift der Uiguren") was disputed by Isaak Jakob Schmidt, who is considered the founder of Mongolian Studies. Klaproth asserted that the Uighur language was a Turkic language, which today is undisputed, while Schmidt was persuaded that Uighur should be classified as a "Tangut" language.


Klaproth's bibliography extends to more than 300 published items.


His great work "Asia Polyglotta" (Paris, 1823 and 1831, with Sprachatlas) not only served as a résumé of all that was known on the subject, but formed a new departure for the classification of the Eastern languages, more especially those of the Russian Empire. To a great extent, however, his work is now superseded.


The "Itinerary of a Chinese Traveller" (1821), a series of documents in the military archives of St. Petersburg purporting to be the travels of George Ludwig von , and a similar series obtained from him in the London foreign office, are all regarded as spurious.


Klaproth was also the first to publish a translation of "Taika" era Japanese poetry in the West. Donald Keene explained in a preface to the Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai edition of the "Man'yōshū:"


Gustav Ferdinand Richard Radde (27 November 1831 – 2 March 1903) was a German naturalist and Siberian explorer. Radde's warbler and several other species are named after him.


Radde was born in Danzig, the son of a schoolmaster. He had little formal education, and began a career as an apothecary. At an early age he was influenced by Anton Menge and became increasingly interested in natural history, and in 1852 he gave up his career and spent two years in the Crimea with the botanist Christian von Steven, collecting both plants and animals. He made further trips to southern Russia with Johann Friedrich von Brandt and Karl Ernst von Baer. He was botanist and zoologist on the East Siberian Expedition of 1855, led by the astronomer Ludwig Schwarz.


In 1864 he eventually settled in Tbilisi. In the same year he explored the region surrounding Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in the Western Palearctic. As well as collecting many plants he recorded the languages, ballads and customs of the local tribes. He set up a museum (the Caucasus Museum) and library in Tbilisi to exhibit his discoveries. His collecting expeditions included visits along the Black Sea coast and eastwards beyond the Caspian Sea to Askhabad. In 1895 he sailed to India and Japan with the Grand Duke Michael, and two years later he was official naturalist on a visit by members of the Russian imperial family to North Africa. He eventually became a member of the Council of State in Tbilisi.


In 1884 he was honoured with the chairmanship of the first International Ornithological Congress in Vienna. He was also an honorary member of the "Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft", and a foreign member of the British Ornithologists' Union and the Zoological Society of London. He was awarded the Patron's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1889 and the Constantine Medal of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in 1898.


Animals named after him include birds such as Radde's warbler and Radde's accentor, and amphibians and reptiles such as the Mongolian toad ("Pseudepidalea raddei)", the Azerbaijan lizard ("Darevskia raddei)", a toadhead agama ("Phrynocephalus raddei)", and Radde's mountain viper ("Montivipera raddei)".


Radde was an avid entomologist. His insect (and other) collections are divided: Transbaikal and Amur material is in the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Science; Caucasus and Transcaspian material is in the Georgian National Museum Zoological Section, Tbilisi.


This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Radde when citing a botanical name.


In 1892, he wrote a Russian description of his voyage with the grand dukes Alexander and Sergeis Mikhailovitch.


Ivan Alekseyevich Bartolomei (, 28 November 1813 – 5 October 1870) was an Imperial Russian military officer, antiquarian, and writer.


Bartolomei was born in St. Petersburg in the family of a Russian army general, originally of the Livonian noble family of von Bartholomäi. He took part in the Caucasus War and the Crimean War. In 1853, he led a mission to bring the mountaineers of Free Svanetia under Russian suzerainty. He was promoted to lieutenant-general in 1865. Beyond his service as an Imperial general and bureaucrat, Bartolomei was interested in the peoples and cultures of the Caucasus. He collected Georgian, Bactrian, Parthian, and Sasanian coins, which he subsequently donated to the Hermitage Museum. He authored several studies on the Caucasian ethnography and linguistics and first attempts at creating Abkhaz and Chechen primers. He died in Tiflis in 1870.


Vasileios Vatatzes was born in Therapeia near Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire and was a scion of the Vatatzes noble family. His father was a Greek Orthodox priest who served at the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and he had five siblings.


According to the modern historian Evangelos Venetis, Vatatzes had traveled to Prussia, the Kingdom of France, the Dutch Republic, Great Britain and Denmark by 1732/3. Post-1733 information about Vatatzes's life remains obscure. Venetis notes that in all likelihood, according to Vatatzes's own writings, he "spent much time in the court of Nader Shah, accumulating all necessary information before compiling Nader Shah's biography". In addition to spending much time at court, he also participated in Nader's military expeditions. In 1748, Vatatzes completed Nader's biography (known as the "Persika") in Greek. Vatatzes was proficient in Persian and also drew a map.


According to Venetis, Vatatzes "was associated with the 18th-century Greek Enlightenment of the Danubian Principalities". Venetis adds that Vatatzes either wrote his manuscripts at the court of the Greek Phanariote rulers of the Danubian Principalities or they were reproduced there in large quantities after his death. Anyhow, in all likelihood, Vatatzes was a member of the retinue of the Phanariote rulers. Venetis adds that Vatatzes was "an admirer of Persian civilization and of Nader Shah's rule" and an "important author for Iranian history and Hellenic-Iranian studies". However, his works "have been largely ignored by modern scholarship".


Jean Chardin (16 November 1643 – 5 January 1713), born Jean-Baptiste Chardin, and also known as Sir John Chardin, was a French jeweller and traveller whose ten-volume book "The Travels of Sir John Chardin" is regarded as one of the finest works of early Western scholarship on Persia and the Near East in general.


He was born in Paris, son of a wealthy merchant, jeweller of the Place Dauphine, and followed his father's business.


In 1664, he started for the East Indies with M. Raisin, a Lyons merchant.


They journeyed by Constantinople and the Black Sea, reaching Persia early in 1666.


The same year the shah, Abbas II, made Chardin his agent for the purchase of jewels.


In the middle of 1667, he visited India and returned to Persia in 1669. The next year he arrived in Paris.


He issued an account of some events to which he was an eyewitness in Persia, entitled 'Le Couronnement de Soleiman Troisième,' Paris, 1671.


A learned nobleman, Mirza Sefi, a prisoner in his own palace at Isfahan, had entertained him, instructed him in the Persian language, and assisted him in this work.


Peter de la Croix and Tavernier severely criticised it, while Ange de la Brosse as strongly defended it.


Chardin again started for the East, August 1671.


He was at Constantinople from March to July 1672.


A quarrel between the grand vizier and the French ambassador made the position of French subjects dangerous, and Chardin escaped in a small vessel across the Black Sea, and made a most adventurous journey by Caffa, and through Georgia, and Armenia to Ispahan, which he reached in 1673.


At Sapias, he was robbed by thugs in Samegrelo of all he possessed except two small bundles, worth £6,000.


He stayed at Ispahan four years, following the court in all its removals, and making particular journeys throughout the land, from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf and the river Indus, and visiting several Indian cities.


By these two journeys he realised a considerable fortune, and, deciding to return home, reached Europe in 1677 by a voyage round the Cape of Good Hope.


Of four volumes originally projected the first volume was published in 1686, "Journal du Voyage . . . de Chardin en Parse et aux Indes Orientales," London, fol.


This volume contains the author's journey from Paris to Ispahan, and has the author's half-length portrait by Loggan, with eighteen copper plates, mostly folding.


His former work is reprinted there with a fulsome 'Epistle Dedicatory to James II.'


Chardin in his preface announced three other volumes to follow. The last, which was to contain a short history of Persia, along with his diaries for 1675–77, never appeared. The other three volumes (with many additions to the first) were published at Amsterdam, 1711, 4to, "Voyages de Mons. le Chevalier Chardin", as the complete work. In 1711 another edition, with his translation of "La Relation des Mingreliens", by J. M, Zampi, appeared in ten vols., Amsterdam, l2mo; and in 1735 another edition was published in four vols. 4to, containing a great number of passages added from his manuscripts, but with many omissions of violent Calvinistic passages. The most complete reprint is that of M. L. Langles, in ten vols. 8vo, Paris, 1811.


Chardin's style of writing is simple and graphic, and he gives a faithful account of what he saw and heard. Montesquieu, Rousseau, Gibbon, and Helvetius acknowledge the value of his writings; and Sir William Jones says he gave the best account of Mahometan nations ever published.


Extracts from his works appear in all the chief collections of travels, but there is no complete English translation.


In 1681, Chardin determined to settle in England because of the persecution of Protestants in France.


He was well received at court, and was soon after appointed court jeweller.


He was knighted by Charles II at Whitehall, 17 November 1681.


The same day he married a Protestant lady, Esther, daughter of M. de Lardinière Peigné, councillor in the Parliament of Rouen, then a refugee in London.


He carried on a considerable trade in jewels, and in the correspondence of his time was called 'the flower of merchants.'


In 1682, when he lived in Holland House, Kensington, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.


In 1684, the king sent him as envoy to Holland, where he stayed some years, was styled agent to the East India Company.


On his return to London he devoted most of his time to oriental studies.


In the prefaces to his works, 1686 and 1711, besides travels he speaks of what he calls 'my favourite desipi,' or 'Notes upon Passages of to the Holy Scriptures, illustrated by Eastern ally Customs and Manners,' as having occupied his time for many years.


He did not live after to publish it, and after his death the manuscript was supposed to be lost.


Some of his descendants advertised a reward of twenty guineas for it.


When Thomas Harmer published a second edition of his, 'Observations on divers pissages of Scripture,' 2 vols., London, 1776, 8vo, it was found that by the help of Sir Philip Musgrave, a descendant of Chardin, he had recovered the lost manuscript in six small volumes, and had incorporated almost all of them in his work, under the author's name, or signed 'MS. C.,' i.e. manuscript of Chardin.


In his latter years Chardin lived at Turnin.


Sir John died in Chiswick, London in 1713. He was buried in Turnham Green (Chiswick). A funeral monument to Chardin exists in Westminster Abbey, bearing the inscription "Sir John Chardin – nomen sibi fecit eundo" ("he made a name for himself by travelling").


The remains of Chardin's library were sold by James Levy at Tom's coffee-house, St. Martin's Lane, 1712–13.


He had four sons and three daughters. His eldest son, John, was created a baronet 1720 and died unmarried. He had three others, Daniel, Charles and George. He left his large Kempton Manor House and estate, Sunbury on Thames to his nephew Sir Philip Chardin Musgrave.


Modern scholars consider the 1711 edition of "Voyages" (edited by the Orientalist Louis-Mathieu Langlès) to be the standard version. The complete book has never been translated into English; in fact, English-language versions contain less than half of the original material.


Jean Chardin's life story forms the basis of Dirk Van der Cruysse's 1998 book "Chardin le Persan", and of the partly fictionalised 2011 biography, "Le Joaillier d'Ispahan" by Danielle Digne.


George Kennan (February 16, 1845 – May 10, 1924) was an American explorer noted for his travels in the Kamchatka and Caucasus regions of the Russian Empire. He was a cousin twice removed of the American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan; both shared a birthday.


George Kennan was born in Norwalk, Ohio, and was keenly interested in travel from an early age. However, family finances made him begin work at the Cleveland and Toledo Railroad Company telegraph office at 12.


In 1864, he secured employment with the Russian–American Telegraph Company to survey a route for a proposed overland telegraph line through Siberia and across the Bering Strait. Having spent two years in the wilds of Kamchatka, he returned to Ohio via Saint Petersburg and soon became well known by his lectures, articles, and a book about his travels.


Kennan subsequently (1878) obtained a position with the Associated Press based in Washington, D.C., and as a war correspondent travelled throughout his career to many conflict areas of the world. He also contributed articles to magazines, such as "Century Magazine", "Atlantic Monthly", "McClure's Magazine" (a muckraker magazine), "National Geographic" and "The Outlook".


Kennan befriended other émigrés as well, such as Peter Kropotkin and Sergei Kravchinskii. He became the best-known member of the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, whose membership included Mark Twain and Julia Ward Howe, and also helped found "Free Russia", the first English-language journal to oppose Tsarist Russia. In 1901, the Russian government responded by banning him from Russia.


Kennan was not completely consumed by Russian matters. As a reporter and war correspondent, he also covered American politics, the Spanish–American War, the assassination of President William McKinley, and the Russo-Japanese War, as well as World War I and the Russian Revolution. He also published a book, "E. H. Harriman's Far Eastern Plans", (1917, The Country Life Press) about Harriman's efforts to secure a lease to the South Manchuria Railway from Japan, as well as "The Chicago and Alton Case: A Misunderstood Transaction", (1916, The Country Life Press), defending Harriman's purchase of the Chicago & Alton Railroad from politically motivated criticism by the ICC and Teddy Roosevelt.


Kennan was vehemently against the October Revolution because he felt the Bolsheviks lacked the "knowledge, experience, or education to deal successfully with the tremendous problems that have come up for solutions since the overthrow of the Tsar." President Woodrow Wilson read and weighed Kennan's report in 1918 criticizing the Bolsheviks, but Kennan eventually criticized Wilson's administration for being too timid in intervening against Bolshevism.


Kennan's last criticism of Bolshevism was written in the "Medina Tribune", a small-town newspaper, in July 1923:


Kennan died at his home in Medina, New York on May 10, 1924, and was buried in Boxwood Cemetery.


Robert Mignan (1803 – 3 June 1852) was a British military officer, explorer, and author. He was fellow of the Linnean Society of London and member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.


Mignan entered the Bombay Army in 1819 and became a lieutenant of the 1st European Regiment on 3 May 1820. In January 1821, he was part of an expeditionary force of 2,695 men under the command of General Lionel Smith sent on a punitive campaign against the Bani Bu Ali tribe in Oman.


In the 1820s, Mignan commanded the escort attached to the resident of the British East India Company. Between 1826 and 1828, Mignan made several archaeological excursions into the little known regions of Iraq, visiting such sites as Ctesiphon and Babylon. He published "Travels in Chaldæa: Including a Journey from Bussorah to Bagdad, Hillah, and Babylon, Performed on Foot in 1827" in 1829.


In 1829 Mignan departed, with his family, from London to return to his military duties in India. Travelling through St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, he joined Prince Khosrow Mirza, Persian envoy extraordinary, returning to Persia after conveying regrets at the murder of the Russian diplomat Alexander Griboedov in Teheran. While in St. Petersburg, Mignan met the Prussian scholar Alexander von Humboldt who convinced him to explore the western coastline of the Caspian Sea. His winter journey on a difficult route via Novocherkassk and through the Caucasus to Tiflis, the capital of Russian Georgia, and further south into northwestern Persia in 1829 and 1830 is described in Mignan's travelogue "A Winter Journey through Russia, the Caucasian Alps, and Georgia", published in London in 1839.


Mignan was promoted to captain on 11 September 1830 and major of the right wing on 15 August 1847. His last commission was brevet lieutenant colonel on 7 June 1849. He died in Poonah in 1852.


Vicken Cheterian (Western ) is a Lebanese-born journalist and author, who teaches international relations at Webster University Geneva. He has also lectured at University of Geneva and SOAS University of London (2012-14). Cheterian is also a columnist for the Istanbul-based weekly "Agos". He holds a PhD from Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IUHEI).


Agathangelos (in Agatʿangełos, in Greek "bearer of good news" or angel, 5th century AD ) is the pseudonym of the author of a life of the first apostle of Armenia, Gregory the Illuminator, who died about 332.


According to Agathangelos, he was tasked by Tiridates III to write about his father Khosrov II of Armenia and his reign period. Until the 19th century, based on this fact, scholars believe that Agathangelos lived in the 4th century. However further detailed research of his writing has demonstrated that Agathangelos lived and worked in the 5th century and was not able to be Tiridates III's secretary.


Kirakos Gandzaketsi (}) (c. 1200/1202–1271) was an Armenian historian of the 13th century and author of the "History of Armenia", a summary of events from the 4th to the 12th century and a detailed description of the events of his own days. The work concentrates primarily on the history of Medieval Armenia and events occurring in the Caucasus and Near East. The work serves as a primary source for the study of the Mongol invasions and even contains the first recorded word list of the Mongolian language. The work has been translated into several languages including Latin, French and Russian.


A ransom was paid to free Vanakan in the summer of that year but Kirakos also managed to escape the same night and returned to the town of Getik.


Following Vanakan's death in 1251, Kirakos assumed his former teacher's duties and became the head of the school in New Getik. In 1255, he was granted an audience with the leader of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, Hetum I, in the town of Vardenis (in Aragatsotn), informing him of missionary work in the region.


He remained in New Getik for several more years; he died in 1271 and was buried there.


Kirakos completed several works in his lifetime; however, his most prominent is that of "History of Armenia" (Պատմություն Հայոց). He began to write the book on May 19, 1241 and completed it in 1265. Divided into two parts, the first part of the "History of the Armenians" begins with the life of Gregory the Illuminator, the patron saint of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and is devoted largely to the history of the Armenian church from the third century to the twelfth century. The second part of "History" focuses on the ramifications and physical damage inflicted against the people of the region by the Turkic and Mongol invasions, including the torture and death of Hasan-Jalal, the prince of Khachen.


Approximately 47 facsimiles of the 65 chapters of "History of Armenia" survived and can be found in numerous repositories located around the world including the Matenadaran in Yerevan, Armenia and museums in Vienna, London, Paris, and St. Petersburg.


Tovma Artsruni (; also known in English-language historiography as Thomas Artsruni; precise birth date and date of death unknown) was a ninth-century to tenth-century Armenian historian and author of the "History of the House of Artsrunik" (). Contrary to the given title, the four-volume work not only relates the history of Artsruni royal family, of which he was a member of, and its origins near Lake Van but also comprehensively covers the history of Armenia.


Tovma began writing "History" sometime in the 870s. Much like other histories composed by Armenian historians, the first volume starts at the beginning of the Armenian nation and ends in the middle of the fifth century. However, Tovma's most valuable contributions are found in the second and third volumes which accurately detail Armenian life under the rule of the Arab Caliphates and in particular the 851 Arab military expedition led by the Turkic general Bugha al-Kabir, its subsequent consequences, and the establishment of the independent Bagratid state north of Lake Van. Tovma was a relative of the king of Vaspurakan Gagik I, and wrote a detailed account in "History" about the famous palace and church Gagik constructed on Akhtamar Island.


The precise date that Tovma completed his work is unknown although some historians have determined that it was composed sometime after 905. Tovma's work ends with an incomplete 29th chapter yet several unknown authors (referred to as "Anonymous"; ) took it upon themselves to continue "History" down to the 1370s and added an appendix and colophon. Tovma's "History" was first published in 1852 in Constantinople in Armenian and was subsequently translated into French by Marie-Félicité Brosset in 1862.


Alec (Alirza) Rasizade () is a retired Azeri-American professor of history and political science, who specialized in Sovietology, primarily known for the typological model (or "algorithm" in his own words), which describes the impact of a drop in oil revenues on the process of decline in rentier states by stages and cycles of their general socio-economic degradation upon the end of an oil boom. He has also authored more than 200 studies on the history of international relations, Perestroika reforms and breakup of the USSR, oil diplomacy and contemporary politics in the post-Soviet states and autonomies of Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus.


Professor Rasizade's academic contribution to Sovietology may be divided into 4 general categories: Caspian oil boom, Russia, Azerbaijan and Central Asia. His ideas and conclusions for each of these major studies are summarized in the following theses:


1) Having an insider knowledge of Caspian oil reserves, Rasizade precisely calculated and predicted in his writings the exact end of the second Baku oil boom of 2005-2014, notwithstanding the geopolitical euphoria of the 1990s in Western capitals based on exaggerated estimates by American academia, Azeri government and Caspian oil consortium.


2) On Russia, he wrote that Putin's Bonapartism was a natural result of the 1990s turmoil, when the society as a whole and the nouveau riches in particular, longed for a strongman who could establish order, stability and legitimacy for the illegally acquired wealth even at the expense of civil rights restriction. Furthermore, Rasizade argues that demise of the USSR was only the first stage in the process of Russian Federation's own breakup or, as he put it bluntly, Russia is doomed to disintegrate as did all multinational empires in history.


3) Azerbaijan, in his view, is a classic Middle Eastern petrostate, which will eventually sink into its legitimate place among the impoverished Muslim nations with the end of oil boom, as is predetermined by its culture, endemic corruption and lack of industrial endowment. He insists that the oil boom was just an aberration on Azerbaijan's natural path from communism into the Third world.


4) As for Central Asia, his main argument has been the futility of US efforts to impose there the democratic values of European civilization, since democracy in Muslim countries inevitably leads to election and entrenchment of Islamofascism. Instead of direct Western intervention in the region, he recommends support for the local despots who are able to maintain peace in the region and order in their countries by brutally effective methods of the same Islam.


Simon Janashia (; July 13, 1900 – November 5, 1947) was a Georgian historian and public figure. He was a professor of history and one of the founding members of the Georgian Academy of Sciences.


Janashia was born in 1900, in Makvaneti in the southwestern Georgian province of Guria. His father, Nikoloz Janashia (1872-1918), was an educator and ethnographer, born in Abkhazia. In 1922, Simon Janashia graduated from the Tbilisi State University. From 1924 to 1947, he served as a lecturer (1924-1930), Associate Professor (1930-1935) and Professor (1935-1947) there. In 1941, he was one of the founders of the Georgian Academy of Sciences (GAS), and from 1941 to 1947, he was Vice-President of the Academy and Director of the Institute of History of the GAS. In 1943, Janashia was elected as a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (now the Russian Academy of Science). In the 1940s, he organized archaeological excavations in Mtskheta and Armazi in eastern Georgia.


Janashia's main fields of his research were the ethnogenesis of the Georgians and other Caucasian peoples, the history of feudalism in Georgia and the Caucasus, the history and archaeology of ancient Georgia, the history of Colchis and Caucasian Iberia, the history of Christianity in Georgia, and source studies of the history of Georgia and the Caucasus. He was an author of more than 100 scholarly works, including about 10 monographs. A full collection of Janashia's works was published in four volumes in Tbilisi between 1949 and 1968. Simon Janashia died in Tbilisi in 1947.


Ivane Javakhishvili (, 11 April 1876 – 18 November 1940) was a Georgian historian and a linguist whose voluminous works heavily influenced the modern scholarship of the history and culture of Georgia. He was also one of the founding fathers of the Tbilisi State University (1918) and its rector from 1919 to 1926.


Javakhishvili authored more than 170 works dealing with various aspects of Georgia's political, cultural, social and economic history. Since the publication of its first edition in 1908, his main work, "A History of the Georgian Nation" (fully published between 1908 and 1949), has remained one of the most comprehensive and eloquent treatments of pre-modern Georgian history. Regrettably, it has not been translated into any other language. Several of Javakhishvili's most influential articles and books including "A History of the Georgian Nation" have been reprinted in his twelve-volume collected works from 1977 and 1998.


A Persianate society is a society that is based on or strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art and/or identity.


The term "Persianate" is a neologism credited to Marshall Hodgson. In his 1974 book, "The Venture of Islam: The expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods", he defined it thus: "The rise of Persian had more than purely literary consequences: it served to carry a new overall cultural orientation within Islamdom... Most of the more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims... depended upon Persian wholly or in part for their prime literary inspiration. We may call all these cultural traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, 'Persianate' by extension."


The term designates ethnic Persians but also societies that may not have been ethnically Persian but whose linguistic, material or artistic cultural activities were influenced by or based on Persianate culture. Examples of pre-19th-century Persianate societies were the Seljuq, Timurid, Mughal, and Ottoman dynasties, as well as the Qarmatians who entertained Persianate notions of cyclical time even though they did not invoke the Iranian genealogies in which these precepts had converged. "Persianate" is a multiracial cultural category, but it appears at times to be a religious category of a racial origin.


Persianate culture flourished for nearly fourteen centuries. It was a mixture of Persian and Islamic cultures that eventually underwent Persification and became the dominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of Greater Iran, Asia Minor, and South Asia.


When the peoples of Greater Iran were conquered by Islamic forces in the 7th and 8th centuries, they became part of an empire much larger than any previous one under Persian rule. While the Islamic conquest led to the Arabization of language and culture in the former Byzantine territories, this did not happen in Persia. Rather, the new Islamic culture evolving there was largely based on pre-Islamic Persian traditions of the area, as well as on the Islamic customs that were introduced to the region by the Arab conquerors.


Persianate culture, especially among the elite classes, spread across the Muslim territories in western, central, and south Asia, although populations across this vast region had conflicting allegiances (sectarian, local, tribal, and ethnic) and spoke many different languages. It was spread by poets, artists, architects, artisans, jurists, and scholars, who maintained relations among their peers in the far-flung cities of the Persianate world, from Anatolia to India.


Persianate culture involved modes of consciousness, ethos, and religious practices that have persisted in the Iranian world against hegemonic Arab Muslim (Sunni) cultural constructs. This formed a calcified Persianate structure of thought and experience of the sacred, entrenched for generations, which later informed history, historical memory, and identity among Alid loyalists and heterodox groups labeled by sharia-minded authorities as "ghulāt". In a way, along with investing the notion of heteroglossia, Persianate culture embodies the Iranian past and ways in which this past blended with the Islamic present or became transmuted. The historical change was largely on the basis of a binary model: a struggle between the religious landscapes of late Iranian antiquity and a monotheist paradigm provided by the new religion, Islam.


This duality is symbolically expressed in the Shiite tradition that Husayn ibn Ali, the third Shi'ite Imam, had married Shahrbanu, daughter of Yazdegerd III, the last Sassanid king of Iran. This genealogy makes the later imams, descended from Husayn and Shahrbanu, the inheritors of both the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and of the pre-Islamic Sassanid kings.


After the Arab Muslim conquest of Iran, Pahlavi, the language of Pre-Islamic Iran, continued to be widely used well into the second Islamic century (8th century) as a medium of administration in the eastern lands of the Caliphate. Despite the Islamization of public affairs, the Iranians retained much of their pre-Islamic outlook and way of life, adjusted to fit the demands of Islam. Towards the end of the 7th century, the population began resenting the cost of sustaining the Arab caliphs, the Umayyads, and in the 8th century, a general Iranian uprising—led by Abu Muslim Khorrasani—brought another Arab family, the Abbasids, to the Caliph's throne.


Under the Abbasids, the capital shifted from Syria to Iraq, which had once been part of the Sassanid Empire and was still considered to be part of the Iranian cultural domain. Persian culture, and the customs of the Persian Barmakid viziers, became the style of the ruling elite. Politically, the Abbasids soon started losing their control over Iranians. The governors of Khurasan, the Tahirids, though appointed by the caliph, were effectively independent. When the Persian Saffarids from Sistan freed the eastern lands, the Buyyids, the Ziyarids and the Samanids in Western Iran, Mazandaran and the north-east respectively, declared their independence.


The separation of the eastern territories from Baghdad was expressed in a distinctive Persianate culture that became dominant in west, central, and south Asia, and was the source of innovations elsewhere in the Islamic world. The Persianate culture was marked by the use of the New Persian language as a medium of administration and intellectual discourse, by the rise of Persianised-Turks to military control, by the new political importance of non-Arab ulama and by the development of an ethnically composite Islamic society.


Pahlavi was the "lingua franca" of the Sassanian Empire before the Arab invasion, but towards the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 8th century Arabic became a medium of literary expression. In the 9th century, a New Persian language emerged as the idiom of administration and literature. The Tahirid and Saffarid dynasties continued using Persian as an informal language, although for them Arabic was the "language for recording anything worthwhile, from poetry to science", but the Samanids made Persian a language of learning and formal discourse. The language that appeared in the 9th and 10th centuries was a new form of Persian, derivative of the Middle-Persian of pre-Islamic times, but enriched amply by Arabic vocabulary and written in the Arabic script.


The Persian language, according to Marshall Hodgson in his "The Venture of Islam", was to form the chief model for the rise of still other languages to the literary level. Like Turkish, most of the more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims depended upon Persian (Urdu being a prime example). One may call these traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, ‘Persianate’ by extension. This seems to be the origin of the term "Persianate".


The Iranian dynasty of the Samanids began recording its court affairs in Persian as well as Arabic, and the earliest great poetry in New Persian was written for the Samanid court. The Samanids encouraged translation of religious works from Arabic into Persian. In addition, the learned authorities of Islam, the "ulama", began using the Persian "lingua franca" in public. The crowning literary achievement in the early New Persian language was the "Shahnameh" (Book of Kings), presented by its author Ferdowsi to the court of Mahmud of Ghazni (998–1030). This was a kind of Iranian nationalistic resurrection: Ferdowsi galvanized Persian nationalistic sentiment by invoking pre-Islamic Persian heroic imagery and enshrined in literary form the most treasured folk stories.


Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh" enjoyed a special status in Iranian courtly culture as a historical narrative as well as a mythical one. The powerful effect that this text came to have on the poets of this period is partly due to the value that was attached to it as a legitimizing force, especially for new rulers in the Eastern Islamic world:


The Persianate culture that emerged under the Samanids in Greater Khorasan, in northeast Persia and the borderlands of Turkistan exposed the Turks to Persianate culture; The incorporation of the Turks into the main body of the Middle Eastern Islamic civilization, which was followed by the Ghaznavids, thus began in Khorasan; "not only did the inhabitants of Khurasan not succumb to the language of the nomadic invaders, but they imposed their own tongue on them. The region could even assimilate the Turkic Ghaznavids and Seljuks (11th and 12th centuries), the Timurids (14th and 15th centuries), and the Qajars (19th and 20th centuries).


The Ghaznavids, the rivals and future successors of the Samanids, ruled over the southeastern extremities of Samanid territories from the city of Ghazni. Persian scholars and artists flocked to their court, and the Ghaznavids became patrons of Persianate culture. The Ghaznavids took with them Persianate culture as they subjugated Western and Southern Asia . Apart from Ferdowsi, Rumi, Abu Ali Sina, Al-Biruni, Unsuri Balkhi, Farrukhi Sistani, Sanayi Ghaznawi and Abu Sahl Testari were among the great Iranian scientists and poets of the period under Ghaznavid patronage.


Persianate culture was carried by successive dynasties into Western and Southern Asia, particularly by the Persianized Seljuqs (1040–1118) and their successor states, who presided over Iran, Syria, and Anatolia until the 13th century, and by the Ghaznavids, who in the same period dominated Greater Khorasan and parts of India. These two dynasties together drew the centers of the Islamic world eastward. The institutions stabilized Islamic society into a form that would persist, at least in Western Asia, until the 20th century.


The Ghaznavids moved their capital from Ghazni to Lahore in modern Pakistan, which they turned into another center of Islamic culture. Under their patronage, poets and scholars from Kashgar, Bukhara, Samarkand, Baghdad, Nishapur, Amol and Ghazni congregated in Lahore. Thus, the Persian language and Persianate culture was brought deep into India and carried further in the 13th century. The Seljuqs won a decisive victory over the Ghaznavids and swept into Khorasan; they brought Persianate culture westward into western Persia, Iraq, Anatolia, and Syria. Iran proper along with Central Asia became the heartland of Persian language and culture.


As the Seljuqs came to dominate western Asia, their courts were Persianized as far west as the Mediterranean Sea. Under their rule, many pre-Islamic Iranian traditional arts like Sassanid architecture were resurrected, and great Iranian scholars were patronized. At the same time, the Islamic religious institutions became more organized and Sunni orthodoxy became more codified.


Shahnameh's impact and affirmation of Persianate culture.


As the result of the impacts of Persian literature as well as to further political ambitions, it became a custom for rulers in the Persianate lands to not only commission a copy of the "Shahnameh", but also to have his own epic, allowing court poets to attempt to reach the level of Ferdowsi:


Iranian and Persianate poets received the "Shahnameh" and modeled themselves after it. Murtazavi formulates three categories of such works too: poets who took up material not covered in the epic, poets who eulogized their patrons and their ancestors in "masnavi" form for monetary reward, and poets who wrote poems for rulers who saw themselves as heroes in the "Shahnameh", echoing the earlier Samanid trend of patronizing the Shahnameh for legitimizing texts.


First, Persian poets attempted to continue the chronology to a later period, such as the "Zafarnamah" of the Ilkhanid historian Hamdollah Mostowfi (d. 1334 or 1335), which deals with Iranian history from the Arab conquest to the Mongols and is longer than Ferdowsi's work. The literary value of these works must be considered on an individual basis as Rypka cautions: "all these numerous epics cannot be assessed very highly, to say nothing of those works that were substantially (or literally) copies of Ferdowsi. There are however exceptions, such as the "Zafar-Nameh" of Hamdu'llah Mustaufi a historically valuable continuation of the Shah-nama" and the "Shahanshahnamah" (or "Changiznamah") of Ahmad Tabrizi in 1337–38, which is a history of the Mongols written for Abu Sa'id.


Second, poets versified the history of a contemporary ruler for reward, such as the "Ghazannameh" written in 1361–62 by Nur al-Din ibn Shams al-Din. Third, heroes not treated in the "Shahnameh" and those having minor roles in it became the subjects of their own epics, such as the 11th-century "Garshāspnāmeh" by Asadi Tusi. This tradition, chiefly a Timurid one, resulted in the creation of Islamic epics of conquests as discussed by Marjan Molé. Also see the classification employed by Z. Safa for epics: "milli" (national, those inspired by Ferdowsi's epic), "tarikhi" (historical, those written in imitation of Nizami's Iskandarnamah) and "dini" for religious works. The other source of inspiration for Persianate culture was another Persian poet, Nizami, a most admired, illustrated and imitated writer of romantic "masnavis".


Along with Ferdowsi's and Nizami's works, Amir Khusraw Dehlavi's "khamseh" came to enjoy tremendous prestige, and multiple copies of it were produced at Persianized courts. Seyller has a useful catalog of all known copies of this text.


In the 16th century, Persianate culture became sharply distinct from the Arab world to the west, the dividing zone falling along the Euphrates. Socially the Persianate world was marked by a system of ethnologically defined elite statuses: the rulers and their soldiery were non-Iranians in origin, but the administrative cadres and literati were Iranians. Cultural affairs were marked by a characteristic pattern of language use: New Persian was the language of state affairs, scholarship and literature and Arabic the language of religion.


Safavids and the resurrection of Iranianhood in West Asia.


The Safavid dynasty ascended to predominance in Iran in the 16th century—the first native Iranian dynasty since the Buyyids. The Safavids, who were of mixed Kurdish, Turkic, Georgian, Circassian and Pontic Greek ancestry, moved to the Ardabil region in the 11th century. They re-asserted the Persian identity over many parts of West Asia and Central Asia, establishing an independent Persian state, and patronizing Persian culture They made Iran the spiritual bastion of Shi’ism against the onslaughts of orthodox Sunni Islam, and a repository of Persian cultural traditions and self-awareness of Persian identity.


The founder of the dynasty, Shah Isma'il, adopted the title of Persian Emperor "Pādišah-ī Īrān", with its implicit notion of an Iranian state stretching from Afghanistan as far as the Euphrates and the North Caucasus, and from the Oxus to the southern territories of the Persian Gulf. Shah Isma'il's successors went further and adopted the title of "Shāhanshāh" (king of kings). The Safavid kings considered themselves, like their predecessors the Sassanid Emperors, the "khudāygān" (the shadow of God on earth). They revived Sassanid architecture, build grand mosques and elegant "charbagh" gardens, collected books (one Safavid ruler had a library of 3,000 volumes), and patronized "Men of the Pen" The Safavids introduced Shiism into Persia to distinguish Persian society from the Ottomans, their Sunni archrivals to the west.


At the beginning of the 14th century, the Ottomans rose to predominance in Asia Minor. The Ottomans patronized Persian literature for five and a half centuries and attracted great numbers of writers and artists, especially in the 16th century. One of the most renowned Persian poets in the Ottoman court was Fethullah Arifi Çelebi, also a painter and historian, and the author of the "Süleymanname" (or "Suleyman-nama"), a biography of Süleyman the Magnificent. At the end of the 17th century, they gave up Persian as the court and administrative language, using Turkish instead; a decision that shocked the highly Persianized Mughals in India. The Ottoman Sultan Suleyman wrote an entire divan in Persian language. According to Hodgson:


Toynbee's assessment of the role of the Persian language is worth quoting in more detail, from "A Study of History":


E. J. W. Gibb is the author of the standard "A Literary History of Ottoman Poetry" in six volumes, whose name has lived on in an important series of publications of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish texts, the Gibb Memorial Series. Gibb classifies Ottoman poetry between the "Old School", from the 14th century to about the middle of the 19th century, during which time Persian influence was dominant; and the "Modern School", which came into being as a result of the Western impact. According to Gibb in the introduction (Volume I):


The Saljuqs had, in the words of the same author:


The Mughals, who were of Turco-Mongol descent, strengthened the Indo-Persian culture, in South Asia. For centuries, Iranian scholar-officials had immigrated to the region where their expertise in Persianate culture and administration secured them honored service within the Mughal Empire. Networks of learned masters and madrasas taught generations of young South Asian men Persian language and literature in addition to Islamic values and sciences. Furthermore, educational institutions such as Farangi Mahall and Delhi College developed innovative and integrated curricula for modernizing Persian-speaking South Asians. They cultivated Persian art, enticing to their courts artists and architects from Bukhara, Tabriz, Herat, Shiraz, and other cities of Greater Iran. The Taj Mahal and its Charbagh were commissioned by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his Iranian bride.


The tendency towards Sufi mysticism through Persianate culture in Mughal court circles is also testified by the inventory of books that were kept in Akbar's library, and are especially mentioned by his historian, Abu'l Fazl, in the "Ā’in-ī Akbarī". Some of the books that were read out continually to the emperor include the "masnavis" of Nizami, the works of Amir Khusrow, Sharaf Manayri and Jami, the "Masnavi i-manavi" of Rumi, the "Jām-i Jam" of Awhadi Maraghai, the "Hakika o Sanā’i", the "Qabusnameh" of Keikavus, Sa’di's "Gulestān" and "Būstān", and the "diwans" of Khaqani and Anvari.


This intellectual symmetry continued until the end of the 19th century, when a Persian newspaper, "Miftah al-Zafar" (1897), campaigned for the formation of Anjuman-i Ma’arif, an academy devoted to the strengthening of Persian language as a scientific language.


Almost every Persian artwork was accompanied by texts. In the late 14th and 15th centuries, political control in Iran passed to the Timurids, who moved the capital from Tabriz in the west to Samarkand and Herat in the east. In the first half of the 15th century, Iranian artists working for the Timurid sultans developed the highly detailed, jewel-like style of painting that signifies Persian painting, which became known as the "Persian School of Herat".


When the Safavids came to power in 1501 and unified the eastern and western parts of Iran, the eastern and western Persian painting styles were mingled. The political unity under the first two Safavid rulers Ismail I and Tahmasp I, and the establishment of the Safavid capital at Tabriz in the west, led Persian artists to leave Herat. One of the most celebrated Iranian painters, Behzad, known as "the master of Persian painting", influenced many other Persian painters, including Reza Abbasi and Sultan Muhammad. He eventually painted perhaps the most extraordinary example of Persian painting "The Court of the Gayumars" from an opulent edition of the Shahnameh, commissioned by Shah Tahmasp c. 1522–1525. The painting depicts the legendary court of Gayumars, the first shah in the epic.


In Anatolia, a flourishing school of painting developed at the courts of Turkic rulers in the second half of the 15th century. The style of Ottoman miniature illustrations was derived from the Persian models, especially the painting of Shiraz. The long reign of the Ottoman sultan Suleyman enabled his successor Selim (r. 1566–1574) to enjoy the pleasures of the palace without much concern for military conquests. A painting of Sultan Selim II in the exhibition depicts him partaking in one of his favorite pastimes, drinking, which earned him the nickname "Selim the Sot".


By the mid-16th century, some Iranian artists from the Safavid Persian court had immigrated to Istanbul. Others had made their way to India in the retinue of the Mughal emperor Humayun, who returned to India in 1555 from exile in Iran. It was at the court of Humayun's son and successor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), however, that the Mughal style of painting came into its own.


The most important early project in this new style was the 14-volume "Hamzanama" produced by a team of Indian artists, both Muslim and Hindu, working under the supervision of Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad, two Persian émigré artists. Akbari paintings incorporated the precise, linear style of Persian painting with the dynamism and vibrant palette of indigenous Indian painting. With the introduction of European-style perspective and modelling, Mughal painting became increasingly naturalistic from the 1580s until the mid-17th century, but the core of both Ottoman and Mughal painting remained Persian.


The term "nowruz" first appeared in Persian records in the 2nd century CE, but it was also an important day during Achaemenid times (c. 550–330 BCE), on which kings from different nations under Persian rule would present gifts to the emperor ("Shahanshah") of Persia[5]. It has been suggested that the famous Persepolis complex, or at least the palace of Apadana and the "Hundred Columns Hall", were built for the specific purpose of celebrating Nowruz. However, no mention of Nowruz exists in Achaemenid inscriptions (see picture). Later it became the national holiday of the Parthian Empire, which ruled Iran (c. 247 BCE – 224 CE). There are specific references to the celebration of Nowruz during the reign of Vologases I (51–78 CE), but these include no details.


Extensive records on the celebration of Nowruz appear following the accession of Ardashir I of Persia, the founder of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE). Under the Sassanid kings, Nowruz was celebrated as the most important day of the year. Most royal traditions of Nowruz, such as audiences with the public, cash gifts, and the pardoning of prisoners, were established during the Sassanid era, and they persisted unchanged until modern times.


Nowruz, along with Sadeh (celebrated in mid-winter), survived in society following the introduction of Islam in 650 CE. Other celebrations such as Gahanbar and Mehregan were eventually side-lined or were only continued by the Zoroastrians, who carried them as far as Turkey. Nowruz, however, was honored even by the early founders of Islam. There are records of the Rashidun caliphs presiding over Nowruz celebrations and it was adopted as the main royal holiday during the Abbasid period.


Following the demise of the caliphate and the subsequent re-emergence of Persian dynasties such as the Samanids and Buyyids, Nowruz was elevated to an even higher status. The Buyids revived the Sassanid traditions and restored many smaller celebrations that had been eliminated by the caliphate. Even the Turkish and Mongol invaders did not attempt to abolish Nowruz in favor of any other celebration. Thus, Nowruz remained the main celebration of Persian lands by both the officials and the people.


The Transcaucasian Commissariat was established at Tbilisi on 11 November 1917, as the first government of the independent Transcaucasia following the October Revolution in Petrograd. The Commissariat decided to strengthen the Georgian–Armenian–Azerbaijani union by convoking a Diet or general assembly ("Sejm") in January 1918.It declared independence from Russia and formed the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic after being faced with the threat of being overrun by the Ottoman invasion.


Peace talks were initiated with the Ottoman Empire in March 1918, but broke down quickly as the Ottoman refused to accept the authority of the Commissariat. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended Russia's involvement in the First World War, conceded parts of the Transcaucasus to the Ottoman Empire, who continued their invasion of the region in order to take control of the territory. Faced with this imminent threat, the TDFR was proclaimed as an independent state on 22 April 1918. Further negotiations began immediately with the Ottoman, which recognized the state.


The Kingdom of Georgia (), also known as the Georgian Empire, was a medieval Eurasian monarchy that started circa 1008 AD. It reached its Golden Age of political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar the Great from 11th to 13th centuries. Georgia became one of the pre-eminent nations of the Christian East, their pan-Caucasian empire stretching, at its largest extent, from the North Caucasus to the northern portion of Iran and Anatolia, while also maintaining religious possessions abroad, such as the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem and the Monastery of Iviron in Greece. It was the principal historical precursor of present-day Georgia.


Located on the crossroads of protracted Roman–Persian wars, the early Georgian kingdoms disintegrated into various feudal regions by the early Middle Ages. This made it easy for the remaining Georgian realms to fall prey to the early Muslim conquests in the 7th century.


In struggle against the Arab occupation, Iberian princes of Bagrationi dynasty came to rule over Tao-Klarjeti, the former southern provinces of Iberia, and established Kouropalatate of Iberia as a nominal vassal of the Byzantine Empire. Bagrationi's continued fighting for the central Georgian land, known as Kartli, contested also by the Kingdom of Abkhazia, the Arab emirs of Tbilisi and even by Kakhetian and Armenian Bagratid rulers of Tashir-Dzoraget. The restoration of the Iberian kingship begins in 888, however Bagrationi dynasty failed to maintain the integrity of their kingdom, which was actually divided between the three branches of the family with the main branch retaining in Tao and another controlling Klarjeti.


An Arab incursion into western Georgia was repelled by Abkhazians jointly with Lazic and Iberian allies in 736. The successful defense against the Arabs, and the increasingly expansionist tendencies of the kingdom to the east and the struggle against Byzantium, fighting for the hegemony within the Georgian territories speed up the process of unification of Georgian states into a single feudal monarchy. In 9th century western Georgian Church broke away from Constantinople and recognized the authority of the Catholicate of Mtskheta; language of the church in Abkhazia shifted from Greek to Georgian, as Byzantine power decreased and doctrinal differences disappeared.


At the end of the 10th century David III of Tao invaded the Kartli and gave it to his foster-son Bagrat III and installed his father Gurgen as his regent, who was also crowned as "King of the Iberians" in 994. Through his mother Gurandukht, sister of the childless Abkhazian king Theodosius III ( 975–978), Bagrat was a potential heir to the realm of Abkhazia.


Bagrat's reign, a period of uttermost importance in the history of Georgia, brought about the final victory of the Georgian Bagratids in the centuries-long power struggles. Bagrat's foreign policy was generally peaceful and the king successfully manoeuvred to avoid the conflicts with both the Byzantine and Muslim neighbours even though David's domains of Tao remained in the Byzantine and Tbilisi in the Arab hands.


The second half of the 11th century was marked by the strategically significant invasion of the Seljuq Turks, who by the end of the 1040s had succeeded in building a vast empire including most of Central Asia and Persia. The Seljuk threat prompted the Georgian and Byzantine governments to seek a closer cooperation. To secure the alliance, Bagrat's daughter Maria married, at some point between 1066 and 1071, to the Byzantine co-emperor Michael VII Ducas.


The Seljuqs made their first appearances in Georgia in the 1060s, when the sultan Alp Arslan laid waste to the south-western provinces of the Georgian kingdom and reduced Kakheti. These intruders were part of the same wave of the Turkish movement which inflicted a crushing defeat on the Byzantine army at Manzikert in 1071. Although the Georgians were able to recover from Alp Arslan's invasion and even securing the Tao (theme of Iberia), by the help of Byzantine governor of Armeno-Georgian origin, Gregory Pakourianos. On this occasion, George II was bestowed with the Byzantine title of "Caesar", granted the fortress of Kars and put in charge of the Imperial Eastern limits.


Watching his kingdom slip into chaos, George II ceded the crown to his 16-year-old son David IV in 1089. King David IV proved to be a capable statesman and military commander. As he came of age under the guidance of his court minister, George of Chqondidi, David IV suppressed dissent of feudal lords and centralized the power in his hands to effectively deal with foreign threats. In 1089–1100, he organized small detachments to harass and destroy isolated Seljuk troops and began the resettlement of desolate regions. By 1099 David IV's power was considerable enough that he was able to refuse paying tribute to Seljuqs.


In 1103 a major ecclesiastical congress known as the Ruis-Urbnisi Synod was held. Next year, David's supporters in the eastern Georgian province of Kakheti captured the local king Aghsartan II (1102–1104), a loyal tributary of the Seljuk Sultan, and reunited the area with the rest of Georgia. Following the annexation of Kakheti, in 1105, David routed a Seljuk punitive force at the Battle of Ertsukhi, leading to momentum that helped him to secure the key fortresses of Samshvilde, Rustavi, Gishi, and Lori between 1110 and 1118.


To strengthen his army, King David launched a major military reform in 1118–1120 and resettled several thousand Kipchaks from the northern steppes to frontier districts of Georgia. In return, the Kipchaks provided one soldier per family, allowing King David to establish a standing army in addition to his royal troops (known as Monaspa). The new army provided the king with a much-needed force to fight both external threats and internal discontent of powerful lords. The Georgian-Kipchak alliance was facilitated by David's earlier marriage to the Khan's daughter.


David IV founded the Gelati Academy, which became an important center of scholarship in the Eastern Orthodox Christian world of that time. Due to the extensive work carried out by the Gelati Academy, people of the time called it "a new Hellas" and "a second Athos". 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 similar relationship to God and to his people. His hymns also share the idealistic zeal of the contemporaneous European crusaders to whom David was a natural ally in his struggle against the Seljuks.


Reign of Demetrius I and George III.


The kingdom continued to flourish under Demetrius I, the son of David. Although his reign saw a disruptive family conflict related to royal succession, Georgia remained a centralized power with a strong military. In 1139, he raided the city of Ganja in Arran and brought the iron gate of the defeated city to Georgia and donated it to Gelati Monastery at Kutaisi, western Georgia. Despite this brilliant victory, Demetrius could hold Ganja only for a few years. A talented poet, Demetrius also continued his father's contributions to Georgia's religious polyphony. The most famous of his hymns is Thou Art a Vineyard.


The unified monarchy maintained its precarious independence from the Byzantine and Seljuk empires throughout the 11th century, and flourished under David IV the Builder ( 1089–1125), who repelled the Seljuk attacks and essentially completed the unification of Georgia with the re-conquest of Tbilisi in 1122. In spite of repeated incidents of dynastic strife, the kingdom continued to prosper during the reigns of Demetrios I (1125–1156), George III (1156–1184), and especially, his daughter Tamar (1184–1213).


The successes of his predecessors were built upon by Queen Tamar, daughter of George III, who became the first female ruler of Georgia in her own right and under whose leadership the Georgian state reached the zenith of power and prestige in the Middle Ages. She not only shielded much of her Empire from further Turkish invasions but successfully pacified internal tensions, including a coup organized by her Russian husband Yury Bogolyubsky, prince of Novgorod.


This offensive, which would prove the ruin of Georgia, was preceded by the devastating conflict with Khwarazm ruler Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu, the son of the last ruler of Khwarazm, who was defeated by the Mongols and now led his Khwaras mian army to Caucasus. The Georgians suffered bitter defeat at the Battle of Garni, and the royal court with Queen Rusudan moved to Kutaisi, when the Georgian capital Tbilisi was besieged by the Khwarezmians. The victorious Khwarezmid soldiers sacked Tbilisi and massacred its Christian population and terminated Georgia's "Golden Age". Jalal al-Din continued devastating Georgian regions until 1230, when the Mongols finally defeated him.


In 1235–1236, Mongol forces, unlike their first raid in 1221, appeared with the sole purpose of conquest and occupation and easily overran the already devastated Kingdom. Queen Rusudan fled to the security of western Georgia, while the nobles secluded themselves in their fortresses. By 1240 all the country was under the Mongol yoke. Forced to accept the sovereignty of the Mongol Khan in 1242, Rusudan had to pay an annual tribute of 50,000 gold pieces and support the Mongols with a Georgian army.


Fearing that her nephew David VII of Georgia would aspire to the throne, Rusudan held him prisoner at the court of her son-in-law, the sultan Kaykhusraw II, and sent her son David VI of Georgia to the Mongol court to get his official recognition as heir apparent. She died in 1245, still waiting for her son to return.


The Mongols created the "Vilayet of Gurjistan", which included Georgia and the whole South Caucasus, where they ruled indirectly, through the Georgian monarch, the latter to be confirmed by the Great Khan upon his/her ascension. Following the death of Queen Rusudan in 1245, an interregnum began during which the Mongols divided the Caucasus into eight tumens.


The period between 1259 and 1330 was marked by the struggle of the Georgians against the Mongol Ilkhanate for full independence. The first anti-Mongol uprising started in 1259 under the leadership of King David Narin who in fact waged his war for almost thirty years. The Anti-Mongol strife went on under the Kings Demetrius II ( 1270–1289) and David VIII ( 1293–1311).


In 1334, Shaykh Hasan of the Jalayir was appointed as governor of Georgia by Abu Sai'd. However, George soon took advantage of the civil war in the Il-Khanate, where several khans were overthrown between 1335 and 1344, and drove the last remaining Mongol troops out of Georgia. The following year he ordered great festivities on the Mount Tsivi to celebrate the anniversary of the victory over the Mongols, and massacred there all oppositionist nobles.


Having restored the kingdom's unity, he focused now on cultural, social and economic projects. He changed the coins issued by Ghazan khan with the Georgian ones, called George's tetri. Between 1325 and 1338, he worked out two major law codes, one regulating the relations at the royal court and the other devised for the peace of a remote and disorderly mountainous district. Under him, Georgia established close international commercial ties, mainly with the Byzantine Empire, but also with the great European maritime republics, Genoa and Venice.


One of the primary reasons of Georgian political and military decline was the bubonic plague. It was first introduced in 1346 by the soldiers of George the Brilliant returning from a military expedition in south-western Georgia against invading Osmanli tribesmen. It is said that the plague wiped out a large part, if not half of the Georgian populace. This further weakened the integrity of the kingdom, as well as its military and logistic capabilities.


There was a period of reunion and revival under George V the Brilliant, but the eight onslaughts of the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur between 1386 and 1403 dealt a great blow to the Georgian kingdom. Timur's first appearance in the Caucasus was a response to Khan Tokhtamysh’s marauding inroad into Northern Iran through the Caucasian lands in 1385.


In late autumn 1386, a huge army of Timur attacked Georgia. Timur officially proclaimed his invasions to be jihad against the region's non-Muslims. Tbilisi was besieged and taken on 22 November 1386, after a fierce fight. The city was pillaged and Bagrat V and his family were imprisoned. Taking advantage of this disaster, the royal vassal Duke Alexander of Imereti proclaimed himself an independent ruler and was crowned king of Imereti at the Gelati Monastery in 1387.


Georgian resistance prompted a renewed attack by the Turco-Mongol armies. Bagrat's son and successor, George VII, put up a stiff resistance and had to spend much of his reign (1395–1405) fighting the Timurid invasions. Timur personally led most of these raids to subdue the recalcitrant Georgian monarch. Although he was not able to establish a firm control over Georgia, the country suffered a blow from which it never recovered. By the time George VII was forced to accept Timur's terms of peace and agree to pay tribute, he was a master of little more than gutted towns, ravaged countryside and a shattered monarchy.


The political split of the kingdom was sped up by the Eristavs of Samtskhe. In 1462 Kvarkvare II Jaqeli called against the king of Georgia Uzun Hasan, the leader of the Aq Qoyunlu. His invasion was used by the viceroy of the western Georgia – Bagrat VI. In 1463 Bagrat VI defeated Giorgi VIII at Chikhori. "Dadiani, Gurieli, Abkhazians and Svans came to the conqueror and expressing the wish of all the Imerians (westerners) blessed him to be King. From that time Imereti turned into one kingdom and four Duchies or satavado.


Bagrat was the king of only west Georgia for a short period. In 1466 he crossed the borders of East Georgia (Inner Kartli) and proclaimed himself King of all Georgia. In fact, he possessed only west Georgia and Inner Kartli. Giorgi VIII went to Kakheti and formed an independent Kakhetian Kingdom. Recognizing as a sovereign of Bagrat VI the grandson of Alexander I the Great – Constantine II was consolidated in the lower Kartli (Tbilisi), while Samtskhe-Saatabago became an independent principality.


In 1490 Constantine asked a specially assembled royal court for an advice concerning restoration of the integral kingdom. The royal court advised Constantine II to postpone this struggle till the better times. After this the king of Kartli had to temporarily reconcile with the kings of Kakheti and Imereti and also prince of Samtskhe having thus formed the factual split of Georgia. Its unity was finally shattered and, by 1490/91, the once powerful monarchy fragmented into three independent kingdoms – Kartli (central to eastern Georgia), Kakheti (eastern Georgia), and Imereti (western Georgia) – each led by the rival branches of the Bagrationi dynasty, and into five semi-independent principalities – Odishi (Mingrelia), Guria, Abkhazia, Svaneti and Samtskhe – dominated by their own feudal clans.


The aristocratic élite of this period was divided into two major classes: an upper noble whose dynastic dignity and feudal quality was expressed in the terms Tavadi and Didebuli, respectively; both of these terms were synonymous, from the 11th to the 14th centuries, with Eristavi, and all three terms referred to one of the upper nobles, "a Prince". Lesser nobles, the Aznauri, were either "nobles of race" or "of patent" who acquired their status in specific charters issued by the king or a lord. The power of the feudal nobles over the peasantry also increased and the cultivators began to loss a degree of personal freedom they had formerly enjoyed.


"Eristavi"'s (dukes) were in charge of local governing. Saeristavo (duchy) was divided into Khevi ruled by "Khevistavi" (in mountainous regions – "Khevisberi"). List of duchies at the time of reign Tamar the Great: Svaneti, Racha-Takveri; Tskhumi, Artgveti, Odishi, Kartli, Kakheti, Hereti and Samtskhe.


The frontier regions were granted exceptional privileges and autonomous rights, and were governed by monapire eristavi (frontier governor). There were several frontier (sanapiro) marches estabelished specifically on southern districts: Gagi, Lore, Akhalkalaki, Artani, Panaskerti, Gachiani and Kari.


For their part, towns were governed by "amiri", while large cities by "amirt-amiri". All these arrangements were codified and systematised in special legislation – Regulations of the Royal Court – and codes of laws. The bishops and the churches were exempted from quitrents and duties.


Tribute extracted from the neighbors and war booty added to the royal treasury, giving rise to the saying that "the peasants were like nobles, the nobles like princes, and the princes like kings."


During the Middle Ages, Christianity was the central element of Georgian culture. Specific forms of art were developed in Georgia for religious purposes. Among them, calligraphy, polyphonic church singing, cloisonné enamel icons, such as the Khakhuli triptych, and the "Georgian cross-dome style" of architecture, which characterizes most medieval Georgian churches. The most celebrated examples of Georgian religious architecture of the time include the Gelati Monastery and Bagrati Cathedral in Kutaisi, the Ikalto Monastery complex and Academy, and the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta.


Outstanding Georgian representatives of Christian culture include Euthymius of Athos (Ekvtime Atoneli, 955–1028), George of Athos (Giorgi Atoneli, 1009–1065), Arsen Ikaltoeli (11th century), and Ephrem Mtsire, (11th century). Philosophy flourished between the 11th and 13th century, especially at the Academy of Gelati Monastery, where Ioane Petritsi attempted a synthesis of Christian, aristotelician and neoplatonic thought.


Tamar's reign also marked the continuation of artistic development in the country commenced by her predecessors. While her contemporary Georgian chronicles continued to enshrine Christian morality, the religious theme started to lose its earlier dominant position to the highly original secular literature. This trend culminated in an epic written by Georgia's national poet Rustaveli – "The Knight in the Panther's Skin" ("Vepkhistq'aosani"). Revered in Georgia as the greatest achievement of native literature, the poem celebrates the Medieval humanistic ideals of chivalry, friendship and courtly love.


From the 10th century, Georgians had started to play a significant role in preaching Christianity in the mountains of the Caucasus. "Wherever the missions of the patriarchs of Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem failed, the Georgian Church succeeded in bringing Jesus's Cross and preaching His Gospels". This is corroborated not only by old written sources, but also by Christian architectural monuments bearing Georgian inscriptions, which are still to be seen throughout the North Caucasus in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria. The golden age of Georgian monasticism lasted from the 9th to the 11th century. During that period, Georgian monasteries were founded outside the country, most notably on Mount Sinai, Mount Athos (the Iviron monastery, where the Theotokos Iverskaya icon is still located), and in Palestine.


The Transcaucasian Military District, a military district of the Soviet Armed Forces, traces its history to May 1921 and the incorporation of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia into the Soviet Union. It was disbanded by being redesignated as a Group of Forces in the early 1990s after the Soviet Union collapse. The military district formed as a basis of the modern day armed forces of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.


The Transcaucasian Military District was originally formed from the Red Army's Separate Caucasian Army, which became the Red Banner Caucasian Army in August 1923. On 17 May 1935, the Red Banner Caucasus Army was redesignated the Transcaucasian Military District. The Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani national formations, plus units from the 11th Soviet Red Army, all joined the new district about this time.


In July 1936 the District's formations and units received designations according to the countrywide numbering scheme and became: the 9th (formerly 1st Caucasus) Mountain Rifle Division, named for the Central Executive Committee of the Georgian SSR; the 20th (formerly 3rd Caucasus) Mountain Rifle Division; the 47th (former 1st) Georgian Mountain Rifle Division, named for Joseph Stalin; the 63rd (former 2nd) Georgian Mountain Rifle Division, named for Mikhail Frunze; the 76th Armenian Mountain Rifle Division, named after Comrade Voroshilov, and the 77th Аzerbaijani Mountain Rifle Division, named for Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze.


On 22 June 1941 the District consisted of the 3rd (4th, 20th, and 47th Rifle Divisions), 23rd Rifle Corps (136th and 138th Rifle Divisions) and 40th Rifle Corps (9th and 31st Rifle Division), the 28th Mechanised Corps, which included the 6th and 54th Tank Divisions and the 236th Motorised Division (), five unattached divisions – the 63rd, 76th, and 77th Rifle, the 17th Mountain Cavalry Division and the 24th Cavalry Division, and three fortified regions.


On 1 August 1941 the 46th Army was formed from the 3rd Rifle Corps headquarters. 45th Army was formed from the 23rd Rifle Corps. 45th and 46th Armies guarded the Turkish border. The 44th Army was formed from the 40th Rifle Corps and the 47th Army formed from the 27th Mechanized Corps. Both armies were deployed on the Iranian border. On 23 August, the military district became the Transcaucasus Front. District headquarters was subordinated to the front's military council and directed the formation of new units. It was disbanded on 14 September 1941.


On 28 January 1942, the military district was reformed when the Caucasian Front was divided into the Transcaucasian Military District and the Crimean Front. The district was commanded by Ivan Tyulenev and included the 45th and 46th Armies, as well as 4 rifle divisions and a rifle brigade. On 28 April 1942, the district became the second formation of the Transcaucasian Front.


After the war the Transcaucasus Front reverted to being a part of the Headquarters Transcaucasus Military District (ZakVO), in Tbilisi. In 1979 Scott and Scott reported the District' headquarters address as Tbilisi-4, Ulitsa Dzneladze, Dom 46. The District became part of the Southern Direction, headquartered in Baku and including the North Caucasus and Turkestan Military Districts, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.


In 1988, dispositions within the District were as follows:


The Soviet Air Forces' presence in the district consisted of the 34th Air Army, established in 1949, redesignated the Air Forces of the Transcaucasian Military District (VVS ZKVO) in 1980, and then given the name 34th Air Army again in 1988. It was made up of the 36th Bomber Aviation Division, 283rd Fighter Aviation Division and six independent aviation regiments, totaling twelve aviation regiments. The formation's Military Unit Number was 21052.


Army composition (source V.I. Feskov et al 2004):


The Soviet Air Defence Forces had the 19th Army of Air Defence Forces located in the District.


By Ukaz No. 260 of the President of the Russian Federation of 19 March 1992 the Soviet Transcaucasian Military District and the Caspian Flotilla were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.


On 26 September 1992 the district was disbanded, according to Michael Holm and Feskov et al. 2013. Another, earlier report said on 1 January 1993, the District became the Group of Russian Forces in the Transcaucasus (Russian Группа российских войск в Закавказье – ГРВЗ; GRVZ). After many of the divisions listed above had disbanded or become part of the former republics' armed forces, in the mid 1990s the GRVZ's dispositions were:


General Major Aleksander Studenikin, former deputy commander of the Moscow Military District's 20th Army, commanded the Group in 2004 with General (Major?) Andrei Popov as his deputy.


The Russian presence at Vaziani was withdrawn in the late 1990s and an agreement over the withdrawal of the 12th and 62nd Bases by 2007–08 was made in 2005. The Akhalkalaki 62nd base was officially transferred on schedule to Georgia on 27 June 2007. The 12th Military Base in Batumi was transferred earlier than scheduled; scheduled for February 2008, it was transferred on 13 November 2007. The 'Zvezda' command post (probably the former District war headquarters) in the town of Mtskheta, just north of Tbilisi, was handed over by early September 2005. Due to the espionage conflict between Russia and Georgia, the Transcaucasus Group of Forces headquarters in Tbilisi was closed down ahead of schedule: 287 Russian servicemen left Georgia by 31 December 2006.


Even after the GRVZ was totally withdrawn, Russian troops continue to remain in peacekeeping roles in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, de jure parts of Georgia. There are about 1,600 men on the Abkhazian-Georgian boundary (serving alongside UNOMIG) and a battalion in South Ossetia. According to the Russian authorities, the Gudauta military base is also now used by the peacekeeping forces, but no international monitoring has ever been allowed there.


The Special Transcaucasian Committee (Russian: Особый Закавказский Комитет "Osobyi Zakavkazskii Komitet" (OZaKom, Ozakom or OZAKOM)) was established on March 9, 1917, with Member of the State Duma V. A. Kharlamov as Chairman, to replace the Imperial Viceroy Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and with special instruction to establish civil administrations in areas occupied in the course of the war on the Caucasian front by the Russian Provisional Government in the Transcaucasia as the highest organ of civil administrative body. Commissars were appointed for the Terek Oblast and the Kuban Oblast, and these as well as the Committee were to carry on relations with central government institutions through a Commissar for Caucasian Affairs in Petrograd attached to the Provisional Government.


Soviets also sprang up throughout the area and, in time, organized an influential Regional Center at Tiflis, using the loyalty of the Russian Armenians. Hakob Zavriev was instrumental in having Ozakom issue a decree about the administration of the occupied territories. This region was officially identified as "the land of Turkish Armenia" and transferred to a civilian rule under Zavriev, who oversaw districts Trebizon, Erzurum, Bitlis, and Van. Each of the districts under Administration for Western Armenia had their own Armenian governor, with Armenian civil officials. The position of the Caucasian Muslems was different though membership was drown from ethnically representatives of Duma deputies.


The committee ignored the Social Democratic hegemony in the region and provoked the Soviet to demand its abolition.


The Ozakom was composed of five members:


The ruble (, ), manat () or maneti () was the currency of both Transcaucasian states, the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic and the Transcaucasian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic.


In 1918, the Comissariat of the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic issued paper money denominated in rubles: . This ruble was equivalent to the Russian ruble. The notes bore Russian text on the obverse, with Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian texts on the reverses. Denominations were 1, 3, 5, 10, 50, 100 and 250 rubles.


Between 1919 and 1922/3, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia issued their own currencies, the Armenian ruble, Azerbaijani manat and Georgian maneti, which replaced the Transcaucasian ruble at par.


In 1923 and 1924, the Transcaucasian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (part of the USSR) issued notes of denominations between 1000 and 10 milliard rubles.


From 1924 and onwards, the Soviet ruble circulated as the official currency of the Transcaucasian SFSR (and the three Soviet Socialist Republics that succeeded the Transcaucasian SFSR). Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia gained independence and issued their own respective currencies in 1993, 1992, and 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.


The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR; 22 April — 28 May 1918) was a short-lived South Caucasian state extending across the present-day countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, plus parts of eastern Turkey as well as Russian border areas. The state lasted only for a month before Georgia declared independence, followed shortly by Azerbaijan and Armenia.


Diverging goals of the three major groups (Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians) jeopardized the TDFR's existence. The peace talks again broken down, and facing a renewed Ottoman offensive in May 1918 Georgian delegates in the Seim announced that the TDFR was unable to continue on, and declared independent the Georgian Democratic Republic on 26 May, with aid from the German Empire. With the Georgians no longer part of the TDFR, the Armenians and Azerbaijanis each declared themselves independent on 28 May, ending the federation.


The South Caucasus had been conquered by the Russian Empire in the early nineteenth century, with the last annexations taking place in 1828. A Caucasian Viceroyalty had originally been established in 1801, and over the next several decades the administration was reformed to consolidate Russian control, with the Viceroyalty given greater power in 1845. Tiflis (now Tbilisi), which had been the capital of the Georgian Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, became the seat of the viceroy and the "de facto" capital of the region.


The South Caucasus was overwhelmingly rural: aside from Tiflis the only other city of significance was Baku, which grew in the late nineteenth century as the region began exporting oil and became a major economic hub.


With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Caucasus became a major theatre, with the Russian and Ottoman Empires fighting each other in the region. The Russians won several battles and invaded deep into Ottoman territory. However they were concerned that the local population, who were mostly Muslims, would continue to follow the Ottoman Sultan and disrupt the Russian forces, as he was also the caliph, the spiritual leader of Islam. Both sides also wanted to use the Armenian population, who lived across the border, to their advantage and foment uprisings. However, after military defeats, the Ottoman government turned against the Armenians, launching the Armenian Genocide by 1915, in which an estimated 0.8 to 1.5 million Armenians were killed.


The idea to establish a Transcaucasian legislative body had been discussed since November 1917, though it had not been acted on at that time. However, with the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January, it became apparent to the leaders of the Commissariat that ties with Russia had been all but severed. With no desire to follow the lead of the Bolsheviks the Commissariat agreed to establish their own legislative body, so that the Transcaucasus could have a legitimate government and negotiate with the Ottoman Empire more properly. Thus on 23 February they established the "Seim" (legislature) in Tiflis.


No election was held for the deputies; instead the results for the Constituent Assembly election were used, with the electoral threshold lowered to one-third of that used for the Constituent Assembly in order to allow more members to join, which allowed smaller parties to be represented. Nikolai Chkheidze, a Georgian Menshevik, was named the chairman. Ultimately the Seim comprised some ten different parties. However, it was dominated by three parties, each representing one major ethnic group: the Georgian Mensheviks and Azerbaijaini Musavat party each had 30 members, while the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) had 27 members. The Bolsheviks boycotted the Seim, asserting that the only legitimate government for Russia (including Transcaucasia) was the Council of People's Commissars (known by its Russian acronym, Sovnarkom).


From the outset the Seim faced challenges to its authority. With a diverse ethnic and political makeup and no clear status to its authority, there was conflict both within its chambers and outside. It was largely dependent on national councils, represented by the three main ethnic groups, and was unable to proceed without their consent. Thus the Ottoman offer to renew peace talks and a willingness to meet in Tiflis, where the Seim was based, was refused, as the Seim felt it would only showcase the internal disagreements taking place. Instead they agreed to travel to Trabzon, in northeast Anatolia.


During the recess at Trabzon, the Ottoman forces continued their advance into the Transcaucasian territory, crossing the 1914 border with the Russian Empire by the end of March. The Seim debated the best course of action; majority of the delegates favored a political solution. To this end, on 20 March the Ottoman delegates offered that only if the Seim were to declare independence, thereby confirming that Transcaucasus was no longer part of Russia, could they return to negotiations. The idea of independence had come up before, with the Georgians having discussed it for themselves in depth in the preceding years. However, it was decided against as the Georgian leadership felt the Russians would not approve it and the Menshevik political ideology leaned away from nationalism.


By 5 April, Chkhenkeli accepted the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a basis for further negotiations and urged the Transcaucasian Seim to accept this position. He initially asked that Batum remain part of the Transcaucasus, arguing that as the major port in the region it was an economic necessity. However, the Ottomans refused the proposal, making it clear that they would only accept the terms of Brest-Litovsk, to which Chkhenkeli conceded. Acting on his own accord, on 9 April Chkhenkeli agreed to negotiate further based on the terms set out, though requested that representatives from the other Central Powers participate in the talks. Rauf replied that such a request could only be considered if the Transcaucasus were an independent state.


The Ottoman forces made their military superiority apparent right away. They occupied Batum on 14 April, with little resistance. They also attacked Kars, but a force of 3000 Armenian soldiers, with artillery support, held the city until it was evacuated on 25 April. Having captured most of their desired territory and not willing to lose more soldiers, the Ottoman delegates offered another truce on 22 April and waited for the Transcaucasians to reply.


The debate finished, Davit Oniashvili, a Menshevik, proposed the motion for the Seim "to proclaim Transcaucasia an independent democratic federative republic". Some deputies left the chamber in order to avoid voting against the matter, so the motion passed with few dissents. The new republic, the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR), immediately sent a message to Vehib Pasha announcing this development and expressing their will to accept the provisions of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and surrendered Kars to the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire recognized the new republic, the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR), on 28 April. Despite this recognition the Ottomans continued their advance into Transcaucasian territory and shortly after occupied both Erzerum and Kars.


The treaty contained twelve articles, which called for the Ottoman Empire to be ceded not only Ardahan, Batum, and Kars, but also the , , and Surmalin Uyezds, and large parts of the Aleksandropol and Echmiadzin Uyezds, mainly along the tracks of the Kars-Julfa railway. The territory named would effectively bring the entire Armenia within the Ottoman Empire. The railway was desired as the Ottoman forcese sought a fast route to North Persia, where they were fighting the British forces in the Persian Campaign, though historian Richard G. Hovannisian has suggested that the real reason was to allow them a means to reach Baku.


Giving the TDFR several days to consider their options, the Ottoman forces resumed their military advances into Armenia on 21 May. They engaged the Armenians at the battles of Bash Abarn (21–24 May), Sardarapat (21–29 May) and Kara Killisse (24–28 May), but could not defeat the Armenians decisively. As a result, their advance slowed down and eventually they were forced to retreat.


As the TDFR lasted only a month, it has had a limited legacy, and the historical scholarship on the topic is limited. Historians Adrian Brisku and Timothy K. Blauvelt have noted that it "seemed both to the actors at the time and to later scholars of the region to be unique, contingent, and certainly unrepeatable." Stephen F. Jones stated it was "the first and last attempt at an independent Transcaucasian union," while Hovannisian noted that the actions of the TDFR during its short existence demonstrated that it "was not independent, democratic, federative, or a republic".


While the three successor states would be reunited within the Soviet Union as the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, this would only exist between 1922 and 1936 before being broken up again into three union republics. Within the modern states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, the TDFR is largely ignored in their respective national historiography, given consideration only as the first stage towards their own independent states.


The Treaty of Ahmet Pasha (Persian:"عهدنامه احمد پاشا", ) was a treaty signed on 10 January 1732 between the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia.


In the 17th century, a stalemate between the Ottoman and Safavid empires had been reached by the treaties of Serav and Zuhab. However, during the short rule of Afghanistan based Hotaki dynasty, chaos in Iran resulted in clashes along frontiers, especially in Caucasus. Meanwhile, Peter I of Russia began to occupy the Iranian territories in the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia, gains which were confirmed by the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1723). Fearing a Russian-controlled Caucasus, the Ottomans decided to capture Tbilisi to balance the Russian advance. But this operation resulted in a long Ottoman Safavid war.


Between 1723 and 1730, the Ottomans were able to control South Caucasus by capturing Yerevan and Ganja in addition to Tbilisi. In the southern fronts (i.e., Western Iran), Ottomans captured Tabriz, Urmia, Khorramabad, Kermanshah and Hamedān. In 1724, the Ottomans and Russians had agreed, by the Treaty of Constantinople (1724), to further divide the aforementioned Iranian territories between the two of them. But after Tahmasp II of Safavids began controlling Iran, the Ottoman advance was checked. Tired of war, both sides decided to end the war. Ahmet Pasha (Ottoman) and Mehmet Rıza Kulu (Persian) signed the treaty.


The treaty proved to be an armistice rather than a permanent treaty. Because, neither Ottoman sultan Mahmut I approved the loss of Tabriz nor Nader Shah, then the commander in chief of the Persian army, the losses in Caucasus. During Nader Shah's reign, Afsharid Persia was able to regain its losses.


The Caucasian Native Cavalry Division (), or "Savage Division" () was a cavalry division of the Imperial Russian Army. Formed on 23 August 1914, it was transformed into the Caucasian Native Cavalry Corps on 4 September 1917 before being dissolved several months later. It was composed mostly of Muslim volunteers from among various Peoples of the Caucasus. It took part in World War I, commanded by Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia, younger brother of Emperor Nicholas II.


The division earned the nickname "Savage" for its personnel's traditional attire and relaxed discipline. During the course of World War I it distinguished itself in numerous engagements, including the Brusilov and Kerensky Offensives. During the February Revolution, the Savage Division remained loyal to the Russian Provisional Government and refused to participate in the Kornilov affair. Dissolving soon afterwards, many of its veterans enlisted into the armed forces of the White movement and the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus.


In early October, the newly formed division conducted a parade in Vladikavkaz, the division’s units then began transferring to Vinnytsia and Proskurov. On 15 November, the division was dispatched to Lvov where it became part of the 2nd Cavalry Corps of the Southwestern Front. On 28 November, it began its march towards the front line at Sambir. On 30 November, the division crossed the border Russia between Austria-Hungary. On 8 December, the Circassian Regiment clashed with the enemy at Terky and Volkovya.


Between 26 and 27 February, the Kabardin Regiment defended the Lomnica river crossing at Podgorka against several Austrian attacks, while being targeted by heavy shelling. The regiment lost three killed and 29 wounded in the fighting. The Ingush and Circassian Regiments crossed the Lomnica river under heavy enemy fire a week later. They then attacked the Tsu Babina village, which was held by an Austrian infantry battalion supported by six machine guns and dislodged the defenders. The Austrians lost 323 men killed and 54 captured. On 6 March, Michael Alexandrovich personally led the division in an offensive on Tlumach, defeating two Austrian battalions and seizing the town. He was later awarded the Saint George Sword for the action.


A large scale Austrian offensive forced the division to withdraw to the right bank of the Prut and by the middle of May it returned to its initial positions on the Dniester. On 4 June, the division took part in the Brusilov Offensive advancing along the right bank of the Dniester towards Chernivtsi, taking Okno village two days later. On 11 June, the division counter-attacked the Austrians who had attempted to create a bridgehead at Zhezhava. The division continued to pursue the Austrians taking the villages Luzhany, Shepenice and Altmaeshti on the left bank of the Prut, taking 1,320 prisoners in the process.


In the middle of October 1916, the 1st and 3rd Brigades were incorporate into the Romanian Front's 4th Army and were forwarded to Stanislavov. In December 1916, the division fought a series of battles in Roman and Bacău. In February 1917, the division was withdrawn to the Bessarabia Governorate, allowing its personnel to rest. The February Revolution and the subsequent Abdication of Nicholas II did not negatively affect the division's morale. In the middle of June 1917, the division joined the 12th Army Corps at Stanislavov in preparation of the Kerensky Offensive. On 8 July, the division launched an offensive on Kalush and Dolyna. On 12 July, the 1st Brigade and the 3rd Caucasus Cossack Division thwarted a German counter-offensive at Kalush.