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New Perspectives on The Land of Heroes and Giants": The Georgian Sources for Sasanian History

Dr. Stephen Rapp Jr
Department of History
Sam Houston State University

This presentation surveys the Georgian literary sources for the history of the Sasanian Empire and the larger Iranian Commonwealth. Chief among these written works are Georgian hagiographical and historiographical works produced between the fifth and ninth centuries. The texts are considered on multiple levels, including their literal content, the vocabulary and syntax, as well as their production and subsequent revision and transmission. While Georgian historiographical sources have often been dismissed as later monuments saturated that are more legend than history, I shall argue that they are, in fact, deep reservoirs of Iranic imagery and that the oldest compositions were deliberately patterned upon the Xwaday-namag.