Georgia

ⁱ/ˈdʒɔrdʒə/ (Georgian: საქართველო Sakartvelo, IPA: [sɑkʰɑrtʰvɛlɔ] ( listen)) is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads ofWestern Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast byAzerbaijan. The capital and largest city is Tbilisi. Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres (26,911 sq mi), and its population is almost 5 million. Georgia is aunitary, semi-presidential republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy.

During the classical era, several independent kingdoms became established in what is now Georgia. The kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia adopted Christianity in the early 4th century. A unified Kingdom of Georgia reached the peak of its political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar in the 11th–12th centuries. Thereafter the area was dominated by various large empires, including the Safavids, Afsharids, and Qajar Persians. In the late 18th century, the kingdom ofKartli-Kakheti forged an alliance with the Russian Empire, and the area was annexed by Russia in 1801. After a brief period of independence following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia was occupied by Soviet Russia in 1921, becoming part of the Soviet Union as the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. After independence in 1991, post-communist Georgia suffered from civil unrest and economic crisis for most of the 1990s. This lasted until the Rose Revolution of 2003, after which the new government introduced democratic and economic reforms.

Georgia is a member of the Council of Europe and the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development. It contains two de facto independent regions,Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which gained limited international recognition after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Georgia and a major part of the international community consider the regions to be part of Georgia's sovereign territory under Russian military occupation.^[7]

History

Main article: History of Georgia (country)

Prehistory

Main article: Prehistoric Georgia

The territory of modern-day Georgia was inhabited by Homo erectus since the Paleolithic Era. The proto-Georgian tribes first appear in written history in the 12th century BC.^[13]

Archaeological finds and references in ancient sources reveal elements of early political and state formations characterized by advanced metallurgy and goldsmith techniques that date back to the 7th century BC and beyond.^[13]

The classical period saw the rise of the early Georgian states Diauehi (13th century BC), Colchis (8th century BC), Sper (7th century BC) and Iberia (6th century BC). In the 4th century BC, a unified kingdom of Georgia – an early example of advanced state organization under one king and an aristocratic hierarchy – was established.^[14] Sargon II(722–705 BC) of the Assyrian empire conquered the Georgian state of Tabal and all of the Hittite kingdoms of the Taurus Mountains.^[15]

In Greek mythology, Colchis was the location of the Golden Fleece sought by Jason and the Argonauts in Apollonius Rhodius' epic tale Argonautica. The incorporation of the Golden Fleece into the myth may have derived from the local practice of using fleeces to sift gold dust from rivers.^[16] Known to its natives as Egrisi or Lazica, Colchis was also the battlefield of the Lazic War fought between the Byzantine Empire and Sassanid Persia.

After the Roman Empire completed its conquest of the Caucasus region in 66 BC, the Georgian kingdoms were Roman client states and allies for nearly 400 years.^[16] In 337 AD King Mirian III declared Christianity as the state religion, giving a great stimulus to the development of literature, arts, and ultimately playing a key role in the formation of the unified Georgian nation.^[17][18] King Mirian III's acceptance of Christianity effectively tied the kingdom to the neighboring Eastern Roman Empire, which exerted a strong influence on Georgia for nearly a millennium, determining much of its present cultural identity.^[16]

The early kingdoms disintegrated into various feudal regions by the early Middle Ages. This made it easy for Arabs to conquer most of eastern Georgia in the 7th century. From the 7th century to the 10th century, Georgia was part of the Khazar empire.

The various independent regions would not be united into a single Kingdom of Georgia until the beginning of the 11th century.

Although Arabs captured the capital city of Tbilisi in 645 AD, Kartli-Iberia retained considerable independence under local Arab rulers.^[16] The prince Ashot I (r. 813–830) – also known as Ashot Kurapalat – became the first of the Bagrationi family to rule the kingdom. Ashot's reign began a period of nearly 1,000 years during which the Bagrationi, as the noble house was known, ruled at least part of what is now the republic. Bagrat III (r. 1027–1072) united western and eastern Georgia.

The Kingdom of Georgia reached its zenith in the 12th to early 13th centuries. This period during the reigns of David IV (called David the Builder, r. 1089–1125) and his granddaughter Tamar (r. 1184–1213) has been widely termed as Georgia's Golden Age or the Georgian Renaissance ^[20] This early Georgian renaissance, which preceded its Western European analogue, was characterized by impressive military victories, territorial expansion, and a cultural renaissance in architecture, literature, philosophy and the sciences.^[21] The Golden age of Georgia left a legacy of great cathedrals, romantic poetry and literature, and the epic poem "The Knight in the Panther's Skin".^[22]

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