Georgia’s Historical Hardships as Reflected in Toponyms

Abstract

This paper examines Giorgi Zedginidze’s important historical narrative, The Mother’s Cathedral, through a historical-onomastic method. Giorgi Zedginidze, a native of Samtskhe–Javakheti, depicts in his work the turbulent and tragic period in the history of that region. The narrative extends beyond Samtskhe–Javakheti to encompass historical southern Georgia, specifically territories corresponding to modern-day Turkey. The work depicts the seventeenth-century Ottoman annexation of Georgian lands, with particular emphasis on the conquest and devastation of Shavsheti.
The narrative reflects a historical phase during which south-western Georgia endured severe subjugation under Ottoman rule, initiated in the sixteenth century, gradually encompassing the entirety of western Georgia. These efforts proved successful — Georgia was deprived of a territory that, in the ninth and tenth centuries, had served as the political, cultural, and ecclesiastical center of the country. As Professor Revaz Siradze characterizes it, this region constituted a “Second Kartli.”
In the seventeenth century, historical south-western Georgia continued to preserve its Georgian place names, or toponyms, which I have characterized metaphorically as a symbolic form of “identity.”
A pertinent analogy may be drawn with the removal, during the 1990s, of the explicit identification of nationality from identity documents – while it remained evident to us that the surname recorded therein was Georgian – so too the explicit marking of Georgian origin gradually faded from certain “conquered toponyms”. Yet, despite formal transformation, the Georgian lexical base could still be discerned. Scholarly investigation, however, overlooks neither the linguistic nor the historical dimensions of this phenomenon.
As late as the seventeenth century, Georgian toponyms still clearly preserved the national identity of Georgian land, standing as silent guardians over it. Several of the Georgian villages identified by the toponyms attested in the narrative have long since become abandoned settlements, yet the toponyms themselves remain as enduring linguistic testimonies to their historical existence.
This study will first examine the toponyms of Samtskhe-Javakheti attested in the narrative and then proceed to those of historical south-western Georgia in the seventeenth century, thereby reconstructing the toponymic configuration of three centuries prior. The analysis draws on the emotionally charged, thematically poignant, and toponym-rich passages of Zedginidze’s prose, revealing the intertwining of geography, memory, and identity.
Amid the harsh realities of conquest and warfare, one passage in the narrative stands out: although the conqueror is portrayed as ruthless, G. Zedginidze’s work includes a scene depicting the humane interaction between a wounded Turkish soldier and a Georgian man. Such episodes suggest that, over time, human compassion helped transform relations between Georgians and Turks, fostering goodwill and friendship.