The Issue of Reliability of Sekhnia Chkheidze's Chronological Records According to Georgian and Foreign Sources

Abstract

The previous article covers the difficult political situation created in Eastern Georgia in the first half of the 18th century according to Sekhnia Chkheidze's "Life of Kings". In the source, the author presented these events in the form of chronicles, and we de­liberately combined them into one topic, so that the reader could better understand the severity of these processes for Eastern Georgia: "Ottomanism", "Lekianism", "Kyzi­lba­sho­ba". XVII-XVIII centuries in the historical life of the Georgian people were mainly the era of destruction and wars against foreign enemies. The political disintegration of the country was facilitated by the invasions of the foreign enemy. From the beginning of the 18th century, the lezgins often attacked Kartl-Kakheti, and during the Ottoman rule, from 1923, their invasions became more permanent. In the early days of the weakening of Persia, Iran used the Lezgins in the fight against the Georgian kingdoms, but later, the Lezgins started raiding the Persian dominions in Transcaucasia and the Shah turned to the Georgian kings for help.

Sekhnia Chkheidze has described in detail the repelling of predatory groups from Dagestan, their raiding of towns and villages and their abduction of food sources. The Georgian population selflessly fought against these hooligan attacks, but the effective fight against the enemy was made difficult by internal disagreements of the country, as well as by the intolerable policy of first the Ottomans and then the Kizilbashis. Sekhnia Chkheidze was the first in Georgian historiography to arrange the real perception of historical facts chronologically and convey them in simple language.