Cjss second Issue: cjss second Issue qxd

Byzantium was never actually a part of Georgia, not counting relatively short
historical periods. The Iberian community used to be a part of Byzantium. In
such a case, if the population of this part was also Armenian, it is not clear
why the Armenian speaking population of Byzantium had the Georgian-
Kalkedonuri religious service and not the Greek-Kalkedonuri one. 
The historians whose only proof of the Georgian descent of Grigol
Bakurianisdze is his Kalkedonitoba, cannot actually illustrate even one case
when a person with an undoubtedly Armenian descent  calls  himself “Geor-
gian”  because of Kalkedonitoba.
Armenian sources usually give the name of Duophysitists either to Kalke-
donits or to people of Greek faith. 
3. The quintessence of all the stated is that the Typicon of the Petritsoni
Monastery does not seem to give any evidence on where Grigol descended
from. All the scholars following N. Mar without an exception repeated the
groundless version of N. Mar on the descent of Grigol from Tao - without giv-
ing the version any critical consideration. The list of the estates that Grigol
owned, including the one in Tao, does not help us in any way determine his
descent. It is quite clear from the information presented by Grigol that his
mother had left his brother and himself “without an estate”. The brothers
started serving the Byzantine Caesar and got all their estates from the latter.
Therefore, declaring that Grigol was from Tao, based on the fact that he had
been given an estate there by Byzantine Caesar – would be absolutely ground-
less. There is an opinion, according to which Byzantine Caesars granted es-
tates to those who served them in the motherlands of the latter. Firstly, this
did not always happen and there are lots of cases illustrating this. In addition,
what is the most important, whenever such a fact did occur, the territories
where estates were granted were subordinated to Byzantium. It is clear that
if Grigol were from, let’s say, Kakheti or Kartli, Caesar would have been unable
to grant him an estate here for the simple reason that those parts were not
under his control. The fact that the Byzantine Caesar granted estates to Grigol
in the Armenian and Georgian parts  within the borders of Byzantium can
only corroborate that the Caesar granted estates to people in places that were
close to the motherlands of the latter, however under Byzantine control. 
The only information that might be an attempt to confirm the descent
of Grigol in Tao is the note of Kedrene (Skilitsa) on the father of Grigol. The
Byzantine historian “David Kurapalate passed away and made the King (Cae-
sar Basil implied) his heir and the owner of his possessions. When the latter
went to Iberia, he ascertained the property left to him, assured Giorgi, the
brother of the last Kurapalate and the ruler of internal Iberia, to be content
with his estates and not invade those that did not belong to him. He concluded
a truce with him, took his son captive and left for Phoenicia. He took with him
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noblemen from Iberia, the highest ranking of them were Fevdat and Fers the
Bakuriani …” (Georgica, 1963. p. 46).
Later, while describing a war with Giorgi I, Kedrene notes: “as Giorgi, the
sovereign of Abazgia violated the agreement concluded with the Romans, and
invaded the Roman borders, the King launched a campaign against him with
all his army... after that there was the second fight… Giorgi escaped to the
mountains in Iberia. After a while, he conducted talks with the king (Caesar
Basil), gave him some parts of the country that the latter wished for and con-
cluded an armistice with him. He also sent  his son Bagrat with him as a cap-
tive. The King conferred the title of Magistros upon Bagrat and sent him back”
(Georgica, 1963. p. 46).
As we can see, Kedrene uses various sources to get information on the re-
lations of the kings of Georgia (Bagrat III, Giorgi I) with Caesar Basil. There-
fore, though he presents the story of Caesar Basil coming to Georgia twice:
once while narrating the death of David Kurapalate in 1001 and the second
time while describing a war with Giorgi I in 1021 – he makes an important
mistake in while using the sources. The mistakes were caused by his super-
ficial knowledge of the political situation in Georgia. From the two parts of
the story of Kedrene mentioned above, the second narrates  the developments
of 1021, i.e. the story of captivation of Prince Bagrat, while the fist episode is
a mixture and blending of Caesar Basil’s entrance of Georgia in 1001 and
1021. The episode narrates how Caesar came to Georgia owing to the death
of David Kurapalate in 1021, and how Prince Bagrat the son of Giorgi was
taken captive, which happened in 1022. Kedre blends the list of the distin-
guished people whom Caesar Basil took with him at different times. We be-
lieve that the Caesar took Prince Bagrat and Bakuriani at the same time and
Fevdat and Fers - the sons of Jojik at a different time - twenty years before
that, in 1001 when he first came to Georgia. It is clear the Fers was at Caesar’s
court long before Bagrat was  taken captive. The fact that Fers was decapitated
a little earlier before the developments, because of his participation in the
uprising against Caesar.
Hence, out of the people listed above, the Caesar of Byzantium could only
have taken with him Bakuriani, not brother Jojikisdze when he took Bagrat
prisoner. The mentioning of the people together by Kadrene is the result of a
mistake of Byzantine historians that we have mentioned above. 
It is clear that Bactrian settled near Kghrene is the father of Grigol.
Firstly, Grigol calls himself Bakurianisdze. Apart from this, Caesar conferred
the title of a Petrikios on Bakuriani as well as Pevghate and Persi the Jojikidze.
The title corresponds to the Georgian title “To the Head of Eristavis, the God”.
This is the title that Grigol refers to his father with. The chronology of devel-
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