© 2008. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved ‑ 53 It is a curi

© 2008. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved ‑ 53 It is a curious fact that “whereas the Ibero-Caucasian and Euskaro-Kartvelian hypotheses have a number of adherents among Kartvelists, the Nostratic one has not met with approval among them at all” (Klimov 1991: 325), even though the groundwork for Nostratic was done in the USSR, and Kartvelian data play a key role in establishing the sound correspondences. Even at present, few Kartvelian specialists outside Georgia, and almost no one in Georgia, have gone on record as supporting any form of the Nostratic hypothesis. Čikobava and his school were of course hostile to the very idea of Nostratic, since it split Kartvelian genetically from the two North Caucasian families. Gamq’relidze & Mač’avariani (1965), as was mentioned earlier, steered clear of any explicit endorsement of either Nos­ tratic in general, or a genetic relation between Indo-European and Kartvelian in particular, even as they leveled strong criticism at the empirical grounding of the Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis (e.g., Gamq’relidze 1971). Klimov himself walked a thin line between the Ibero-Caucasian and Nostratic camps, criticizing the first without rejecting it out of hand, while on the other hand acknowledging evidence for Indo-European-Kartvelian isoglosses, without however recognizing a genetic link between the two families.40 As a result, Klimov came under attack from both sides: Čikobava (1970) accused him of being a Nostratic sympathizer, whereas toward the end of his life Klimov was upbraided for being unfairly critical of Nos­ tratic (Manaster-Ramer 1995). 8. The Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis and the historiography of Abkhazia The preceding account of the Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis is only part of the story. If, on the one hand, Marr and Čikobava were opposed by proponents of a uniformitarian, metho­ dologically-rigorous and language-centered historical ap­ proach, on the other their work came under attack from historians seeking to re­ interpret or even redraw the complex scenarios of contact, mixing and layering that both Marr and Čikobava regarded as characteristic of Caucasian ethnohis­ tory. Among the presuppositions underlying criticism from this second camp are post-war Soviet ethnogenesis theory, which favored a simplistic superposition of territory, language, ethnos and nation; and the distinctive variety of ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ which flourished in the Soviet intellectual ecosystem, and continues to thrive fifteen years after the break-up of the USSR. This section begins with a detour into medieval Georgian literary and historical studies, during which the Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis will fade from view temporarily, to return later on, intertwined with the thread of Soviet and post-Soviet historiographic templates. 40. Klimov attributed the existence of apparently cognate lexemes in Indo-European and Kart­ velian to intensive contacts between the two speech communities at various periods (Klimov 1984, 1994). The Rise and Fall and Revival of the Ibero-Caucasian Hypothesis by Kevin Tuite, Professor of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal Historiographia Linguistica Vol. 35:1/2 (2008), pp. 23–82 The Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis and the histography of Abkhazia pp.53-65 © 2008. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved 54 Kevin Tuite 8.1 P’avle Ingoroq’va, Giorgi Merčule, and the ‘Life of Grigol of Xandzta’ Less than a month after Čikobava’s triumphant speech at the 1951 special ses­ sion of the Academy of Sciences on Stalin’s contribution to linguistics, a thick man­ uscript by the literary historian P’avle Ingoroq’va (1893–1990) was delivered to the printers, although it would not be published until three years later. At first glance, Ingoroq’va’s tome purported to be a biography of the 10th-century Georgian eccle­ siastic Giorgi Merčule, best known as the author of the ‘Life of Grigol of Xandzta’ .41 The latter text was written in 951, and Ingoroq’va’s Giorgi Merčule was intended to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the ‘Life of Grigol of Xandzta’ , a critical edition of which Ingoroq’va published in 1949. It was to have an impact far beyond the disciplinary frontiers of Georgian medieval literary studies, however, and con­ tinues to arouse passions over a half-century after its publication. Like Čikobava, Ingoroq’va singled out Marr for criticism in the pages of his book, but his angle of attack was radically different, and the consequences for Georgian historiography were far more problematic. Ingoroq’va’s name is commonly invoked in debates over the historical relation between Abkhazia and Georgia, often by partisans of one side or the other who seem not to have read more than a few excerpts from Ingoroq’va’s thousand-page monograph. In order to understand how this mid–20th-century bi­ ography of a mid–10th-century biographer became the cause and object of heated argument ever since its publication, I will discuss the importance of each of its three layers, as it were: Grigol and his times, the significance of Giorgi Merčule’s hagiography of Grigol, and Ingoroq’va’s objectives in writing a study of Giorgi. According to his biographer, Grigol of Xandzta was born in 759 and died at the age of 102 in 861. Although born into a prominent East Georgian noble family, Grigol was drawn to a monastic vocation. Accompanied by three companions, the young Grigol left his home province, then under Arab domination, and traveled southwestward to what is now north­ eastern Turkey. Grigol explored the sparsely- settled district of K’larjeti, in search of a solitary locale where he could found a monastery. He chose the remote site of Xandzta, where he and his companions built a wooden church and a simple monastic compound. In the course of time Grigol of Xandzta became archimandrite of a coalition of a dozen monasteries in the region, which were founded by him or his disciples. Grigol’s monastic ca­ reer overlapped, and to an extent intersected, the reigns of three rulers who were 41. Full title: “The work and career of the worthy life of our holy and blessed father Grigol the Archimandrite, builder of Xandzta and Shat’berd, and with him the commemoration of many blessed fathers” (Šromay da mo>uac’ebay >irsad cxorebisay c’midisa da net’arisa mamisa čuenisa grigolisi arkimandrit’isay, xanŠtisa da šat’berdisa a>mašenebelisay, da mis tana qsenebay mravalta mamata net’artay). The version consulted while writing this paper is that of Abuladze et al. (1963). “Merčule” is not the family name of the author but rather a title loosely translated “specialist in [ecclesiastical] law” or perhaps “theologian” (Ingoroq’va 1954: 17–28). © 2008. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved The Rise and Fall and Revival of the Ibero‑Caucasian Hypothesis 55 to play a critical role in the struggle for the liberation of western Transcaucasia from foreign (Arab and Byzantine) hegemony, and the eventual consolidation of the united Georgian kingdom under Bagrat’ III in the early 11th century: Leon II (King of Abkhazia 786–798), Ashot’ Kuropalates (King of Georgia 800–826) and his son and successor Bagrat’ I (826–876). Although inheritor of the Iberian kingdom in eastern Georgia, Ashot’ moved his residence to Art’anuji in K’larjeti after a series of defeats by the Arab armies. It was from here that he and his sons launched their long campaign to retake southern and eastern Georgia, and it was in K’larjeti that they took an interest in and contributed financially to Grigol’s ecclesiastical work. Composed ninety years after the death of its subject, the biography of Grigol of Xandzta fell into oblivion until the mid–19th century, when a Georgian scholar came across an 11th-century copy of Giorgi Merčule’s text in the library of the Jerusalem Patriarchate. Marr examined the manuscript in 1902 and published a scholarly edition nine years later. Since World War II the ‘Life of Grigol of Xan­ dzta’ has been issued in several critical editions, and, in abridged and annotated form, it has become a prominent component of the Old Georgian literary canon taught in schools.42 The popularity of this work cannot be ascribed to its liter­ ary merits alone. In a list of key themes laid out for middle-school readers of the ‘Life of Grigol of Xandzta’ , K’ . Danelia included, alongside medieval church his­ tory and monastic life, ‘the self-government (autocephaly) of the Georgian church, and the cultural and political integrity (mtlianoba) of Georgia’ (Sarĵveladze et al. 1986: 135). With regard to the status of the Orthodox Church in Georgia, Giorgi Merčule described significant moves toward autonomy from the patriarchates of Constantinople and Jerusalem, such as the securing of the right to consecrate holy oils locally rather than import them from Jerusalem. This would culminate in the removal of the Orthodox communities of western Transcaucasia — Lazica, Egrisi and Abkhazia — from subordination to Byzantium and their attachment to the Iberian Catholicosate in Mcxeta, just as the latter had earlier become autonomous from Antioch. As for the concept of Georgian national unity, while the ‘Life of Grigol of Xandzta’ certainly accorded important supporting roles to the kings of Iberia and Abkhazia, whose dynastic union in 1010 gave rise to the united Geor­ gian kingdom of which the present-day Republic of Georgia considers itself the successor, it is in the domain of religion that the Georgian nation received its ini­ tial definition. In previous centuries, the proper name Kartli denoted a territory and feudal state in eastern Georgia, corresponding to the province still known 42. Notwithstanding uploads/Geographie/ the-ibero-caucasian.pdf

• Détails
• Publié le Aoû 12, 2022
• Catégorie Geography / Geogra...
• Langue French
• Taille du fichier 0.2266MB