Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, Georgia is a country of rainforests and swamps, snow and glaciers, and semi-arid plains. It has ski resorts and mineral springs, monuments and an oil pipeline. It also has one of the longest and most turbulent histories in the Christian or Near Eastern world, but no comprehensive, up-to-date account has been written about this little-known country-until now. Remedying this omission, Donald Rayfield accesses a mass of new material from recently opened archives to tell Georgia's absorbing story. Beginning wi.

Includes maps of: Georgia, circa 1200 A.D.; Western Georgia (Imeretia, Mingrelia, Guria, Abkhazia), circa 1500 A.D.; Kakhetia, circa 1500 A.D.; Kartli, circa 1500 A.D.; Georgia and the Russian Conquest of Transcaucasia, 1801-78 A.D.; Georgia Today. Originally published: 2012.

Edge of Empires Cover; Imprint page; Contents; Contents pt II; Introduction; 1. The Emergence of the Kartvelians; 2. The Origins of the Kingdom of Kartli; 3. Conversion; 4. The Arab Conquest; 5. Unification; 6. Davit the Builder; 7. Demetre and Giorgi III; 8. Queen Tamar; 9. Mongol Invasion; 10. The Fractured State; 11. Timur Lang and the Destruction of Georgia; 12. Fratricide; 13. King Teimuraz I; 14. Teimuraz Dispossessed; 15. The Eighteenth Century; 16. The Russian Conquest of Kartli-Kakhetia; 17. King Solomon's End; 18. Vice-regency; 19. Reaction and Revolution; 20. Independence. 21. Soviet Annexation22. After Stalin; 23. Independence Restored; References; Chronology; Maps and Dynastic Trees; Select Bibliography; Photo Acknowledgements; Index.