Iran and the Caucasus

The peoples of the Caucasus maintained close cultural, economic, and political relations with the Iranian commonwealth from ancient times. The linguistic influence of the Iranian languages also spread across the North and South Caucasus. A clear manifestation thereof is the existence of two Elbrus(es), one in the Caucasus and the other along the Caspian coast. According to the Georgian Chronicle (Kartlis Tskhovreba) Parnavaz (fourth to third Century BC), the legendary first king of Georgia, was a nephew of viceroy of the Persian empire and his mother was from Isfahan. He killed the regent of Alexander the Great (III of Macedon) and established the first unified Georgian kingdom. Georgian kings were under strong Iranian influence but from medieval times the Bagratid princes stressed the ancient Judaic roots to transcend the Muslim as well as Byzantine hegemony. Iranian cultural markers, however, were still important in the south Caucasus throughout the medieval and early modern period. The heyday of medieval Caucasian literature corresponded with the Iranian cultural resurgence. Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209) and Mosis Khorenatsi (1130-1213), two literary men of prominence, one writing in Persian and the other in Armenian, were both from Ganja. In nearly the same period the twenlveth century Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli authored the national epic poem Vepkhistqaosani (The Knight in the panther's skin) supposedly at the court of Queen Tamar (r. 1184-c. 1213) in Georgia.

While the Iranian plateau was under Seljuk and Mongol rule, a new political system of dual structure, a hybrid polity of Turk-Tajik, was established. Nomadic tribesmen constituted the military elites while the sedentary population provided financial and administrative resources. The new geo-political settings and the technical innovation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries enhanced by massive flow of peoples and goods resulted in drastic change in the political structures in the region. The early modern world conditioned the emergence of the new imperial entities. There was an urgent need for the army equipped with firearms and peoples as well as estates to sustain the enlarged royal domain.