THE KINGDOM OF IMERETI ACCORDING TO „TSKHOVREBA MEPETA” (LIFE OF KINGS) BY SEKHNIA CHKHEIDZE

Verifying written sources, especially the works of the old chroniclers and specifying their historical and source study value is one of the main tasks of historical sciences. No complete A complete historical and source-scientific study of the works by Sekhnia Chkheidze, a Georgian historian of the of the XVII century and the first third of the XVIII century has not been carried out until now. Such a “delay” is partially caused by the attitude of Ivane Javakhishvili, the founder of the modern Georgian historical school, to the works of Sekhnia Chkheidze. Our goal is to study the reliability of the records by Sekhnia by means of comparison of the different kind of historical sources, records of Georgian and foreign authors and data from the works by Sekhnia Chkheidze. The article analyses the records of the author about the kingdom of Imereti history of XVII-XVIII centuries out of the mentioned extensive research. Georgian historiography is dominated by the view that the focus of Sekhnia Chkheidze's attention was only on the historical processes taking place in the Eastern Georgia, and he was not familiar with the political situation in the Western Georgia. On the basis of the cyclical source scientific research conducted by us, the present paper shows that S. Chkheidze was well aware of the political processes taking place in the Western Georgia, especially in the Kingdom of Imereti. Reportedly, Georgia was divided into several kingdom-prinicipalities in the II half of the XV century, it was a long process, first, Samtskhe-Saatabago, then Kakheti Kingdom separated from the united Georgia, later, Kartli and Imereti were also formed as separate kingdoms. The process of disintegration was deepend in the XVI century, Imereti Kingdom had started dividing into several prinicipalities like Samegrelo, Guria, Abkhazia and Svaneti in the second half of the 50s. Despite such a condition the fight for restoring of the country unity had never stopped. Sekhnia Chkheidze, treasurer and historian of the royal court of Kartli, could clearly see that Western Georgia faced the most difficult situation in the case of unification of the country. A chronicler highlights the attempt of progressive kings of Kartli (Vakhtang V, Giorgi XI, Archil and Vakhtang VI) to enhance and strengthen their influence on the whole region with support of Georgians from the Western Georgia.