Georgian Merchants

2025-01-25

When discussing trade routes in the 16th-18th centuries, attention is more focused on the commercial activity of Iranians, Armenians, Indians and other ethnic groups. Georgian merchants are rarely considered as an important trading group. However, the 16th-18th centuries are when Georgian merchants became particularly active.

Georgian merchants were active even before the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. For example, the Venetian merchant Jacopo Badoeri, while living in Constantinople in 1436-1440, mentions George “the Megrelian” who traded in precious mahogany. Indirect information about the relationship between Georgian and Russian merchants can also be found in the account of the Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin, when he refers to the Georgian land as a rather rich region.

However, from the 16th century onwards, there was a greater prospect of entering the international arena. The reason for this was not only the ambition of Russia, Persia and the Ottomans to subjugate the South Caucasus to their economic influence, but also the production of products in the region itself that would allow them to enter into trade and economic competition in the Near East. One such product was silk.

For example, when the English merchant, Giles Fletcher, visited Moscow at the end of the 16th century, he met Turkish, Persian, Georgian and Armenian merchants there. Georgian merchants also visited Constantinople. The “Life of Akhali Kartli” mentions a Georgian merchant in the Ottoman capital, Diakvnisshvili, who brought the remains of King Simon to Georgia.

Later, in the 17th century, Georgian merchants were active in the imperial capital of Isfahan, where they were actively engaged in trade with many European merchants. This is mentioned by the German traveler Olearius. Among the peoples forcibly exiled to Iran by Shah Abbas, Georgians played a special role in the development of trade and economic relations. For example, silk production in the Gilan province passed into the hands of Khoja Lalazar Yahudi, a Georgian Jew exiled from Kakheti to Iran.

The German traveler Engelbert Kaempfer notes in his accounts of Georgia that Georgians were also actively engaged in trade among many nationalities in Isfahan. The Russian merchant Kotov, in his description of his journey, where he travels from Russia to Isfahan and then to Constantinople, gives Russian transliterations of Georgian numbers. He also does this in Armenian, Turkish and Persian. It was vital for a merchant to be able to pronounce numbers in the languages ​​of the regions and peoples where and with whom he would have to trade. Kotov's mention of Georgian numbers should indicate the activity of Georgian merchants in the markets of Iran, in particular Isfahan, to which the Russian merchant devotes a large part of his description.

Historical documents often mention merchants from Gori in Ganja, Gilan, Isfahan and other cities of Iran, in Daruband or Constantinople. For example, the above-mentioned merchant Diakvnisshvili was from the city of Gori. On Georgian tombstones discovered in Isfahan at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, we read the names of merchants from Gori: Mamijanashvili, Amirbabashvili Elizbari's son, Baghdasari, Zurab Gorkashvili and others. Distant India must also have been no stranger to Gori merchants. In one of the documents from the last years of the 17th century, Giorgi Tumanishvili's serf Tsaturashvili fled to India.

Georgian merchants must have also been in Astrakhan. This was quite possible after Russia's expansion towards the Volga region and the Caspian Sea. In this regard, Astrakhan is interesting for us, where, by a decree of 1681, the Russian government allowed Armenians, Indians and Georgians to live in the city if they were engaged in trade.

At the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, Georgians were also active in the Ottoman trade direction. In the first quarter of the 17th century, the English ambassador to Constantinople, Thomas Ray, mentioned Georgian merchant ships. Also noteworthy is Erzurum, which, according to the French traveler Tournefort, was supplied with fruits from Georgia. Perhaps, due to territorial proximity, he meant its western part by “Georgia”.

However, it is also known that Erzurum also had close contacts with eastern Georgia, in particular with Tbilisi, where caravans passed daily. The pottery produced in Erzurum was especially famous, and it was exported throughout the Near East and the Mughal Empire.

Every year, more than two thousand camel-scented roots, called boya, were exported from Tbilisi and its surroundings to Erzurum. From Erzurum, Georgian boya was sent to Diyarbakir to dye canvas destined for Europe. Another export destination was India, which raises a reasonable assumption about the possible active commercial activity of Indian merchants in Georgia.

Tbilisi also had close contacts with Yerevan and Ganja, from where, for example, the ingredients needed for the production of gunpowder were imported. Slave trade was developed in Yerevan in the 17th century. During the same period, Georgian merchants brought silk to Aleppo, which the Italian Minadoi mentions when he speaks of the presence of Georgians in Aleppo.

In general, it should be noted that, as in previous centuries, the main land trade-transit direction was still the southeast of Georgia. This is also evidenced by the travel routes of Evliya Chelebi himself: from Anatolia to Tabriz and the surrounding areas, then to the Yerevan-Ganja direction, by which the Turkish traveler reaches Shirvan and Daruband. On his way back to Georgia from Daruband, Evliya Chelebi traveled south, to Shaki, from where he first arrived in Kakheti, and then in Tbilisi.

Georgia must have had active contact with the cities on the Black Sea coast. In the middle of the 16th century, Trabzon had active trade relations with Samegrelo, the Abazi country, Crimea and the Cossacks. There was also active trade between Samegrelo and the southeastern Black Sea. Kaffa had close contact with the Georgian Black Sea coast. For example, in 1539, Michele Membre quite easily found a ship from Kaffa to Anaklia. Jean Chardin also easily arrived in Georgia.

In other words, in the 16th-18th centuries, the geographical area of ​​activity of Georgian merchants was quite wide and included both the Near East, as well as Russia and some European cities. This should indicate Georgia's active involvement in trans-Eurasian trade.

Source: forbes.ge