Georgian merchants and Georgian diplomats

In the treatise of the Polish author - Mikołaj Rosenberg, I came across a reference to Georgian merchants who came to China.

In the treatise "On the Origin of the Tatars", which was presented to King Maximilian I in Vienna in 1499,

Rosenberg is motivated by the spirit of finding a potential partner for an anti-Turkish coalition in the Far East. Regarding China/Cathay, he states:

,,Hi extra Ymaum montem vastissimas regiones incolunt, quae aetate nostra de Cathaio dicuntur, ad illos qui ex nostris accessissent, vidi neminem. Verum Georgianorum ac Armenianorum negotiatores raro et cum magna difficultyate et labore periculose solent penetrare, de quorum potentia, diviriis imperii amplitudine, mira et dicuntur et scribuntur".

Translation: "Beyond Mount Imam, in a vast region, live those who in our time are called Cathay, I have not seen anyone among us who has reached it, although Georgian and Armenian merchants rarely reach it, with great difficulty and dangerous journeys, about whose power, wealth, greatness and wonders they speak and write".

It is true that China was known to Europeans early on through the Mongol Empire, but during the Age of Great Geographical Discoveries, direct contact with China was established in the 1510s, when the Portuguese arrived there, so it is quite understandable that in the 1490s Rosenberg writes: "I have not seen anyone among us who has reached it".

This account by Rosenberg is of outstanding scientific value not only for Georgian but also for European historiography, in particular, for the scientific literature of the "Great Geographical Discoveries". As it turns out, in the second half of the 15th century, Georgian merchants reached Cathay, that is, China, and at the same time, their oral and written accounts of this distant country became known even to Europeans who had not yet established direct contact with China.

The source of the Polish Rosenberg, I think, could have been the Georgian "brilliant orators", the ambassadors of the King of Kartli, Constantine II, to the Spanish court, to Ferdinand and Isabella. It is interesting that it was precisely in the 1490s that they met with the ruling circles of Poland on their way. I mean the Georgian ambassadors, Nilo and Zakaria, who are called “brilliant orators” in Spanish sources. They sailed across the Black Sea and arrived in Spain via the Dnieper through the territory of Lithuania and Poland. Nilo and Zakaria proposed the idea of ​​an anti-Ottoman coalition to the Lithuanian-Polish authorities.

Rosenberg was a great theorist of creating an anti-Turkish coalition, therefore, his communication and exchange of information with the Georgian ambassadors who arrived in Poland for the same purpose is quite natural.

Beka Chichinadze