The Kartlis Tskhovreba is the collection of Georgian chronicles. Among the works it contains is that of Leonti Mroveli.[1] Its ancient part, down to 1469, stands in the first volume of the French translation of 1849.[2]

Heraclius at Tiflis

The chronicle tells how a kinsman of the emperor Maurice named Heraclius killed the emperor Phocas and made himself master of Greece. Grown powerful, “he brought Turks from the west” and marched against Persia at the head of a countless army to recover the wood of the Cross.[3] Stephanos, the ruler of Kartli, would not rise against the Persians. He fortified his towns and held Tiflis. Heraclius laid siege to the town. Stephanos sallied out every day, until he was killed in one of the fights and the emperor took Tiflis.[4]

The men in the citadel of Kala would not submit. Their commander shouted from the walls that the emperor had the beard of a goat and the neck of a he-goat. Heraclius said that the insult was not untrue. He opened the book of Daniel and read that the he-goat of the west would come and break the horns of the ram of the east.[5] He gave Tiflis to Adarnase, eristaw of Kakheti, and made him prince of Georgia. He left with Adarnase an eristaw named Djibgha to reduce the citadel.[5] While the emperor went on towards Baghdad, as the chronicle has it, Adarnase and the eristaw Djibghou attacked Kala. Djibghou took it in a few days and captured its commander. First he filled the man’s mouth with gold, for his words had pleased the emperor. Then, for his insolence, he had him flayed and sent the skin to Heraclius.[6]

The name Djibghou

  • K'art'lis CxovrebaGeorgian
  • Histoire de la GéorgieFrench

In the chronicle Djibghou is one of the emperor’s men, an eristaw left behind at Tiflis. The text does not call him a Göktürk.[7] The translator identified him in a note with the Khazar prince Ziebel, who met Heraclius under the walls of Tiflis. Theophanes names Ziebel as the commander.[8] The same note records that the Armenian version of the chronicle writes Dchibgha. It also records that the Georgian writer Wakhoucht made him a kinsman of the emperor.[8] A recent study identifies the forms Djibgha and Djibghou with the title yabgu. The chronicler would then have taken the title for a personal name.[9]

Reliability

The chronicle gives the siege of Tiflis from the side of Kartli, with the death of Stephanos, the insult from the citadel and the fate of its commander. For the Göktürks it says only that Heraclius “brought Turks from the west”. Whether its Djibghou is the Göktürk yabgu is a matter of interpretation, not a statement of the text.

References

  1. ^ Golden 1992, p. 350
  2. ^ Brosset 1849
  3. ^ Kartlis Tskhovreba
  4. ^ Kartlis Tskhovreba
  5. ^ a b Kartlis Tskhovreba
  6. ^ Kartlis Tskhovreba
  7. ^ Kartlis Tskhovreba
  8. ^ a b Brosset 1849, p. 226
  9. ^ Aslan 2025, p. 688

Sources

Literature

  • Marie-Félicité Brosset (trans.), Histoire de la Géorgie depuis l'antiquité jusqu'au XIXe siècle, vol. I (1849)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • İlhan Aslan, Herakleios Dönemi Bizans-Sasani Savaşında Müttefik Bir Güç: Batı Türk Kağanlığı (2025)

Articles resting on this source 5

Heraclius · Siege of Tiflis (627–629) · The Caucasus campaign, 627–629 · Tiflis · Tong Yabgu

Related

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Kartlis Tskhovreba.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/kartlis-tskhovreba/

Last revised: 8 November 2026