The Conversion of Kartli (Moktsevay Kartlisay)

The chronicle survives in the manuscript collection of the monastery of Shatberdi, bound up with a longer Life of Nino (The Life of St. Nino). Marjory and J. O. Wardrop, who translated the passage on Nino, describe it in their preface as giving the story “in a dry, brief manner” and carrying the history down to the ninth century. They judged that its oldest part was not later than the seventh century and that it was compiled from existing material and was not the root of the other versions. These are their opinions, printed in 1900.

The passage has Nino come to Mtskheta after the martyrdom of her companions in Armenia, and dates the conversion of the queen to her sixth year there and of the king to the seventh. It puts her death in the fifteenth year from her arrival, “from the ascension of Christ three hundred and thirty-eight years”, a figure which the translators thought should be counted from Christ’s birth, and goes on to the deaths of the king and queen. The translators note that a leaf is missing from the manuscript in the middle of the passage and that they filled the gap from the later Georgian Chronicle. Like the Life, it stands centuries after the events and after Rufinus.