The Knight in The Panther's Skin - About The Author

About The Author

Shota Rustaveli is regarded by Georgians as their greatest poet. There is little known about his origins, but as the 8th quatrain in the poem suggests, the author identifies himself as Rustveli, literary meaning, "someone from Rustavi" (not to be confused with the modern-day city of Rustavi near Tbilisi). Other clues provided by the poem suggests that Rustaveli was a well-educated and highly-placed nobleman at the court of Georgia's greatest sovereign, King Tamar. It was Queen Tamar to whose honor the poet dedicated his masterpiece, written in ca. 1196-1207. In 1960, the Georgian Archaeological expedition discovered a portrait of Rustaveli on the wall of ninth-century Georgian Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem. A medieval Georgian inscription identifies the figure of the old man with long white beard and dressed in rich clerical habit as Shota from Rustavi. As historians suggest, Rustaveli undertook a pilgrimage to this monastery before his death.

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