Pharnavaz I of Iberia - Parnavaz and Arrian's Pharasmanes

Parnavaz and Arrian's Pharasmanes

Several modern scholars have been tempted to make identification between the Parnavaz of the medieval Georgian tradition and the Pharasmanes of the Greco-Roman historian Arrian, a 2nd century AD author of Anabasis Alexandri. Arrian recounts that "Pharasmanes (Фαρασμάνης), king of the Chorasmians", visited Alexander with 15,000 horseman, and pledged his support should Alexander desire to campaign to the Euxine lands and subdue Colchians, whom Pharasmanes names as his neighbors. Apart from the similarity of the names of Pharasmanes and Parnavaz (both names are apparently based on the same root, the Iranian farnah), it is interesting to note that the king of Chorasmia in Central Asia reports Colchis (today’s western Georgia, i.e., the western neighbor of ancient Kartli/Iberia) to be a neighboring country. Some Georgian scholars have suggested that the Greek copyists of Arrian might have confused Chorasmia with Cholarzene (Chorzene), a Classical rendering of the southwest Georgian marchlands (the medieval Tao-Klarjeti), which indeed bordered with Colchis and Pontus.