Amiran-Darejaniani

Amiran-Darejaniani (Georgian: ამირანდარეჯანიანი), translated into English as "The story of Amiran, son of Darejan", is a medieval Georgian romance, dating probably from the early or middle decades of the twelfth century. It is one of those literary works which heralded the emergence of native secular literature after several centuries of domination by patristic tradition. It is a prose tale of battling knights in twelve episodes attributed to Moses of Khoni (Mose Khoneli; მოსე ხონელი). This attribution is found in the epilogue of Vep’khis-tqaosani, an epic poem by Shota Rustaveli, the greatest classic of medieval Georgian literature, and is otherwise unknown. A tradition holds it that Moses came from the town of Khoni in western Georgia, and, like Rustaveli, served at the court of Queen Tamar (r. 1184-1213), who presided over the Georgian "Golden Age".

Amiran-Darejaniani was first published by the self-educated Georgian literary critic and bibliophile Zakaria Chichinadze in 1896, followed by several critical editions in the 20th century. The epos was first introduced to the English-speaking world through a translation by Robert Horne Stevenson in 1958. Next appeared a Russian translation by Bidzina Abuladze in 1965.

Amiran-Darejaniani is the oldest surviving original Georgian romance, but its roots can be traced both in Georgian folk tradition and Persian epos which Georgian authors admired and translated; Visramiani, a free Georgian rendition of Vis o Ramin, being the closest to the period in question. Moses of Khoni's composition gave rise to a whole cycle of legends, handed down by the village story-teller. So involved has the interrelation of the literary and folk variants become that some leading experts have suggested that the folk variants, stemming from the legends about Amirani, preceded the literary Amiran-Darejaniani, rather than being derived from it. The Persian and Arabic names and the lack of specific Georgian references in the text have led to a hypothesis, suggested by Marie-Félicité Brosset and Nicholas Marr, but now largely discredited, that Amiran-Darejaniani is a translation of a lost Persian text. Yet, the influence of Persian epic tradition, particularly Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, is strongly felt.

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