Shota Rustaveli

შოთა რუსთაველი Shota Rustaveli
Reproduction of Rustaveli's portrait c. 1905
Born	Rustavi, Meskheti Kingdom of Georgia
Died	Jerusalem
Resting place	Monastery of the Cross Jerusalem (undisclosed)
Pen name	Rustveli Meskhetian poet
Occupation	poet, thinker, statesman, prince, treasurer
Nationality	Georgian
Citizenship	Kingdom of Georgia
Alma mater	Gelati academy Ikalto academy Academy in Byzantine Empire
Period	Reign of Queen Tamar Georgian Golden Age
Genre	poetry, national epic
Notable works	The Knight in the Panther's Skin

Shota Rustaveli (Georgian: შოთა რუსთაველი, c. 1160—after c. 1220),mononymously known simply as Rustaveli, was a medieval Georgian poet. He is considered to be the preeminent poet of the Georgian Golden Age and one of the greatest contributors to Georgian literature. Rustaveli is the author of The Knight in the Panther's Skin (ვეფხისტყაოსანი, Vepkhist'q'aosani), a Georgian national epic poem.

Little, if anything, is known about Rustaveli from contemporary sources. His poem itself, namely the prologue, provides a clue to his identity: the poet identifies himself as "a certain Rustveli." "Rustveli" is not a surname, but a territorial epithet which can be interpreted as "of/from/holder of Rustavi". Later Georgian authors from the 15th through 18th centuries are more informative: they are almost unanimous in identifying him as Shota Rustaveli, a name which is preserved on a fresco and a document from the formerly Georgian Monastery of the Holy Cross at Jerusalem. The fresco was described by the Georgian pilgrim Timote Gabashvili in 1757/58, and rediscovered by a team of Georgian scholars in 1960. The same Jerusalem document speaks of Shota as a sponsor of the monastery and a "high treasurer", thus echoing a popular legend that Rustaveli was a minister at Queen Tamar’s court and retired to the monastery at an advanced age. Both a folk tradition and the 17th-century royal poet Archil identify Rustaveli as a native of the southern Georgian region of Meskheti, where his home village Rustavi was located (not to be confused with the modern-day city of Rustavi near Tbilisi). He is assumed to have been born between 1160 and 1165. A legend states that Rustaveli was educated at the medieval Georgian academies of Gelati and Ikalto, and then in "Greece" (i.e., the Byzantine Empire). He must have produced his major work no earlier than the 1180s and no later than the first decade of the 13th century, most probably 1205-1207.