Rustaveli’s "The Man in the Panther Skin": Cultural Bridge from East to West and the Georgians of Safavid Iran

Abstract

In the Middle Ages the road from East to West was not only a trade and economic route but it served as a cultural bridge as well, Georgia being an important user of this bridge. In the present study attention is focused on Rustaveli’s The Man in the Panther Skin along these lines. My research of recent years has enabled me to state and argue an absolutely new fact both for Kartvelology (Georgian Studies) and for English literary criticism, namely that Rustaveli’s MPS was used early in the 17th century as a plot source by the English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. On the basis of the story of the love of the main characters of MPS, Tariel and Nestan, the cited dramatists wrote two plays: Philaster and A King and No King , that were successfully produced throught the 17th century on the English stage

The means by which the story of Rustaveli’s poem reached the intellectual circles of the England of Shakespeare’s time remains a mystery. Only conjectures may be made on this issue. One of these conjectures seem to me relatively more convincing: the circle of Islamised Georgians at the Safavid court in Persia, in particular Allahverdi Khan and his family. The point is that towards the end of the 16th century the Iranian royal court was visited by a large embassy of Englishmen led by the well-known diplomat Antony Sherley. The Englishmen sojourned long at the Shah’s court and, with the support of Shah Abbas and his foremost confidant and commander Allahverdi Khan, they reorganized and rearmed Iran’s army. After this Antony Sherley left for Europe in the rank of the Shah’s envoy, where for years he facilitated the establishment of political and trade relations between Iran and Europe. This period coincides exactly with the entry of the story of MPS into England.