iv
the East and Iberia of the West, the high-water marks of Arab conquest, were both fertilized by the Semitic flood, and, whether or not they have some ancient ethnic affinity, this has given them not a few common characteristics; Spain had Christendom at her back, Georgia carried on her glorious crusade in isolation till the struggle was hopeless, and a century ago she was forced into an alliance with the Russian Empire. From her situation, geographical and political, Georgia was the country most likely to show that approximation of Eastern and Western thought typical of the epoch of the Crusades, and in these latter days it is largely due to the infusion of Iberian blood that Turkey and Persia have still sufficient vitality to attempt reforms. It might have been expected that a people whose life was a ceaseless fight to keep for Christendom the bridge between Asia and Europe would have put into its greatest artistic effort an uncompromising confession of faith; but freedom of thought rather than fanaticism is characteristic of Shot'ha, so at various times, down to the eighteenth century, the orthodox clergy destroyed manuscripts of the poem, and the editio princeps of 1712 could only appear because its royal editor appended to it a pious mystical commentary. We find one reference apiece to Mohammed (1010) and Mecca (1144), and three mentions of the Koran (339, 514, 1144); the official representatives of Islam are spoken of with scant sympathy (339). To Christianity as an ecclesiastical system we have, possibly, allusions (Easter Eve, 536; icon, 247; shrine, 1345; halo, aureole, 226, 229, 1110, 1410); there may be a few quotations from the Scriptures ("gall of bitterness," 99; "hart and waterbrooks," 835, 1564; "tinkling cymbals," 772; "charity faileth not," 1520; "through a glass darkly," 110, 656, 707, 1431; "hidden treasure,"? 882; "be content," "judge not," 18; "rivers run into the sea," 49); the Biblical personages incidentally mentioned are—Adam, Beelzebub, ? Ezra, Goliath, Levi, and Satan, and the geographical names Eden, Euphrates, Gihon, Pison, and Gibeon, are used in similes; there seems to be a reference to the doctrine of regeneration (184), and another perhaps to purgatory (785).
