Conversion of Kartli (chronicle)

Following the 1975 fire at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in Egypt, at least two hitherto unknown variants of CoK were discovered among a large number of Georgian manuscripts mainly dated to the 9th/10th century.

Many passages of the Shatberdi Codex are more informative, but these details are probably later insertions as suggested by the occurrence of the word Baghdad, a post-8th century toponym.

The Shatberdi codex cites some of its sources (such as "a brief account of the conversion of Kartli" by Grigol the Deacon) most of which did not survive and are otherwise unknown.

The first one is conventionally known as The Chronicle (ქრონიკა, k’ronika), a brief history of Kartli from the mythic expedition by Alexander the Great into Georgian lands down to the 7th century.

Its core text, The Conversion of Kartli, from which the corpus derives its title, relates the story of proselytizing mission by St. Nino, who is also the subject of the last component of CoK, the hagiographic Life of Nino (ცხოვრება წმიდა ნინოსი, ts’xovreba ts’mida ninosi).