Erusheti

The name "Erusheti" was applied by the medieval Georgians to the territory in the Kura or Mtkvari river valley around the eponymous town or fortress, north of Artani (Ardahan), between the Arsiani Range (Yalnızçam Dağları) and Kartsakhi Lake (Aktaş Gölü).

While its eastern counterpart was at times conquered by the Artaxiads and Arsacids of Armenia, Erusheti/West Javakheti firmly remained within the Iberian realm, eventually becoming a Bagratid domain c.

[2] The Georgian historical tradition makes Erusheti, along with Mtskheta and Manglisi, one of the earliest church establishments in Kartli (Iberia) following King Mirian's conversion to Christianity in the 330s.

According to the 11th-century historian Leonti Mroveli, Erusheti was the first place which the bishop John of Kartli, returning from his mission to Constantinople with a group of Byzantine priests and masons, chose to build a Christian church.

There, the chronicle continues, he left a treasure and the nails of the Lord brought from Constantinople, to the disappointment of King Mirian who wanted to have the relics at his capital, Mtskheta.