Manglisi (Georgian: მანგლისი, pronounced [manɡlisi]) is a daba (townlet) in the Tetritsqaro Municipality, Kvemo Kartli region of Georgia.

[1] With a recorded history going back to the 4th century, Manglisi was one of the earliest centers of Christianity in Georgia and is a home to the medieval cathedral of the Mother of God.

Manglisi is located on the southern slopes of the Trialeti Range, on the Tbilisi-Tsalka highway, 56 kilometres (35 mi) west of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in the Algeti river valley.

[5] The Georgian historical tradition makes Manglisi, along with Mtskheta and Erusheti, 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, Manglisi 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.

[11][12] The valley of Manglisi appears in possession of the Juansheriani family,[13] a branch of the former royal dynasty of Chosroids of Iberia, in the middle of the 8th century,[14] and then of the Liparitids, whose one member Rati, a contemporary of Bagrat III (r. 978/1008–1014), is described by the Georgian chronicler to have held "the fortress of Ateni and all Kartli south of the Mtkuari, Trialeti, Manglis-khevi, and Skvireti.

[18] The abandoned cathedral still stood there, undisturbed by Georgia's Muslim intruders because, as the 18th-century historian Prince Vakhushti claims, they thought one of the frescoes in the church depicted Muhammad seated upon a lion.