Nicopsis

A center of Christianity in the region known as Zichia, Nikopsis was at times a Byzantine bishopric and was believed to be a burial place of the apostle Simon the Canaanite.

This formula determined the extent of the territory over which the Georgian monarchy claimed authority by means of its northwestern and northeastern geographic extremes, Nikopsis on the Black Sea and Derbend on the Caspian.

[8] It first appears in the controversial testament will of David IV "the Builder", composed (or forged) in 1125,[9] and recurs in the chronicles of the reigns of his successors, especially, Queen Tamar (r.

[6] The tradition is also found in the 11th-century Georgian Vita of George the Hagiorite by Giorgi Mtsire, who claims that Simon the Canaanite was buried "in our land, in Abkhazia, at the place which is called Nikopsi".

A popular, but not universally accepted hypothesis first advanced by Frédéric Dubois de Montpéreux and followed by Fillip Brun, Boris Kuftin, Zurab Anchabadze, and Leonid Lavrov, places Nikopsis at Novomikhaylovsky at the mouth of the Nechepsukho river near Tuapse, where the early medieval imported pottery, roof tiles, and marble pieces have been unearthed.