"Rustveli" is not a surname, but a territorial epithet that can be interpreted as "of/from/holder of Rustavi"; although a 10th century manuscript fragment found in 1975 in Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai attests to its use as a cognomen by a noble house of Ru(i)staveli.

A legend states that Rustaveli was educated at the medieval Georgian academies of Gelati and Ikalto, and then in "Greece" (i.e., the Byzantine Empire).

The manuscripts of The Knight in the Panther's Skin occupy an important place among the works produced in Georgia.

The only known contemporary portrait of Shota Rustaveli was painted on the eastern face of the southwest pillar of the church of the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem.

The portrait was vandalized in June 2004 by an unknown perpetrator, who scratched out Rustaveli's face and part of the accompanying Georgian inscription with his name.

Streets in a number of cities in the former Soviet Union are named after Rustaveli, including in Moscow, Saint Petersburg (Russia), Kyiv, Lviv (Ukraine), Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Yerevan, Gyumri (Armenia), and elsewhere, such as pathway in Jerusalem, which leads to the Monastery of the Cross.

Georgian composer Tamara Vakhvakhishvili set Rustaveli's poetry to music in her composition Citation for voice and orchestra.