ABSTRACT
T RANSLATION of the letter from the Kartlian King Yuri, sent to the ambassadors by the interpreter Nikita Tyutchev: By the mercy of God, I, King Yuri, the son of Simon, of
royal descent from the beginning,I am writing to you, lord Mikhail and Andrey, the ambassadors of the great Sovereign Tsar and great Prince Boris Fedorovich of all Russia, and of his son, the great sovereign Prince Fedor Borisovich of all Russia, sovereigns of all the northern land, to rejoice in the Lord. You have sent a letter to us by the interpreter Mikita, and we have received your letter, and have understood everything that is written in it. We are unworthy and unable to reply to this matter. And if you are bearers of such a great and most wondrous affair, where have you been until now or since? And now let it be known unto you that we are engaged in war, and suffer from much disorder and want. We have gone to Samtskhe to fight the Hagarenes; and we consider this an obstacle to your coming here before the summer.2 If God
(470) ••• I And, Sovereign, along with Suliman we sent the interpreter Svoyetin Kamenev and the under-dyak Druzhina Stepanov, having first sworn them in, and four streltsy with them. And we, your servants, wrote to Simon's son King Yuri that he should command us to come to him without delay, because we had your Majesty's instructions for him, King Yuri, regarding many great affairs, and because you, the great Sovereign, wished to be gracious to him and to make him your Majesty's kinsman. When we reached the land of Soni on our way here, we sent a message to King Yuri by Aristov's men, saying that we had your Majesty's royal letter and message about many affairs and your Majesty's bountiful presents for him, King Yuri; while we were in the land of Soni we had no news from him. After we came to the Georgian land we Chap. I, p. 94, n. I. Giorgi was brother-in-law to Manuchar II, atabeg of Samtskhe, who had married Elena, daughter of Simon I in 1582. Following the capture of Simon by the Turks in 1600, Giorgi had continued his father's policy of sustaining his relatives in Samtskhe. After the Persian capture of Erevan, in the spring of 1604, the Georgians had the support of Emirguneh, the new Khan of Erevan, himself an apostasjzed Georgian (see Brosset, HG, Vol. II/i, pp. 471-5); for interesting details from Iskander Munshi, see also Chap. I I, p. 442, n. 3 above. The leaders on the Turkish side were also apostasized Georgians - Yusuf Pasha of Akhaltsikhe, a son of Beka Jaqeli brother of Manuchar II; and Ferhat Pasha of Penek (cf. Brosset, ibid., p. 472 , n. 3).
