Tsisana Abuladze, Turkish-Georgian lexical Encounters, History and Onomasticon, Tbilisi, 2025, 471 pp.

Abstract

The fourth book recently published by the National Center of Manuscripts of Georgia in the ‘Scolarly Heritage IV’ series contains articles by one of the prominent representatives of Georgian Orientalism, Turkologist Tsisana Abuladze, which have been published in Georgian and foreign scientific journals for years. The collection includes 51 works under five headings – Turkish-Georgian lexical encounters; Source studies. Diplomacy; Orientalist studies in Georgia; Academician Sergi Jikia; Reviews. We offer a brief overview of the articles in the first heading. Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani (1658-1725) laid the foundation for considering Turkish-Georgian linguistic contacts. Tsisana Abuladze's PhD thesis - ""Turkish lexical material in S.-S. Orbeliani's Georgian lexicon"" was devoted to a detailed study of Turkish lexical material. Tsisana Abuladze aims to give us a complete picture of Turkish borrowings in the Georgian language of the Sulkhan-Saba era. The considered Turkisms are contrasted with their prototypes in Turkic languages and their dialects. The study of borrowings was conducted using a complex method, the primary meanings of lexemes and semantic modifications were determined. The study is exemplary. The primary sources were specified and their linguistic and geographical characteristics were given. The local semantic evolution of individual facts was emphasized. Phonetic adaptations were systematized and Turkish-Georgian realities were analyzed etymologically. Also, particularly difficult cases were examined from the point of view of etymology and internal reconstructions were carried out. Borrowings were divided into lexical-semantic groups. The following article is ‘Toponym Tao in Persian and Ottoman Sources’ (pp. 58-62). In some lists and editions of Persian and Ottoman sources (Hasan Rumlu, Iskander Munshi, Ibrahim Pechev, Shah Tahmasp’s Conversation with Turkish Ambassadors), the Georgian toponym Tao, the land of Tao, is rendered in an incorrect form – /dad/ instead of /tav/o/, which has led to different interpretations of this toponym. The article ‘Ottoman Written Monuments with the Names of Georgia and Its Political Formations’ presents the Ottoman designations of our country and its regions. The term “Gurjistan” is polysemantic and denotes: 1. a geohistorical territory, 2. one of the political units of Georgia, 3. Rarely, this term refers to the whole of Georgia. In parallel with “Gurjistani”, Georgian political units are named with autonyms. The following article is ‘Turkish texts transliterated into the Georgian alphabet’. The latest publication of the above-mentioned rubric, entitled ‘Turkish-Georgian vocabulary (17th century)’, is dedicated to the manuscript preserved in the Uppsala University Library – Vocabularium turko-gruzinicum. Each Turkish lexeme has only one Georgian equivalent. Sometimes the Georgian translation is not an exact match to the Turkish one. Most Georgian words are written with the a-suffix: naumsi instead of nemsi; gaviani instead of gviani, etc.