Gurji

The Georgian Jews, who call themselves Gurjim, are one of the oldest Jewish communities outside the Levant. Their own tradition, recorded by the chronicler Leonti Mroveli, brings the first settlers to Kartli after Nebuchadnezzar's capture of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, when they were granted land at Zanavi near Mtskheta.

After the Arab conquest of the late seventh century, Muslim emirs ruled Tbilisi until 1122, and in the late ninth century Abu-Imran al-Tiflisi founded the Karaite-leaning Tiflisite sect, which lasted three centuries while most kept rabbinic Judaism and ties with the Baghdad academies.

Their vernacular was Judaeo-Georgian, Georgian enriched with Hebrew words and written in Georgian or Hebrew script. Medieval and early modern Georgia knew little anti-Jewish persecution, and the community blended into Georgian rural life while remaining distinct from the neighbouring Mountain Jews and, after the Russian annexation of 1801, from Ashkenazi Jews.