Georgian

Georgian is the principal language of the Kartvelian, or South Caucasian, family, spoken across Georgia and serving as a lingua franca for speakers of its relatives Mingrelian, Laz and Svan. Its written history began after the Christianization of the Kingdom of Iberia in the fourth century, when it replaced Aramaic as the literary language.

The oldest surviving work, Iakob Tsurtaveli's Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik, dates to the fifth century. Georgian is written in its own alphabet of uncertain origin, whose Mkhedruli form developed alongside the medieval kingdom.

The twelfth-century epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin by Shota Rustaveli became the classic of Middle Georgian. In 1629 the first printed Georgian books appeared in Rome, prepared by Nikoloz Cholokashvili for Catholic missionaries.