Lesser Caucasus Mountains

The Lesser Caucasus uplands of Samtskhe belonged to the frontier country between Georgian, Anatolian and Armenian lands. Their political setting changed as Ottoman expansion reached the Georgian principalities during the sixteenth century. Ottoman forces took western parts of Samtskhe first and extended their conquest eastward in 1578, bringing a larger part of the region under imperial administration.

In 1579 territories conquered at different times were gathered into the Akhaltsikhe, or Childir, pashate. This unit did not include every former possession of Samtskhe: some districts were assigned to other Ottoman provinces. Members of the Jakeli family remained prominent in its government. The uplands consequently formed part of a border region whose older ruling relationships continued within a changed imperial framework. Another transformation followed the Russo-Ottoman war of 1828–1829, when Akhaltsikhe and its surroundings passed to Russian rule. The mountain country stood within this shifting political geography, rather than beneath a single unchanged frontier throughout the early modern centuries.