Iberia (redirected from Iberia (disambiguation))

Iberia (ībĭr`ēə), ancient country of Transcaucasia, roughly the eastern part of present-day Georgia. It was inhabited in earliest times by various tribes, collectively called Iberians by ancient historians, although Herodotus called them Saspirams. Between the 6th and 4th cent. B.C. the kingdoms of Colchis (western Georgia) and Iberia were founded. Iberia was allied to the Romans, ruled by the Sassanids of Persia, and became (6th cent. A.D.) a Byzantine province. Its later history is that of Georgia.

---

Iberian Peninsula

 or Iberia

Peninsula, southwestern Europe, occupied by Spain and Portugal. Its name derives from its ancient inhabitants whom the Greeks called Iberians, probably after the Ebro (Iberus) River, the peninsula's second longest river. The Pyrenees form a land barrier in the northeast from the rest of Europe, and in the south at Gibraltar the peninsula is separated from North Africa by a narrow strait. Its western and northern coasts are bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, and its eastern coast by the Mediterranean Sea. It includes Cape da Roca, in Portugal, the most westerly point of continental Europe.

---

Iberia

1. the Iberian Peninsula

2. an ancient region in central Asia, south of the Caucasus corresponding approximately to present-day Georgia

---

Iberia 

The ancient name of eastern Georgia (Kartli) used by classical and Byzantine authors.

At the turn of the fourth century B.C. a state was founded in Iberia. Some of the farmers, united in communes, were free, while others were subordinate to the royal family and nobility. Slave labor, drawn mainly from prisoners of war, was employed in construction and other heavy work, as well as in the king’s household. The most important city was the Iberian capital, Mtskheta. Crafts and trade flourished there and in the cities of Urbnisi and Uplistsikhe. In the first centuries A.D. , the Iberians wrote in the Greek and Aramaic scripts. At this time, Iberia was very powerful, particularly during the reign of Pars man II (second century A.D.). Feudalism developed in Iberia in the fourth century A.D.; Christianity was declared the state religion in 337. Toward the end of the fourth century, Iberia was subjugated and heavily taxed by Persia. During the fifth century, King Vakhtang I Gorgasal led a rebellion against the Sassanids. The Persians, crushing the rebellion, abolished the Iberian monarchy and made Iberia a Persian province.

REFERENCES

Istoriia Gruzii, vol. 1. Tbilisi, 1962.
Mtskheta: Itogiarkheologicheskikh issledovanii, vol. I.Tbilisi, 1958.
Boltunova, A. I. “Opisanie Iberii v ‘Geografii’ Strabona.” Vestnik drevnei istorii, 1947, no. 4.
Melikishvili, G. A. K istorii drevnei Gruzii. Tbilisi, 1959.