Ikalto Monastery and Academy of the Georgian Language

The Ikalto Monastery with the ruins of the Academy of the Georgian Language is located in the Kakheti region of eastern Georgia, near the town of Telavi. Because the buildings are on the same site, it is usually known as the Ikalto Academy.

Saint Zenon founded the Ikalto Monastery in the late 6th century. During King David The Builder’s reign, Arsen Ikalto founded the Academy of the Georgian Language, a prestigous cultural-scholastic centre, in 1106.

Georgia’s famous 12th century poet, Shota Rustaveli (the ‘Chaucer of Georgia’), studied there. Studies included theology, rhetoric, astronomy, philosophy, geography, geometry, arithmetic, music, grammar, chanting, pharmacy, pottery, metalwork, viticulture, and wine-making.

In 1616, invaders set the Ikalto Academy on fire, and it was never used again.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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