The Abasha ( ka, აბაშა, xmf, აბაშა), also known as the Abashistskali (Georgian: აბაშისწყალი) or Abashatskari (Mingrelian: აბაშაწყარი) is a river in western

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

, running for in the municipalities of

Martvili Martvili ( ka, მარტვილი) is a small town in Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti province of Western Georgia. Its monastery was Samegrelo's clerical centre in the Middle Ages. Under Soviet rule, from 1936 to 1990, it was named Gegechkori after ...

and

Abasha Abasha ( ka, აბაშა) is a town in western Georgia with a population of 4,941. It is situated between the rivers of Abasha and Noghela, at 23m above sea level and is located some to the west of Tbilisi. The settlement of ''Abasha'' acq ...

Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti ( Georgian: სამეგრელო-ზემო სვანეთი) is a region (Mkhare) in western Georgia with a population of 308,358 (2021) and a surface of . The region has Zugdidi as its administrative center, ...

region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics ( physical geography), human impact characteristics ( human geography), and the interaction of humanity an ...

. Its

catchment A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

area is .

Geography

The Abasha river begins at the confluence of the mountain streams Rachkhitskali and Toba, near the village of Baldi, at above sea level, and meets the Tekhuri as its left tributary. The Abasha forms a narrow canyon near the village of Gachedili (Gochkadili), where the Abasha hydroelectric power station was built in 1928. In July 2010, the

Ilia State University Ilia State University ISU ( Georgian: ილიას სახელმწიფო უნივერსიტეტი) was founded in 2006 as a result of a merger of six different academic institutions with long and varied histories. Current ...

expedition discovered footprints of the herbivorous dinosaurs as well as

ammonites Ammonoids are a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids (i.e., octopuses, squid and cuttl ...

brachiopods Brachiopods (), phylum Brachiopoda, are a phylum of trochozoan animals that have hard "valves" (shells) on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear end, wh ...

, and

sea urchins Sea urchins () are spiny, globular echinoderms in the class Echinoidea. About 950 species of sea urchin live on the seabed of every ocean and inhabit every depth zone from the intertidal seashore down to . The spherical, hard shells (tests) of ...

dating from the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

(100.5–65.5 Ma). In October 2010, the Gachedili canyon was made a protected area by the government of Georgia.

Etymology and history

The legendary etymology of the

hydronym A hydronym (from el, ὕδρω, , "water" and , , "name") is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water. Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As ...

"Abasha" is found in the 11th-century ''History of King Vakhtang Gorgasali'', part of

the Georgian Chronicles ''The Georgian Chronicles'' is a conventional English name for the principal compendium of medieval Georgian historical texts, natively known as ''Kartlis Tskhovreba'' ( ka, ქართლის ცხოვრება), literally "Life of Ka ...

, which, relating the story of the Arab

invasion An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity aggressively enter territory (country subdivision), territory owned by another such entity, gen ...

of 735, claims that the flooding river afflicted the " Abash" contingent of the invading army, being subsequently named Abasha after this event. Modern scholars see the hydronym as a compound of the male given name Aba and the adjectival suffix -''shi'' or, alternatively, the

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

-derived word, ''ab'' (آب, "water") plus the diminutive -''cha''. The Abasha traversed one of the principal districts of historical western Georgia. The important medieval church establishment of

Chqondidi Martvili Monastery ( ka, მარტვილის მონასტერი) is a Georgian monastic complex located in the village of Martvili in the Martvili District of the Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti Province (Mkhare) of Georgia. It sits up ...

was located in the Abasha valley. In the 18th and 19th centuries, a southeastern district of the

Principality of Mingrelia The Principality of Mingrelia ( ka, სამეგრელოს სამთავრო, tr), also known as Odishi and as Samegrelo, was a historical state in Georgia ruled by the Dadiani dynasty. History The principality emerged out of ...

was sometimes referred to as Abasha after the river.

References

{{Rivers of Georgia Rivers of Georgia (country)

Geography

Etymology and history

See also

References