Zakaria Chichinadze-Researcher and Publisher of Oral Texts in Adjara

Abstract

Zakaria Chichinadze is among those  exceptional  Georgian public figures, who occupied a special place in the development of national culture, education  and publishing at the end of the XIX and in the first half of the XX centuries. Being  an integral part of the western part of  the cultural-ethnographic space of Georgia, Adjara turned out to be at the center of political and spiritual conflict in the XIX century. Under Ottoman rule the existence of Georian language and culture in the region  came under threat, as a result  the greater part of the discourse bearing national identity shifted into oral forms. Oral tradition served as the alternative means through which local population managed to preserve historical memory. Chichinadze’s activity in Adjara possesses ethnographic as well as linguocultural aspects. The article aims to showcase Zakaria Chichinadze’s   multifaceted role in gathering and publishing oral texts, analyse and evaluate cultural-political importance of his activity and identify his place in the development of Georgian folkloristics  and textology.