tradition · Passage A.441

rendering, not the wording of the record

Today in Svaneti, in the village of Margvishi (Lentekhi district), lives the only family of Ardasha Beridze, whose ancestor Shakhi Beridze at the end of the 18th century, together with his five brothers, came up from Racha (village of Ghadishi, Ambrolauri district) to what was then an uninhabited place, where the Qipianis, who had fled from Upper Svaneti after committing a murder, were holed up in the only tower. They fought each other: the Beridzes defeated the Qipianis and began building a house on the unsettled land, after which Shakhi asked for the hand of a daughter of the Jamburidzes from a neighboring village.