Abanotubani or the Ancient Bath District of Tbilisi

 

Abanotubani is an old district of Tbilisi and is located at the eastern bank of the Mtkvari River at the foot of Narikala fort across Metekhisubani (Church) [1]. Now a little more precisely: Abanotubani (Georgian აბანოთუბანი) comes from abano "bath" and ubani "district", the term refers to the bath district in the old town of the Georgian capital Tbilisi. And since I want to know everything even more precisely, I looked at the etymology of abano (აბანო) [2]: “From Old Georgian აბანოჲ (abanoy), from Proto-Georgian-Zan *ban- (whence also ბანაობს (banaobs), ბანა (bana) and their derivatives). Cognate with Mingrelian ბონუა (bonua, “to wash oneself”), აბანა (abana) and Laz ობონუ (obonu, “to wash oneself”).” Old Georgian (ႤႬႠჂ ႵႠႰႧႭჃႪႨ) is a literary language, which has been known from the 5th century AD onwards. I noticed that abano is phonetically identical to the Italian Abano. But Abano is a famous thermal spa in Italy [3]. The area was settled in the 9th century BC (Wiki in German). From the 6th century BC, Abano is known as a thermal spa (Wiki in Italian). The origin of Abano may be derived from Aponus, the god of thermal waters, which may be dated back the to the Indo-European root *ap, which means water. Now I ask myself if Abanotubani has been derived from the Abano Terme? Keep in mind that Georgian belongs to the Kartvelian languages and not the Indo-European languages.

As early as the 13th century, around 65 baths used the hot sulphur springs beneath the city, or the water at up to 46.5 °C that bubbles from a spring on Mtabori Mountain. Today, around 10% are still used. But at least you can still bathe there. Most tourists, including me, look at the domes of the baths from the outside, so there is plenty of activity there. Alexandre Dumas and Alexander Pushkin (Александр Серге́евич Пу́шкин) visited the baths. It is not known whether Alexander the Great was there [4]. If you want to read a detailed report about the baths, you have to translate a text from German, but Ingrid has written a nice travelogue [5].

It may look like a Madrasa, but it's a bath

Links and Annotations:
[1] In English there isn't much on the English page of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abanotubani. You may look at the German page, which has an elaborated text: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abanotubani
[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%90%E1%83%91%E1%83%90%E1%83%9C%E1%83%9D
[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abano_Terme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abano_Terme https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abano_Terme
[4] This is of course nonsense on my part, since he passed by to the south and did not come close to the Caucasus.
[5] https://www.ingrids-welt.de/reise/geo/html/tb-baederviertel.htm I guess my text is a pretext to text something on linguistics rather than to inform on the baths – well, at least there are some pictures.
PS. You may have noticed that Abanotubani contains twice Proto-Georgian-Zan *ban-.
.