Kartvelians in the context of "Christianization of Iberia"

The population of the Byzantine Empire encompassed all ethnic and tribal groups living there, mainly Byzantine Greeks, but also Albanians, Armenians, Assyrians, Bulgarians, Goths, Kartvelians, Latini, Levantine Arabs, Serbs and Croats, Thracians, Tzans, Vlachs and other groups. It fluctuated throughout the state's millennial history. The reign of the Emperor Justinian I in the mid-sixth century was the high point of the empire's expansion; however, the arrival of plague in 541 AD and its subsequent recurrences caused a severe depletion of the population. After the reign of Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641 AD) and the loss of the empire's overseas territories, Byzantium was limited to the Balkans and Anatolia. When the empire began to recover after a series of conflicts in the 8th century and its territories stabilized, its population began to recover. By the end of the 8th century the population of the empire was around 7,000,000, a figure that climbed to over 12,000,000 people by 1025 AD. The numbers began falling steadily to 9,000,000 people at 1204 AD and even lower to 5,000,000 people at 1282 AD with the arrival of the Turks.

Kaskian (Kaskean) was the language of the Kaskians (Kaska) of northeastern Bronze Age Anatolia in the mountains along the Black Sea coast. The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture lists the Kaskians as non–Indo-European. There are a number of theories regarding the language family to which it belonged.

It is sometimes suspected that Kaskian was related to the pre-Hittite Hattic language, based on toponyms and personal names; the Hattic moon god was named Kasku. Conversely, the Kaskian language may have been an Indo-European language, perhaps related to Thraco-Phrygian. There may also be connections to the Northwest Caucasian languages; the name Kaskian may be cognate with an old name for Circassia, and the name of one of the tribes in the Kaskian confederation, the Abešla, may be cognate with the endonym of the Abkhaz people and some Circassian people, suggesting the Kaskians proper and Abešla might have been the ancestors of the Circassians, Kartvelians and other Caucasian peoples. It has been conjectured that Kaskian might belong to the Zan family of languages, and have affinities to Megrelian or Laz.