Daniel Chonqadze

Educated at the seminaries of Vladikavkaz and Tbilisi, Chonkadze then taught Ossetic in Stavropol and Tbilisi in the 1850s.

Simultaneously he served as a church official, but would later abandon his clerical status.

Much of his work was on Georgian and Ossetic folklore.

He authored an unfinished Russian-Ossetic dictionary, and wrote down a collection of Ossetic proverbs using an alphabet invented by Professor Andreas Sjögren for the Ossetians.

For this reason, he is considered by some to have been "a founder-father of Ossetic literature".

Chonkadze’s first and last published work, Suramis tsikhe, garnered a long-lasting success.

Published in 1859/60 in the Georgian literary journal Tsiskari ("Dawn"), the novella is a mixture of folklore, history, political protest, and romantic drama in which Chonkadze passionately attacks serfdom.

For censorship reasons, the tale was given a medieval setting filled with allegories.

The contemporary socio-political system is symbolized by the crumbling Surami fortress that requires a living person to be buried within its walls to stand firm.

Daniel Chonkadze (დანიელ ჭონქაძე) (c. 1830 – June 16, 1860) was a Georgian novelist primarily known for his resonant novella Suramis tsikhe ("Surami Fortress").

Chonkadze was born to a peasant family near Dusheti.

His native village housed a mixed Georgian-Ossetian community, a prerequisite for the future writer's lively interest in both Georgian and Ossetian folk traditions.

The novel was filmed by the eminent Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov who directed his multi-award-winning The Legend of Suram Fortress in the 1980s.

Chonkadze died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty, and many of his writings were destroyed by his relatives as a potential source of infection.