Note 4 — Chapter III · TO AKHALTSYKH

St. Saba, although created through the munificence of a Georgian atabeg, is probably the work of an Armenian architect, and may certainly be counted as an example of the Armenian style. If we may trust a mutilated inscription in the interior, which has been in part deciphered by Brosset, the present church was built by the Atabeg Sargis, the son of Beka, who flourished between 1306 and 1334; and, if we could only be certain of the signification of the four numeral letters which are plainly seen on the face of the wall at one side of the window of the western porch, we should perhaps be able to fix the exact date. Dubois, indeed, supposes that it was constructed by Manuchar, brother of the last of the atabegs, Kuarkuareh, who fought with such valour against the Turks. But Dubois is relying upon what he terms “constant tradition,” and Brosset cautions us against accepting anything that he has written about Safar. One would certainly not have thought that such a well-instructed traveller, as was Dubois, could have mistaken a monument of the fourteenth century for a production of the later years of the sixteenth; and personally I should be inclined to attribute the edifice to a period at least as early as the fourteenth century.4