n>icon of the Virgin of Vardzia after
receiving divine help in her campaigns, before transferring the monastery from
Upper or Zeda Vardzia. Tamar is said to have departed from Vardzia during her campaign against the Muslims, and her
ensuing victory at Basian is celebrated in the Hymns in Honour of the Virgin of
Vardzia by Ioane Shavteli. The History of Georgia also relates how Vardzia escaped the Mongol invaders in the 1290s. The Persian Safavid chronicler Hasan Bey Rumlu describes
Vardzia as a "wonder", "impregnable as the wall of Alexander the Great", before
recounting its sack by the Persians under Shah Tahmasp I in 1551; a near-contemporary note in
the Vardzia Gospel tells of its repatriation from a Persian bazaar. After the
arrival of the Ottomans in 1578, the monks departed and the
site was abandoned
