As is known, in the mid-6th century the "Assyrian Fathers" — Ioane of Zedazeni and his disciples — came to Georgia. Ioane instructed them and sent them forth: "some of them to Kakheti, and some toward Kukheti, and some to the upper lands, and one to the outer parts, and others around this our royal city; and they went and settled, some in the river valleys and some in the mountains, in the caves and hollows of the land."