Prince Vakhtang of Imereti

Last updated May 03, 2019

Vakhtang (Georgian :ვახტანგი; after 1495 – 1548) was a Georgian prince of the Bagrationi dynasty of the Kingdom of Imereti, a younger son of King Alexander II of Imereti by his wife Tamar.

Georgian is a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians. It is the official language of Georgia. Georgian is written in its own writing system, the Georgian script. Georgian is the literary language for all regional subgroups of Georgians, including those who speak other Kartvelian languages: Svans, Mingrelians and the Laz.

Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital and largest city is Tbilisi. Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres (26,911 sq mi), and its 2017 population is about 3.718 million. Georgia is a unitary parliamentary republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy.

The Bagrationi dynasty is a royal dynasty which reigned in Georgia from the Middle Ages until the early 19th century, being among the oldest extant Christian ruling dynasties in the world. In modern usage, the name of the dynasty is sometimes Hellenized and referred to as the Georgian Bagratids, also known in English as the Bagrations.

Vakhtang was in opposition to his elder brother, King Bagrat III of Imereti and eventually had to flee to the Kingdom of Kartli, followed by many Imeretian noblemen. In 1512, Bagrat with his army crossed into Kartli, attacked Vakhtang at his base in Mokhisi and defeated him. Through the mediation of King David X of Kartli, the brothers reconciled and Vakhtang returned to Imereti.^[1]

Bagrat III (1495-1565), of the Bagrationi dynasty, was a King of Imereti from April 1, 1510, to 1565. He succeeded upon the death of his father, Alexander II, and faced repeated assaults from the Ottoman Turks as well as the conflicts with his ostensible vassal princes of Mingrelia, Guria, and Abkhazia who were frequently joining the enemy.

The Kingdom of Kartli was a late medieval/early modern monarchy in eastern Georgia, centered at the province of Kartli, with its capital at Tbilisi. It emerged in the process of a tripartite division of the Kingdom of Georgia in 1478 and existed, with several brief intermissions, until 1762 when Karti and the neighboring Georgian kingdom of Kakheti were merged through a dynastic succession under the Kakhetian branch of the Bagrationi dynasty. Through much of this period of time the kingdom was a vassal of the successive dynasties of Iran, but enjoyed intermittent periods of greater independence, especially after 1747.

David X (1482–1526) was a king of the Georgian kingdom of Kartli from 1505 to 1525.

In the late 1540s, Vakhtang was placed at the head of an Imeretian detachment of 500 men sent by Bagrat in response to the cry for help from Rostom Gurieli, Prince of Guria, who was pressured by the Ottoman advance into his possessions around Batumi. Since Gurieli also appealed for help to Levan I Dadiani, Prince of Mingrelia, Vakhtang received a clandestine instruction from his brother not to allow any accord between Gurieli and Dadiani, who were defiant vassals of the king of Imereti. In the meantime, Gurieli succeeded in rolling back the Ottoman forces beyond the Chorokhi before the reinforcements arrived, but he failed to cross the swollen river, thus losing Gonio and Adjara to the enemy. His hopes that the Mingrelians and Imeretians would eventually come to aid were dashed. Through Vakhtang's intrigues, Dadiani, camping at the mouth of the Rioni at Poti, went back to Mingrelia; Vakhtang too, seeing an untenable situation of Gurieli, returned to Imereti.^[1]^[2]

Rostom Gurieli, of the House of Gurieli, was Prince of Guria from 1534 until his death in 1564. Alongside his royal suzerain, Bagrat III of Imereti, Rostom fought against the expanding Ottoman Empire to which he lost parts of his principality. Rostom's relations with Bagrat III subsequently deteriorated over his support to the king's defiant vassal, Levan I Dadiani.

The Principality of Guria was a historical state in Georgia. Centered on modern-day Guria, a southwestern region in Georgia, it was located between the Black Sea and Lesser Caucasus, and was ruled by a succession of twenty-two princes of the House of Gurieli from the 1460s to 1829. The principality emerged during the process of fragmentation of a unified Kingdom of Georgia. Its boundaries fluctuated in the course of permanent conflicts with neighboring Georgian rulers and Ottoman Empire, and the principality enjoyed various degrees of autonomy until being annexed by Imperial Russia in 1829.

The Ottoman Empire, historically known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire or simply Turkey, was a state that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror.

Vakhtang was married Princess Khvaramze (died 1528), daughter of George II of Kakheti. He had two sons:^[3]

George II also known as George the Bad, the Mad or the Evil (1464–1513), of the Bagrationi Dynasty, was a king of Kakheti in eastern Georgia from 1511 to 1513.

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References

1 2 Bagrationi, Vakhushti (1976). Nakashidze, N.T., ed. История Царства Грузинского [History of the Kingdom of Georgia](PDF) (in Russian). Tbilisi: Metsniereba. pp. 132–134.
↑ Rayfield, Donald (2012). Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. Reaktion Books. p. 170. ISBN 1780230303.
↑ Dumin, S.V., ed. (1996). Дворянские роды Российской империи. Том 3. Князья[Noble families of the Russian Empire. Volume 3: Princes] (in Russian). Moscow: Linkominvest. pp. 86–87.

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[Vakh-1] 1 2 Bagrationi, Vakhushti (1976). Nakashidze, N.T., ed. История Царства Грузинского [History of the Kingdom of Georgia](PDF) (in Russian). Tbilisi: Metsniereba. pp. 132–134.

[2] Rayfield, Donald (2012). Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. Reaktion Books. p. 170. ISBN 1780230303.

[3] Dumin, S.V., ed. (1996). Дворянские роды Российской империи. Том 3. Князья[Noble families of the Russian Empire. Volume 3: Princes] (in Russian). Moscow: Linkominvest. pp. 86–87.