Alexander I of Georgia

Life

Alexander was the eldest son of Constantine I of Georgia and his wife Princess Natia Amirejibi, daughter of the Georgian diplomat prince Kutsna Amirejibi. He was brought up by his grandmother (Natia's mother) Rusa (died 1413), an educated and religious noblewoman, who greatly influenced the future king’s preoccupations and his enthusiasm for religious building.

The talented and brave ruler successfully managed to carry out such a difficult task under those conditions. He dangerously destroyed and expelled Turkomans. Only once, for the last time, Qara Yusuf managed to disturb the Georgian land and water, and that too because of the intolerant exodus of the subjects of Alexander the Great. In 1416 Qara Yusuf invaded Akhaltsikhe and he returned his homeland with many loot.

With his ascension to the throne (1412), Alexander moved to western Georgia and mediated a peace between his vassals, the rival princes of Mingrelia and Abkhazia. Then he, in 1414, met the rebellious prince Atabeg Ivane Jaqeli of Samtskhe on battlefield and forced him into submission. Having dealt with these powerful feudal lords, he, aided by Catholicos Patriarch Shio II, began a program the restoration of major Georgian fortresses and churches. He imposed a temporary building tax on his subjects from 1425 to 1440, but despite the king’s efforts many towns and villages, once flourished, were left in ruin and overgrown by forest.

In 1431, he re-conquered Lori, a Georgian marchland occupied by the Kara Koyunlu Turkoman tribesmen of Persia who had frequently raided the southern Georgian marches from there and had even sacked Akhaltsikhe in 1416. Around 1434/5, Alexander encouraged the Armenian prince Beshken II Orbelian to attack the Kara Koyunlu clansmen in Syunik (Siunia) and, for his victory, granted him Lorri under terms of vassalage.

In 1440, Alexander refused to pay tribute to Jahan Shah of the Kara Kouynlu. In March, Jahan Shah surged into Georgia with 20,000 troops, destroyed the city of Samshvilde and sacked the capital city Tbilisi. He massacred thousands of Christians, According to Thomas of Metsoph, Jahan Shah imposed a large tax on the Christians living in Tbilisi in order to convert them to Islam. It is not known from other sources how much this tax was and whether Christians paid it or not.

In order to reduce the power of frequently rebellious aristocracy, he opposed them by appointing his sons – Vakhtang, Demetre, and George – as his co-rulers in Kakheti, Imereti and Kartli, respectively. This, however, proved to be even dangerous to the kingdom's integrity and the fragile unity kept by Alexander would soon disappear under his sons.

For this reason, Alexander the Great is frequently claimed to have disintegrated Georgia and said not to deserve his epithet "the Great" his people bestowed on him. This appellation dates almost from his own day, however, and as the modern Georgian historian Ivane Javakhishvili presumes, might have been related to the large-scale restoration projects launched by the king and his initial success in the struggle with the Turkmen nomads.

As worldly problems overwhelmed his kingdom, Alexander abdicated the throne in 1442 and retired to a monastery under the monastic name of Athanasius.

Marriages and children

He married c. 1411 Dulandukht, daughter of Beshken II Orbelian, by whom he had two son and one daughter:

• A daughter ( – c. 1438) who married, 1425, the emperor John IV of Trebizond;
• Vakhtang IV ( – 1446), King of Georgia from 1442 to 1446;
• Demetrius ( –1453), co-ruler in Imereti; father of Constantine II of Georgia;

Alexander's second marriage with Princess Tamar of Imereti (died after 1455), daughter of Alexander I of Imereti, took place around 1414. Their children were:

• George VIII of Georgia (1415/1417 – 1476), King of Georgia from 1446 to 1465 and first King of Kakheti from 1466 to 1476;
• David, Catholicos Patriarch of Georgia consecrated in 1426.
• Zaal (born – died after 1442), Alexander's fifth son, sixth and last child. He was made a co-king by his father in 1433.

Notes

References

• Ivane Javakhishvili, The History of the Georgian Nation, vol. 3 (1982), Tbilisi State University Press (In Georgian)
• Ronald Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation: 2nd edition (December 1994), Indiana University Press,
• T'oma Metsobeli's History of Tamerlane and His Successors
• Sanikidze, Levan (1991). Unsharpened swords vol. 2. Tbilisi: Merani.

References

1. 1136991948 p 66
2. "ქართული ენციკლოპედიის ი. აბაშიძის სახელობის მთავარი სამეცნიერო რედაქცია".
3. "Home".
4. Sanikidze, Levan. (1991). "Unsharpened swords vol. 2".
5. According to the 15th-century Armenian historian [[Thomas of Metsoph]] (''T’ovma Metsobets’i''), the Kara Kouynlu leader [[Kara Yusuf]] invaded Samtskhe and pillaged its capital Akhaltsikhe in 1416 in response to the profanation inflicted by the local Christian Georgians and Armenians on a [[mosque]].
6. Sanikidze, Levan. (1991). "Unsharpened swords".
7. Studies in the history of Georgia, Vol. 3, Tbilisi, 1979, p. 732
8. Suny (1994), page 45
9. Ivane Javakhishvili (1982), page 243
10. [[Toumanoff, Cyril]] (1949–51). "The Fifteenth-Century Bagratids and the Institution of Collegial Sovereignty in Georgia", ''Traditio'' 7: 181-3.
11. Toumanoff, "The Fifteenth-Century Bagratids", ''Traditio'' 7: 190.