Tamar of Georgia

Tamar was the first woman to rule Georgia in her own right, reigning from 1184 to 1213. Her reign marked the height of medieval Georgia's power, when the Bagrationi kingdom dominated the Caucasus and its culture flourished. Remembered as Tamar the Great and venerated as a saint, she became the central figure of Georgia's historical memory, often blurred by legend.

Tamar was born around 1160, or perhaps 1166, the daughter of King George III and Burdukhan, a princess of Alania. In 1177 a faction of nobles rose against her father in favour of his nephew Demna. George crushed the revolt, had Demna blinded and castrated, and in 1178 crowned Tamar as his co-ruler to secure the succession for his own line. For six years she ruled alongside him.

When George died in 1184, Tamar was crowned again at Gelati, near Kutaisi, but Georgia had never had a female ruler, and many great nobles saw a chance to claw back power. Supported by her aunt Rusudan and the head of the Georgian church, she was nonetheless forced into concessions: she dismissed her father's low-born officials and accepted that a council of nobles would approve royal decrees. She did, however, foil an attempt to create a new council that would make policy without her. As her position grew stronger, she promoted loyal families, above all the Mkhargrdzeli brothers Zakare and Ivane.

The nobles insisted that the queen marry, and in 1185 they brought in Yury, son of the murdered prince Andrey Bogolyubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal. The match failed. In 1187 Tamar persuaded the noble council to approve a divorce and sent Yury away to Constantinople; he twice tried to seize power with help from discontented nobles, and failed both times. Tamar chose her second husband herself: the Alan prince David Soslan, a capable general. Their children, George and Rusudan, both later ruled Georgia. David appeared on coins and charters, but Tamar remained the sovereign, styled mepe, "king", and "king of kings".

With her power secure, Tamar renewed the expansion begun by her great-grandfather David IV. In the 1190s Georgia reduced Shirvan to a tributary state, and in 1195 David Soslan defeated the Eldiguzid ruler Abu Bakr at Shamkor. When the Seljuk sultan of Rum, Suleiman II, marched against Georgia, his camp was overrun at Basian, in 1202, 1203 or 1204 according to different sources. Georgian armies, often led by the Mkhargrdzeli, pushed into Armenian lands, took Dvin and in 1206 Kars, and later raided deep into north-western Iran. In 1204, as the Fourth Crusade shattered the Byzantine Empire, Georgian troops helped Tamar's nephews Alexios and David Komnenos found the Empire of Trebizond on the Black Sea coast. An advance on Khlat brought Georgia into conflict with the Ayyubids; after Ivane Mkhargrdzeli was captured there, a thirty-year truce secured his release and halted the push south.

By the end of her reign Georgian power stretched from the Greater Caucasus in the north to Erzurum in the south, with vassals and allies around its borders. The noble council still met, and Tamar never ruled as an autocrat, but her prestige held the great princes together. Tribute, booty and trade enriched the kingdom. Large domed cathedrals were built, coins carried inscriptions in Georgian and Arabic, and secular literature flowered, culminating in Shota Rustaveli's epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin, which tradition links to the queen.

Tamar fell ill while meeting her ministers near Gori and died at the castle of Agarani; 1213 is the traditional date, though some evidence points to 1207 or 1210. The site of her grave remains unknown. Within two decades, Khwarazmian and then Mongol invasions ended Georgian supremacy, and the contrast deepened her later cult. Folk tales cast her as a saintly or even semi-divine figure, nineteenth-century writers romanticised her, and the Georgian Orthodox Church venerates her as Holy Righteous Queen Tamar.

Our 1200 map shows Georgia in the middle of her reign, when it was the leading power of the Caucasus, with the Turkish states of Anatolia to its west and south.