Kingdom of Georgia

For almost five hundred years, from the early eleventh century to the late fifteenth, most Georgian lands in the southern Caucasus were held together under a single crown. The medieval Kingdom of Georgia, ruled by the Bagrationi dynasty, grew from the union of the western realm of Abkhazia with the eastern lands of Kartli, and between the late eleventh and early thirteenth centuries it became one of the strongest Christian powers of the East. It is the main historical forerunner of modern Georgia.

In the ninth and tenth centuries Bagrationi princes ruled Tao-Klarjeti on the south-western fringe of Georgia, nominally under the Byzantine Empire. Prince David III of Tao adopted a young relative, Bagrat, and placed Kartli in his hands. In 978 nobles in the western kingdom of Abkhazia, whose childless king Theodosius was Bagrat's uncle, invited him to take that throne too. When Bagrat's natural father Gurgen died in 1008, the inheritances came together, and Bagrat III became the first king of a united Abkhazia and Iberia. He annexed Kakheti-Hereti in the east in 1010.

Bagrat's son George I fought the Byzantine emperor Basil II over Tao in the early 1020s and lost, giving up land and sending his son as a hostage. Later in the century the Seljuk Turks became the main danger. Alp Arslan took Tbilisi in 1065, and after a further invasion in 1076 Georgia agreed to pay tribute to Sultan Malik Shah.

The revival began with David IV, crowned in 1089 at the age of sixteen. He curbed the great lords, stopped paying tribute in 1099 and won back fortresses one by one. To build a standing army he settled thousands of Kipchak families in Georgia, each owing a soldier. In 1121 he defeated a large Seljuk army at Didgori and soon took Tbilisi, which became the capital. He also founded the academy at Gelati.

Under his successors Demetrius I and George III the kingdom kept its strength despite family quarrels. It peaked under George's daughter Tamar, who reigned from 1184 to 1213. Her generals defeated the Seljuks of Rum at Basian in 1203 or 1204, took Kars in 1206, and made rulers from Shirvan to Erzurum tributaries. In 1204 Georgian troops helped two exiled Komnenos princes, her relatives, found the Empire of Trebizond on the Black Sea coast.

Kings relied on the Orthodox Church and gave it lands and tax freedom, but also intervened in its affairs. Georgian monks ran houses abroad, including Iviron on Mount Athos and the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem. Gelati, Bagrati Cathedral and Svetitskhoveli are among the great churches of the age, and the philosopher Ioane Petritsi taught at Gelati. Rustaveli's epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin, from Tamar's time, is still counted Georgia's greatest literary work. Coins carried Arabic titles alongside Georgian, a sign of close trade with the Muslim world.

In the thirteenth century the kingdom fell under the Mongols. George V, called the Brilliant, used the break-up of the Ilkhanate after 1335 to expel Mongol troops and restore the realm. Then plague arrived in 1346 and may have killed up to half the population. Repeated campaigns by Timur and later the Turkmen Kara Koyunlu wrecked towns and the economy; in 1440 Jahan Shah sacked Tbilisi.

With Byzantium and Trebizond gone to the Ottomans, Georgia lost its Christian allies. After 1466 the unified kingdom ceased to exist, splitting into the separate kingdoms of Kartli, Kakheti and Imereti and several principalities. Kartli and Kakheti were joined again only in 1762 as Kartli-Kakheti.

Our 1000 and 1100 maps show the Kingdom of Georgia; the 1000 map anticipates the formal union of 1008 by a few years. Its neighbours include the Khazars, Armenia and the Alans in 1000, and the Emirate of Tiflis and Kakheti-Hereti in 1100, before David IV absorbed them.