Teimuraz I of Kakheti
| Teimuraz I | |
|---|---|
King of Kartli | |
| Reign | 1625–1633 |
| Predecessor | Simon II of Kartli |
| Successor | Rostom of Kartli |
| Born | 1589 Iran[1] |
| Died | 1663 (aged 73–74)[2] Gorgan, Iran |
| Burial | |
| Spouse | Anna Gurieli Khorashan of Kartli |
| Issue | Prince Levan Prince Alexander Princess Tinatin Prince David of Kakheti Darejan of Kakheti, Queen of Imereti |
| Dynasty | Bagrationi dynasty |
| Father | David I of Kakheti |
| Mother | Ketevan the Martyr |
| Religion | Georgian Orthodox Church |
| Khelrtva |  |
Teimuraz I (
A versatile poet and admirer of Persian poetry, Teimuraz translated into Georgian several Persian love-stories and transformed the personal experiences of his long and difficult reign into a series of original poems influenced by the contemporary Persian tradition.[3]
Early life
Teimuraz was the son of
He returned home in 1605, after
Since the new monarch was still underage, Queen Ketevan temporarily assumed the function of a regent and arranged, in 1606, Teimuraz's marriage to Ana, daughter of
Iranian invasion
As the Safavid-Ottoman war drew to its close, Abbas I renewed efforts to bring Georgia more completely into his empire. His relations with Teimuraz I quickly deteriorated after the king of Kakheti turned down the shah's summons to Esfahan. Teimuraz, threatened with an Iranian invasion, attempted to buy peace by sending his two sons, Alexander and Leon, and his mother Ketevan as honorary hostages to the shah's court in 1613. This move, however, failed to relieve pressures on Kakheti.
Once the hostilities with the Ottomans had ceased momentarily in 1614 with the Iranian army at its acme, Abbas I sent in his troops against the Georgian kingdoms. This time he was aided by the Georgian nobleman, Giorgi Saakadze, an able fighter who had formerly enjoyed much influence in the service of Luarsab II of Kartli until a threat to his life had led him to defect to the shah. The Iranians drove both Teimuraz and Luarsab from their realms into the western Georgian kingdom of Imereti, and Abbas I replaced them with Georgian converts to Islam. Bagrat VII was installed in Kartli, while Kakheti was given to Teimuraz's cousin Isa Khan. George III of Imereti, under the Ottoman protection, refused to give up the refugees and the shah retaliated by giving Kartli and Kakheti over to his troops for pillage. Then Luarsab chose to surrender, but rejected the shah's request to renounce Christianity. Abbas exiled him to Iran and had him strangled at Shiraz in 1622.[6]
While in exile in Imereti in 1615, Teimuraz I joined George III of Imereti in sending a letter to
Once flourishing towns of Kakheti, like
Rebel king
Teimuraz continued to seek and exploit Russian and Ottoman aid against Iran and remained a rallying point for opposition to the Safavids, encouraging his subjects to reject a Muslim replacement for him. Shah Abbas took revenge by torturing to death the king's mother, Ketevan, on September 13, 1624, and castrating his sons, Alexander and Leon.[6]
Meanwhile, Abbas I's appointed governor of Kakheti,
The Georgian nobility, however, soon divided into two opposing camps. On one side stood Saakadze and his followers who objected to Teimuraz's control of Kartli and intended to invite the Imeretian prince Alexander (the future King
After the defeat of Saakadze and the death of Shah Abbas I in 1629, Teimuraz proceeded to strengthen his authority in eastern Georgia. He instigated Zurab of Aragvi to murder Semayun Khan, an Iranian-appointed rival king of Kartli in 1630, and then had Zurab assassinated, thereby getting rid of them both. By the early 1630s, Teimuraz I had gained more or less stable control of both Kartli and Kakheti. Determined to eliminate the Safavid hegemony over Georgia, Teimuraz sent his ambassador, Niciphores Irbachi, to Western Europe and requested the aid from Philip IV of Spain and Pope Urban VIII. However, the rulers of Europe were too involved in the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) to be concerned about the fate of a small Caucasian kingdom, and nothing came of this mission, the publication of the first Georgian printed book Dittionario giorgiano e italiano ("Georgian-Italian Dictionary"; Rome, 1629) by Stefano Paolini and Niciphores Irbachi being the only result of this embassy.
End of reign
Meanwhile, Teimuraz relations with the new Iranian shah,
Rostom and his fellow Georgian in the Safavid service,
In 1641, Teimuraz, who was intent upon uniting all of eastern Georgia under his rule, backed a nobles' conspiracy against Rostom, which finally ruined his relations with the ruler of Kartli. The plot collapsed and the king of Kakheti, who had already advanced with his troops to the walls of
In the meantime, Rostom's willingness to cooperate with his Safavid suzerains won for Kartli a large measure of autonomy and relative peace and prosperity. However, the nobles and the populace of Kakheti continued to rally around the exiled Teimuraz in the hope of ending their subjection to Iran. In order to end resistance in Kakheti once and for all, Shah
Unable to garner the Russian support for his cause, Teimuraz concluded that the prospects for recovering the crown were nil and returned to Imereti to retire to a monastery in 1661, the same year when Rostom's successor to the throne of Kartli,
Poetry
Teimuraz I's literary works addresses a wide range of topics and includes his original poems as well as translations and adaptations from Persian. This king-poet had such a universal knowledge of Persian and Georgian literature and was so proud of his innovations into the Georgian poetry, that, in his old age, Teimuraz proclaimed himself the greatest poet of Georgia and thought himself superior to the celebrated medieval Georgian author Shota Rustaveli. Although no such claim has ever been accepted by the critics of Georgian literature, there can be no doubt that his courtly and rather mannered lyricism had a certain influence on the 17th-19th-century Georgian poetry. Educated at the Safavid court, he was proficiently fluent in Persian, and his poetic language was full of Persian imagery and allusions, loanwords, and phraseology. Commenting on his interest in Persian poetry, he wrote: "The sweetness of Persian speech urged me to compose the music of verse." During his first creative period, 1629–34, when he was relatively secure on his throne, Teimuraz translated and adapted from Persian the romances of Layla and Majnun (Georgian: ლეილმაჯნუნიანი, Leilmajnuniani), Yusuf and Zulaikha (იოსებზილიხანიანი, Iosebzilikhaniani), The Rose and the Nightingale (ვარდბულბულიანი, Vardbulbuliani), and The Candle and the Moth (შამიფარვანიანი, Shamiparvaniani).[11]
The second period, 1649–56, was in exile at the court of his brother-in-law, Alexander III of Imereti, when Teimuraz, in his own words, used poetry as therapy: "Tears flowed mercilessly like the Nile from my eyes. To overcome I wrote from time to time, I threw my heart into it." In his poems, Teimuraz laments the destruction of his kingdom, condemning the "transient and perfidious world", and mourns the fate of his family and friends, cursing the cause of his own and his people's misfortunes, the "bloodthirsty king of Persia."[12]
Teimuraz's most elaborate and painful poem, however, was his first, The Book and Passion of Queen Ketevan (წიგნი და წამება ქეთევან დედოფლისა, ts'igni da ts'ameba ketevan dedoplisa) written in 1625, seven months after his mother,
Family
Teimuraz I was married twice; first, in 1609, to Anna, daughter of
He fathered three sons and two daughters:
By Anna
- Prince Leon (Levan) (1606–1624)
- Prince Alexander (1609–1620)
Both of them were taken in hostage by Abbas I in 1614 and castrated in an act of revenge in 1618[13] or 1620. The young princes did not survive the mutilation and died shortly thereafter.
- Princess Tinatin (1610–1642). She married Shah Safi in 1637.
By Khorashan
- Prince David (1612–1648), created Prince of Mukhrani in 1627. He died in the battle with the Iranian army, and the dynasty was continued by his son, Heraclius.
- Princess Vakhtang of Imereti(1661), and notorious for her controversial role in the politics of western Georgia.
Notes
- ^ ISBN 978-0-933273-53-5.
King Teimuraz/Ṭahmūraṯ I (r. 1603-63) deserves special notice here, because his life was closely connected with the history of political relations between Persia and Georgia. This poet-king was born in Persia, was proficiently fluent in Persian, and appreciated and highly valued Persian poetry.
- ^ ISBN 0-7007-1163-5.
- ISBN 9781136825293. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
- ISBN 978-1-78023-030-6.
- ^ Rayfield 2016, p. 43.
- ^ a b c d Suny, p. 50.
- ^ Oberling, Pierre. Georgia VIII: Georgian communities in Persia.[usurped] Encyclopædia Iranica Online Edition. Accessed on October 25, 2007.
- ^ Suny, p. 51.
- ^ Suny, p. 53.
- ^ a b Hitchins, Keith. Georgia II: History of Iranian-Georgian relations.[usurped] Encyclopædia Iranica Online Edition. Accessed on October 25, 2007.
- ^ Gvakharia, Aleksandre. Georgia IV: Literary contacts with Persia[usurped]. Encyclopædia Iranica Online Edition. Accessed on October 25, 2007.
- ISBN 0-89875-570-0.
- ^ Allen, William Edward David; Gugushvili, A. (1937). Georgica: A Journal of Georgian and Caucasian Studies. S. Austin and Sons, Limited. p. 18.
References
- ISBN 0-253-20915-3.
- David Marshall Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 1658-1832. New York: Columbia University Press, 1957.
- (in Russian) Вахушти Багратиони (Vakhushti Bagrationi) (1745). История царства грузинского. Возникновение и жизнь Кахети и Эрети. Ч.1. at the Wayback Machine(archived September 5, 2010) Accessed on October 25, 2007.
- Mikaberidze, Alexander (2007). Teimuraz I. Archived 2016-02-14 at the Wayback Machine Dictionary of Georgian National Biography. Accessed on October 25, 2007.
- Rayfield, Donald (2016). "The Greatest King among Poets, the Greatest Poet among Kings: The Poetry of King Teimuraz I". In Günther, Hans-Christian (ed.). Political Poetry across the Centuries. Brill.
External links
- (in Georgian) ქართული ლიტერატურა: მეფე, თეიმურაზ I (A collection of Teimuraz I's poems). National Parliamentary Library of Georgia.
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