Teimuraz I of Kakheti - Iranian Invasion

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.

While in exile in Imereti in 1615, Teimuraz I joined George III of Imereti in sending a letter to Tsar Michael of Russia, informing him of their opposition to the Iranian shah and requesting aid. Recovering from the Time of Troubles, Russians were not prepared and did not intend to intervene in the Caucasian affairs, however. Left to their own devices, the Kakhetian nobles rallied behind David Jandieri and revolted against Isa Khan on September 15, 1615. The rebellion quickly spread to Kartli, and the Georgian nobles proposed Teimuraz I as king of all of eastern Georgia. A punitive Iranian expedition under the command of Ali Quli-Khan was routed by Teimuraz’s forces at Tsitsamuri, leading Shah Abbas to personally lead the next invasion in 1616. The rebellion was quashed, and Teimuraz once again fled to western Georgia. Kakheti was subjected to a complete devastation from which this kingdom never fully recovered. As the official history of Shah Abbas's reign, the Alam-ara proclaims: "Since the beginning of Islam no such events have taken place under any king."

Once flourishing towns of Kakheti, like Gremi and Zagemi, shrank to villages and several settlements disappeared. Sixty to seventy thousand people were killed, and more than one hundred thousand Kakhetian peasants were deported into the Safavid possessions. Their descendants make up the bulk of the ethnic Georgian population of present-day Iran, and a Georgian dialect is still spoken in and around Fereydoon Shahr, Isfahan Province.