Teimuraz I of Kakheti - The Rebel King

The Rebel King

Teimuraz continued to seek a 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.

Meanwhile, Abbas I's appointed governor of Kakheti, Selim Khan of Ganja, embarked on a campaign to resettle the depopulated areas of eastern Georgia with Turkic nomads, sparking a rebellion by the remaining Georgian population. The shah's former Georgian ally, Giorgi Saakadze, or Mourav-Beg as he was known in Iran, joined the revolt and led the Georgians to a victory over the Iranian army at the Battle of Martqopi on March 25, 1625. Saakadze went on to annihilate the Turkic migrants and reinstated Teimuraz as king of Kartli and Kakheti. The shah failed to crush the uprising despite the costly victory over the Georgians at the Battle of Marabda on July 1, 1625. Faced by guerrilla resistance in the highlands of Georgia, Abbas recognized the rebel king’s right to rule.

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 Alexander III of Imereti) as a new king. On the other, Teimuraz and his loyal Kakhetian party who gained an influential supporter in Saakadze’s brother-in-law and erstwhile associate Zurab, eristavi ("duke") of Aragvi. Shah Abbas I, suspicious of Saakadze’s diplomacy with the Ottomans, also encouraged Teimuraz to deal a final blow to the ambitious general. Later in 1626, the rivalry among the Georgian leaders culminated in the battle at Lake Bazaleti in which the royal army won a decisive victory, driving Saakadze into exile to Constantinople where he was put to death in 1629 after serving a brief military career under Sultan Ibrahim I.

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.