Bagrationi Dynasty - Origins

Origins

According to a family legend, taken down by the 11th century Georgian chronicler Sumbat Davitis-Dze, and supplied much later by Prince Vakhushti Bagrationi (1696–1757) with chronological data, the ancestors of the dynasty traced their descent to the biblical king and prophet David and came from Palestine around 530 AD. Tradition has it that of seven refugee brothers of the Davidic line, three of them settled in Armenia and the other four arrived in Kartli (a major Georgian region also known as Iberia by Classical authors) where they intermarried with the local ruling houses and acquired some lands in hereditary possession. One of the four brothers, Guaram (died in 532), allegedly gave an origin to a line subsequently called Bagrationi after his son Bagrat. A successor, Guaram, was installed as a presiding prince of Kartli under the Byzantine protectorate and bestowed, on this occasion, with the Byzantine court title of Kouropalates in 575. Thus, according to this version, began the dynasty of the Bagratids, who ruled until 1801. This tradition had been given a general acceptance until the early 20th century. While the Jewish origin, let alone the biblical descent of the Bagratids, has been largely discounted by modern scholarship, the issue of their origin still remains controversial. Several Soviet-era historians of Georgia developed a view summarized by N. Berdzenishvili and et al. in their standard reference book on the history of Georgia:

Many modern scholars, however, question the above version, referring to a more complex analysis of primary Armenian and Georgian sources. Cyril Toumanoff's research affirms that the Georgian Bagratids branched out of the Armenian Bagratid dynasty in the person of Adarnase, whose father Vasak (son of Ashot III the Blind, presiding prince of Armenia from 732 to 748) passed to Kartli following an abortive uprising against Arab rule in 772. Adarnase’s son, Ashot I, attained to the principality of Kartli in 813 and thus founded the last royal house of Georgia. Accordingly, the legend of Davidic origin of the Georgian Bagratids was a further development of the earlier claim entertained by the Armenian dynasty, as given in the work of the Armenian author Moses of Khorene. Once the Georgian branch, who had quickly acculturated in the new environment, assumed royal power, the myth of their biblical origin helped to assert their legitimacy and emerged as a main ideological pillar of the millennium-long Bagrationi rule in Georgia.

Although certain, generation by generation, history of the Bagrationi dynasty begins only in the late 8th century, Toumanoff has demonstrated that the first Georgian branch of the Bagratids may be traced back as far as the 2nd century AD, when we hear them ruling over the princedom of Odzrkhe in what is now southern Georgia. The Odzrkhe line, known in the medieval annals as the Bivritianis, lasted until the 5th century AD and they cannot be considered as the direct ancestors of the later Bagratids who eventually restored Georgian royal authority.