Bagrat IV of Georgia

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Bagrat IV of Georgia : biography

1018 – 24 November 1072

Bagrat IV () (1018 – 24 November 1072), of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the King of Georgia from 1027 to 1072. During his long and eventful reign, Bagrat sought to repress the great nobility and to secure Georgia’s sovereignty from the Byzantine and Seljuqid empires. In a series of intermingled conflicts, Bagrat succeeded in defeating his most powerful vassals and rivals of the Liparitid family, bringing several feudal enclaves under his control, and reducing the kings of Lorri and Kakheti, as well as the emir of Tbilisi to vassalage. Like many medieval Caucasian rulers, he bore several Byzantine titles, particularly those of nobelissimos, curopalates, and sebastos.

Early reign

He was the son of the king George I (r. 1014–1027) by his first wife Mariam of Vaspurakan. At the age of three, Bagrat was surrendered by his father as a hostage to the Byzantine emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025) as a price for George’s defeat in the 1022 war with the Byzantines. The young child Bagrat spent the next three years in the imperial capital of Constantinople and was released in 1025. He was still in the Byzantine possessions when Basil died and was succeeded by his brother Constantine VIII (r. 1025-8). Constantine ordered the retrieval of the young prince, but the imperial courier was unable to overtake Bagrat – he was already in the Georgian kingdom.Lynda Garland & Stephen Rapp. Mary ‘of Alania’: Woman and Empress Between Two Worlds, pp. 94–5. In: Lynda Garland (ed., 2006), Byzantine Women: Varieties of Experience, 800–1200. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., ISBN 0-7546-5737-X.

After George I died in 1027, Bagrat, aged eight, succeeded to the throne. Queen Dowager Mariam then returned to prominence and became a regent for his underage son. She shared the regency with the grandees, particularly Liparit IV, Duke of Trialeti, and Ivane, Duke of Kartli.

By the time when Bagrat became a king, the Bagratids’ drive to complete the unification of all Georgian lands had gained irreversible momentum. The kings of Georgia set at Kutaisi in western Georgia whence they run all of what had been the Kingdom of Abkhazia and a greater portion of Iberia/Kartli; Tao/Tayk had been lost to the Byzantines while a Muslim emir remained in Tbilisi and the kings of Kakheti obstinately defended their autonomy in easternmost Georgia. Furthermore, the loyalty of great nobles to the Georgian crown was far from being stable. During Bagrat’s minority, the regency had advanced the positions of the high nobility whose influence he subsequently tried to limit when he assumed full ruling powers. Simultaneously, the Georgian crown was confronted with two formidable external foes: the Byzantine Empire and the resurgent Seljuq Turks. Although the Byzantine Empire and Georgia had centuries-long cultural and religious ties, and the Seljuqs posed a substantial threat to the empire itself, Constantinople’s aggressiveness on the Caucasian political scene contributed to an atmosphere of distrust and recrimination, and prevented the two Christian nations from effective cooperation against the common threat. With assertion of the Georgian Bagratid hegemony in the Caucasus being the cornerstone of Bagrat’s reign, his policy can be understood as the attempt to play the Seljuqs and Byzantines off against one another.

Dynastic wars

Shortly after Bagrat’s ascension to the throne, Constantine VIII sent in an army to take over the key city-fortress of Artanuji (modern Ardanuç, Turkey) on behalf of the Georgian Bagratid prince Demetre, son of Gurgen of Klarjeti, who had been dispossessed by Bagrat IV’s grandfather, Bagrat III, of his patrimonial fief at Artanuji early in the 1010s. Several Georgians nobles defected to the Byzantines, but Bagrat’s loyal subjects put up a stubborn fight.Holmes, Catherine (2005), Basil II and the Governance of Empire (976–1025), p. 482. Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-927968-3.

Constantine’s death in 1028 rendered the Byzantine invasion abortive, and, in 1030, the queen Mariam paid a visit to the new emperor Romanos III (r. 1028–1034). She negotiated a peace treaty, and returned with the high Byzantine title of curopalates for his son in 1032. Mariam also brought him a Byzantine princess Helena as wife. Helena was a daughter of Basil Argyros, brother of the emperor Romanos, and the marriage was a diplomatic effort to establish a strategic association. However, Helena’s death shortly afterwards at Kutaisi presented the Georgian court with the opportunity to pursue yet another diplomatic initiative through Bagrat’s marriage with Borena, daughter of the king of Alania, a Christian country in the North Caucasus.