Ashot I Kuropalates
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Ashot I Kuropalates (end of the 8th cent. - 830), presiding prince of Iberia for the Caliph and the Byzantine Emperor. In traditional Georgian history writing, based on the works of Prince Vakhushti Bagrationi and Marie-Félicité Brosset, Ashot I Kuropalates, also known as Ashot the Great, is regarded as the founder of the Georgian Bagrationi dynasty. His reign is assumed to have begun in 786 or even in 780; Ashot would thus have been the direct successor of St Archil, the last member of the old royal house of the Iberian Chosroids. However, the real date of Ashot's accession must have been later, since the last acquisitions of lands by his father Adarnase which are mentioned in the sources could only have taken place after the death of Archil.
The claim put forward in traditional Georgian genealogy, that Ashot I was a descendant of the 6th-century prince Guaram I (c.570-c.595), the alleged first Bagratid ruler of Iberia, cannot be sustained since Ashot’s father Adarnase was the grandson of Ashot III Bagratuni (732-748), presiding prince of Armenia for the Caliph.
Ashot I initially presided as an erismtavari in the area around Tbilisi and ruled over a territory that comprised most of the lands from Kvemo Kartli (“Lower Kartli”) in the south to Shida Kartli (“Inner Kartli”) in the north. Waging an incessant war against the Arabs, he at first succeeded in driving them from his dominions, but the Arabs soon took revenge, forcing him to flee from central Kartli to his south-western possessions in Tao-Klarjeti. Recognised as the presiding prince of Iberia and bestowed with the highest Byzantine court title of a kuropalates, he established himself in the deserted province of Klarjeti, where he restored the castle of Artanuji (now Ardanuç, northeast Turkey) said to have been built by the Iberian king Vakhtang I Gorgasal in the 5th century. To revive the country devastated by the Arabs and cholera epidemics, he patronized the local monastic community established by Grigol Khandzteli, and encouraged the settlement of the Georgians in the region. As a result, the political and religious centres of Iberia/Georgia were effectively transferred from central Kartli to the south-western provinces of Tao-Klarjeti.
From his base in Klarjeti, Ashot fought hard to recover more Georgian lands from the Arab occupation and, though not always successful, succeeded in taking much of the adjoining lands from Tao in the southwest to Shida Kartli in the northeast. Towards the late 810s, he allied with Theodosius II of Abkhazia (810/811-836/837) in order to stop the advancing Kakhetian prince/chorepiscopus Grigol who had occupied part of Ashot’s territories in Shida Kartli. Even though Grigol was aided by both the Arab emir of Tbilisi, and the Caucasian mountain tribes of the Mtiulians and the Tsanars, he was defeated by Ashot in the battle on the Ksani river, and the outcome of the battle was that Ashot could restore his authority in the region.
In 827/828, Khalid b. Yazid, the Arab viceroy of Armīniya, began a major onslaught against Ashot’s principality. Ashot I must have been still alive at that time, and the information provided by the Georgian chronicler Sumbat, according to which Ashot I should have been murdered in 826, is doubtful. It is more likely that the event took place four years later, in 830. Ashot was buried in the church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul which he had built in Artanuji. He is canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church, which celebrates his memory on the day of his martyrdom, January 29.
