David Soslan

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David Soslan (Georgian: დავით სოსლანი) (d. 1204) was the second husband of Queen Tamar of Georgia and consort of the Kingdom of Georgia. Descendant of both Georgian and Alan/Ossetian royal houses^{[citation needed]}, he was a prominent general of the Georgian “golden age”.

According to the much later Georgian chronicles, he was a descendant of Demetre, son of the Georgian king George I (1014-1027) by his Alan wife Alde. Demetre pretended on the Georgian throne during the reign of his half-brother, Bagrat IV (1027-1072). His son, David, took refuge in Alania (the present day North Ossetia-Alania) and married a local princess. Although the Georgian historians claim that they gave origin to a line of Ossetian princes, of which David was a purported member, modern Ossetian scholars consider him to be a representative of the Ossetian noble family of Tsarazon. Of his double name, David was a Georgian, and Soslan an Alan one.

David was brought up by his relative, Rusudan, aunt of Queen Regnant Tamar of Georgia. Tamar married him at the Didube palace near Tbilisi in 1187 after she divorced with the first husband, the Russian prince Yuri Bogolyubsky. As a consort, he was actively involved in the military and political life of the kingdom. He commanded the Georgian army in the victorious campaigns against the Seljuk rulers of Bardav (now Barda, Azerbaijan), Erzurum (known to Georgians as the City of Karnu), Geghark'unik' (known to Georgians as Gelakun), Beylaqan and Ganja in the 1190s. In 1195 he defeated the Seljuk emirs at the Battle of Shamkor. He won his last and perhaps the most famous victory over the Seljuks of Rum at the Battle of Basian in 1203.