Vakhtang I Gurieli


Vakhtang I Gurieli, of the House of Gurieli, was Prince of Guria from 1583 to 1587. He ruled Guria, a small state in southwestern Georgia, as a client of Mamia IV Dadiani, Prince of Mingrelia, who had deposed Giorgi II Gurieli. Vakhtang was one of the sponsors of the Shemokmedi Monastery, Guria's principal cathedral.

Biography

The ancestry of Vakhtang Gurieli is poorly documented. Prince Vakhushti's chronicle, one of the principal sources on Georgia's early modern history, refers to him as being "of a Gurieli stock", without elucidating his parentage. Contemporary documents suggest Vakhtang might have been a son of Rostom Gurieli and brother of Giorgi II Gurieli, a genealogy accepted in mainstream Georgian scholarship. On the other hand, the historian Cyril Toumanoff regarded him as a son of Giorgi II Gurieli.
Vakhtang was installed as prince-regnant of Guria by the neighboring ruler, Mamia IV Dadiani, Prince of Mingrelia, who had invaded Guria and expelled his brother-in-law Giorgi II Gurieli in 1583. Prior to his accession, Vakhtang was in possession of the canton of Kobuleti. Giorgi Gurieli fled to Constantinople to solicit the Ottoman support. He was in the Ottoman-controlled town of Gonio in 1587, when Vakhtang died, enabling Giorgi to reclaim Guria with the help of the Ottoman government.
Vakhtang was buried at the Transfiguration Church in the Shemokmedi Monastery, which he had built. He married, in 1583, Tamar, a daughter of Kaikhosro II Jaqeli, atabag of Samtskhe, and former wife of the nobleman Kaikhosro Oravzhandashvili. Widowed, she remarried Manuchar I Dadiani in 1592. Vakhtang had a son: