The foundation for Georgia’s Golden Age was laid by King Bagrat III (r.1008-1014), who succeeded by luck and ruthlessness in exploiting the opportunities for Georgian unification. He was a member of the Bagrationi dynasty that had ruled Kartli – the central part of today’s Georgia – since the early 9th century AD. Born in c.AD 960, he was the designated heir to Kartli and had some claims to Abkhazia, a region to the north-west. Prince Bagrat had seized his chance when the childless ruler Davit (David) III of Tao (in today’s south-western Georgia and north-eastern Turkey), adopted and installed him in 978 as king of Abkhazia. Impatient to inherit Tao, Bagrat attacked his adoptive father in 989. However, Davit managed to stall Bagrat’s assault and even, against his better judgement, pardoned him. Twelve years later, Davit was assassinated by means of poisoned altar wine, a murder that was masterminded either by his treacherous adoptive son or by the Byzantine emperor Basil II. When Bagrat’s biological father, Gurgen of Kartli, died in 1008, he was able to unite Kartli, Kakheti, Abkhazia, and North Tao to form the Kingdom of Georgia, locally called Sakartvelo, ‘Land of Kartvelians’. Even so, Bagrat had to yield the major part of Tao to Byzantium, which aspired to bring all of Georgia within its orbit. In the event, an emerging power soon neutralised the Byzantine menace, but also proved an even greater challenge for the newly independent Georgian state.
The Seljuk threat
This new power was the Turkic Seljuks, who arrived from the steppes of today’s Turkmenistan, and soon threatened Byzantium’s eastern flank. The Seljuk menace prevented Byzantium from exploiting rivalries among Bagrat’s descendants. In 1064, the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan conquered the important Armenian city of Ani, which Byzantium had acquired in 1045, and looted southern Georgia, an act fomenting a war that lasted almost 60 years between Georgia and the Seljuks. In 1071, Alp Arslan destroyed the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert, which as far as Georgia was concerned, eliminated the Byzantine danger. From 1077 onwards, though, armed Seljuk bands raided Georgia annually and carried its young people off into slavery. Not even the humiliating capitulation of King Giorgi II (r.1072-1089) in 1083 and payment of tribute could put an end to the depredations. For the kingdom to survive, something had to change, and in 1089 Giorgi was forced to abdicate in favour of his young son, Davit IV (r.1089-1125), who was later given the epithet Aghmashenebeli, ‘the Builder’ or ‘Restorer’. Indeed, in due course, Davit restored the economy, introduced functioning state institutions, and built Georgia into a fully sovereign and territorially compact kingdom secured by a strong standing army.
Yet when Davit assumed power, he controlled only Egrisi and Abkhazia; that is, western Georgia. Luckily for Davit, both the bellicose Seljuk sultan Malik Shah and the mastermind of the Seljuk Empire, Vizier Nizam al-Mulk, died in 1092, whereupon the sultanate was plunged into a 13-year internal power struggle. Soon after, the Crusaders’ attacks, beginning in the summer of 1097 and culminating with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, further rocked the Seljuk Empire. Davit raised a 5,000-strong royal guard, cleared Kartli of marauding Seljuk bands, and then stopped the tribute payments, before destroying the resulting punitive Seljuk expedition at the Battle of Ertsukhi in 1104. As a next step, the king put an end to the cronyism and nepotistic relationship that existed between the gentry and church. To clean up the corrupt Augean Stable that was the Georgian Church, Davit had unworthy prelates defrocked, and introduced rules including a minimum age and qualification criteria for priestly ordination and appointment to bishoprics. The king went on to reorganise the government into ministries, create a domestic and foreign intelligence service, and – in order to secure a pool of well-educated clergymen and future scientists – to establish in 1106 the monastery of Gelati and the academy of Ikalto. Here, the curriculum included not only ecclesiastical subjects and philosophy, but also mathematics, geometry, astronomy, rhetoric, and even handicrafts. At the same time, an ambitious construction program for churches and monasteries commenced, and would endure until the Mongol invasions. An impressive example of Davit’s ambition can still be seen in the monastery and educational centre of Gelati, in the Imereti region, which contains a 16th-century mural featuring its founder.
