Bagrat IV of Georgia Totally Explained

Everything about Bagrat Iv Of Georgia totally explained

Bagrat IV (1018 – November 24, 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 sovereignity 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. His Byzantine titles included 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.
   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 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.
   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 Argyropoulos, 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.
   In 1039, Demetre returned to Georgia with Byzantine troops. This time, he was supported by Liparit IV, of the Liparitid clan, the most powerful noble in Georgia.
   Liparit, as duke of the district of Trialeti and later as a commander-in-chief of the royal armies, had appeared as the defender of a boy-king Bagrat early in the 1030s. Liparit’s military prowess had been demonstrated once again in 1034 when, at the head of a combined Georgian-Armenian army, he defeated a Shaddadid troops in Arran. In 1038, Liparit was on the verge of capturing the ancient Georgian capital of Tbilisi, which had been a Muslim stronghold since the 8th century. Fearing his growing power, the Georgian nobles persuaded Bagrat to withdraw Liparit’s army and thus thwarted the plan. As a result, Liparit became a sworn enemy of the king and began actively cooperating with the Byzantines for vengeance on Bagrat and his nobles.

Seljuk attacks

In the 1060s, Bagrat faced with an even greater problem: the Seljuks under Alp Arslan started to penetrate the frontier regions of Georgia. Bagrat had to buy peace through marrying her niece off to Alp Arslan.
   The Seljuk threat prompted the Georgian and Byzantine governments to seek a closer cooperation. To secure the alliance, Bagrat’s daughter Mart’a (Maria) married, at some point between 1066 and 1071, the Byzantine co-emperor Michael VII Ducas. The choice of a Georgian princess was unprecedented, and it was seen in Georgia as a diplomatic success on Bagrat's side.
   On December 10, 1068, Alp Arslan accompanied by the kings of Lorri and Kakheti as well as the emir of Tbilisi again marched against Bagrat. The provinces of Kartli and Argveti were occupied and pillaged. Bagrat’s long-time rivals, the Shaddadids of Arran, were given compensation: the fortresses of Tbilisi and Rustavi. After Alp Arslan left Georgia, Bagrat recovered Kartli in July 1068. Al-Fadl I b. Muhammad, of the Shaddadids, encamped at Isani (a suburb of Tbilisi on the left bank of the Mtkvari) and with 33,000 men ravaged the countryside. Bagrat defeated him, however, and forced the Shaddadid troops to flight. On the road through Kakheti, Fadl was taken prisoner by the local ruler Aghsartan. At the price of conceding several fortresses on the Iori River, Bagrat ransomed Fadl and received from him the surrender of Tbilisi where he reinstated a local emir on the terms of vassalage.
   The last years of Bagrat's reign coincided with what Professor David Marshall Lang described as "the final débacle of eastern Christendom" - the Battle of Manzikert - in which Alp Arslan dealt a crushing defeat to the Byzantine army, capturing the emperor Romanos IV, who soon died in misery. Bagrat IV died the following year, on 24 November 1072, and was buried at the Chkondidi Monastery. The suzerainty over the troubled kingdom of Georgia passed to his son George II.

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