David X

David X (Georgian: დავით X) (1482–1526) was the second king (mepe) of the Kingdom of Kartli from 1505 to 1525. Associated with the throne as a child, he became king on the death of his father and from then on had to endure invasions from the Kingdom of Imereti and Kingdom of Kakheti. A reformer, he succeeded in subduing the army and destroying the power of the nobles by abolishing the semi-independent principalities that were ruining the unity of the country, before uniting eastern Georgia under a single sceptre. David X is also known to have survived another invasion by Persia, and is thus considered to be the first in a series of eleven kings who fought against their Safavid neighbours over the next two centuries.

David was born after 1473.^[1] He was the eldest son of King Constantine II of Georgia and Queen Tamar. In 1488, in the midst of war against the Turkomans, he was associated with his other brothers to his father's throne,^[2] but two years later, in 1490, the Darbazi (royal council) officially put an end to the existence of the Kingdom of Georgia,^[3] which had been de facto divided since the 13th century. The father of the young co-king found himself master of the sole Kartli (central Georgia),^[4] with Tbilisi as capital.^[5] Constantine II died on April 27, 1505, leaving the new king, David X, with a developing kingdom.^[1][6]

The reign of David X is from the beginning illustrated by the internal struggles between Georgian lordships and kingdoms of the 16th century. As early as 1509, King Alexander II of Imereti invaded Kartli and even occupied Gori.^[7] At the same time, he managed to occupy the entire northwest of the kingdom without encountering any real resistance. However, from the month of November, the Ottoman general Selim invaded Imereti. In 1510 David X took the opportunity to regain his lost territories.^[7]

A year later, George of Kakheti surged into Kartli, but failed to capture the king in a besieged castle of Ateni.

In 1513, George invaded again, only to be defeated and taken prisoner by David’s younger brother Bagrat I of Mukhrani. He died in captivity and his kingdom was annexed to Kartli. In 1518, the Persian shah Ismail I of the newly established Safavid Empire, sent in an army under Div Sultan Rumlu, who was joined by the Georgian prince Qvarqvare III Jaqeli, atabeg of Samtskhe. The invaders occupied Surami and Gori, and David had to make peace with the Persians and to promise to pay tribute. Meanwhile, the Kakhetian nobles used the opportunity to install Levan, son of the late king George II, as their king. David besieged the Maghrani Castle where Levan had taken positions, but soon had to abandon the siege as the Qizilbash appeared again in the Georgian lands. David recognised Lavan as the king of Kakheti in order to win his support against the invaders.

In 1522, he refused to convert to Islam as Shah Ismail had demanded. A new Persian invasion ensued, led this time personally by the Shah. David and his son, Luarsab I, offered him a fierce resistance at the Battle of Teleti, but were finally outnumbered and defeated. The Kartlian capital Tbilisi was taken by treachery and garrisoned by a large Persian force, making east Georgia nominally fall for the first time under Safavid rule. On the death of Ismail in 1524, David liberated Tbilisi and expelled the Persians from the country. The Safavid Persians would later try to retake Tbilisi.

In 1525, he reconquered Aghjakala, Lower Kartli, and massacred all the Turkoman Qizilbash who had settled there. The same year, he abdicated the throne in favor of his younger brother George IX, and retired to a monastery under the name of Damiane. David X died in 1526 and was buried at the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral at Mtskheta.

David, as crown prince, first married Nestan-Darejan or Miraingul, daughter of Prince David Baratashvili (fl. 1488–1512), but the union was denounced by David's father, Constantine II.^[8]

David married secondly to Tamar (died in 1554), daughter of Kvarkvare II Jaqeli, Atabag of Samtskhe. She might have been the mother of all of David's children, including his eldest son and successor Luarsab I. Prince Vakhushti reports that the mother of Luarsab was captured by Shah Tahmasp I at Ateni and carried off to Iran, where she committed suicide by poisoning in 1556. According to Cyril Toumanoff, Nestan-Darejan/Miraingul was the mother of David's three sons, Luarsab, Adarnase, and Ramaz, and it was she who committed suicide in 1556. He considers Tamar to have been the third name of this queen, such polyonymy not being infrequent in Georgia at that time.^[9]

David had eight children:

1. Luarsab I, King of Kartli
2. Adarnase (fl. 1512–1558)
3. Prince Ramaz of Kartli
4. Demetre (Dimitri) (fl. 1516–1540)
5. Bezhan, died of leprosy
6. Anonymous daughter (fl. 1519–1560), wife of Baindur, Duke of Aragvi
7. Anonymous daughter (fl. 1532–1534), wife of Prince Javakh Chiladze
8. Anonymous daughter

• Toumanoff, Cyril (1990). Les dynasties de la Caucasie chrétienne de l'Antiquité jusqu'au xixe siècle : Tables généalogiques et chronologiques [Dynasties of Christian Caucasus, from Ancient Times to the 19th century: Genealogical and Chronological Tables] (in French). Rome.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Asatiani, Nodar; Bendianashvili, Alexandre (1997). Histoire de la Géorgie. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 2-7384-6186-7.
• Asatiani, Nodar (2008). Საქართველოს ისტორია II [History of Georgia, Volume 2] (in Georgian). Tbilisi: Tbilisi University Press. ISBN 978-9941-13-004-5.
• Javakhishvili, Ivane (1949). Histoire de la Géorgie. XIe – XVe siècles (in Georgian). Tbilisi: Publication d'État de la RSS de Géorgie..

• (in Georgian) Biography of David X at www.istoria.ge