Bagrat I

Bagrat I restored the old royal house of Abkhazia after the usurpation of the Shavliani and, through his marriage, brought Bagrationi blood into the Abkhazian line. He was a son of King Demetre I, and the Chronicle of Kartli says that when his uncle Giorgi I Aghtsepeli died, Bagrat was still a minor. Giorgi's widow, seduced by the noble Ioane Shavliani, killed Bagrat's brother, the eristavi of Chikha, and had Bagrat cast into the sea; God saved him, the chronicler says, and he reached Constantinople, where he lived at the imperial court while Ioane and then Ioane's son Adarnase reigned in Abkhazia.

The emperor eventually gave him troops and sent him home by sea. Landing in Abkhazia, Bagrat slew Adarnase, took the kingdom, and married Adarnase's widow, a daughter of Guaram Mampali, the son of Ashot I Kuropalates and a prince of the Bagrationi of Tao-Klarjeti. The match made him brother-in-law of Guaram's son Nasra, whom he supplied with his own troops when Nasra returned from Byzantine exile to fight for his inheritance. Nasra seized three fortresses in Samtskhe, but in the battle on the Mtkvari that followed, against Gurgen and Adarnase, son of David, who were aided by the Armenians, the Abkhazians were defeated and Nasra, the Ossetian chief Bakatar, and the Abkhazian eristavi were killed. Modern historians date Bagrat's return to about 887 and Nasra's defeat to 888.

The Divan of the Abkhazian Kings gives Bagrat a reign of eleven years; Toumanoff dates it about 887 to 898, Georgian scholars 882 to 894. His son Konstantini III succeeded him and carried the kingdom's power into Kartli. From Bagrat descended the last Abkhazian kings, Giorgi II and his sons, and through Giorgi's daughter Gurandukht the crown passed to Bagrat III of Georgia, who as a Bagrationi on his father's side was heir to both the houses Bagrat I had joined.