Demetre I

Demetre I, numbered Demetrius II in lists that count the earlier archons of Abasgia, was the second son of Leon II to reign over the Kingdom of Abkhazia, succeeding his childless elder brother Teodos in the mid-ninth century. The Divan of the Abkhazian Kings names him and his brothers as sons of Leon but supplies no absolute dates, and modern reconstructions vary: Toumanoff placed his reign about 855 to 864, Georgian scholarship has proposed both earlier and later brackets, and the chronology followed in these pages puts his death about 873.

The one datable episode of his reign belongs to the Abbasid campaign in the Caucasus. In 853 the caliph's general Bugha al-Kabir, sent to crush the Armenian revolt, defeated the rebellious emir of Tbilisi, Ishaq ibn Isma'il, and burned the city. Demetre had sided with the rebels; his army was defeated, and he fled toward Alania. Bugha's pursuit, according to the Georgian account, was halted by the Tsanars, the mountaineers of Kakheti, and by heavy snow. Georgian historians also credit him with repelling Byzantine incursions in the 840s.

Demetre's importance lies in his sons. Tinen, described as duke of Chikha, was set over Kartli by his uncle Giorgi Aghtsepeli and was killed in the coup that followed Giorgi's death; Bagrat, exiled to Constantinople, returned with Byzantine backing to overthrow the Shavliani usurpers and reigned as Bagrat I. From him descended the later Abkhazian kings and, through Gurandukht, Bagrat III of Georgia.