Giorgi I Aghtsepeli

Giorgi I, called Aghtsepeli, was the third son of Leon II to rule the Kingdom of Abkhazia in the ninth century, and the last before the throne passed out of the direct line. His epithet is explained by Aghtsepi, the appanage he held before his accession. The Divan of the Abkhazian Kings, the regnal list compiled a century later at the court of Bagrat III, records him as brother of his predecessor Demetre but omits the length of his reign, and modern reconstructions differ: Toumanoff placed him about 864 to 871, Georgian scholarship a few years earlier or later, and the chronology followed in these pages has him die about 879.

The Chronicle of Kartli preserves the one substantive fact of his reign. He extended Abkhazian rule over Kartli, the central Georgian land long contested with the Bagratids of Tao-Klarjeti and the princes of Kakheti, and entrusted it to a nephew, a son of Demetre. Modern summaries differ over which nephew: most name Tinen, others Bagrat, the future Bagrat I. The chronicle gives no date.

Giorgi appears to have left no son. On his death, the chronicle says, his widow, whose name is not recorded, joined with the nobleman Ioane Shavliani; Tinen was put to death, and Bagrat, cast into the sea, survived and escaped to Constantinople. Ioane took the throne, and the Shavliani, whom the Divan omits as usurpers, held Abkhazia until Bagrat returned with Byzantine help to restore the house of Leon, from which Gurandukht and the united Georgian kings descended.