Giorgi II

Giorgi II was the most powerful king of medieval Abkhazia, under whom the western Georgian kingdom reached its height, and the grandfather of Bagrat III of Georgia, who united Abkhazia and Kartli under the Bagrationi. He was the elder son of Konstantini III, who left two sons by different wives, and his accession was contested. The Chronicle of Kartli records a bitter strife with his younger half-brother Bagrat, son-in-law of Gurgen II of Tao, who backed him with all his might; there was no peace, the chronicler says, until Bagrat died, after which Giorgi assumed full sovereignty. Modern scholars place the war in the 920s and Bagrat's death around 930. The Divan of the Abkhazian Kings credits Giorgi with forty-four years; Toumanoff dates the reign about 916 to 960, Georgian scholars about 922 to 957.

The chronicle praises him as God-fearing, courageous, generous, and above all a builder of churches, and records that he founded the church of Chqondidi in Mingrelia and made it a bishopric. Byzantine sources agree: Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos, who worked with him to establish Christianity in Alania north of the Caucasus, called him an intelligent and sensible man. Giorgi's power in eastern Georgia rested on Kartli, which he gave to his elder son Konstantini. After three years the son rebelled and shut himself in Uplistsikhe; Giorgi besieged the fortress with the kings of Tao, took Konstantini by a ruse, and had him blinded and castrated, and he died. Kartli then passed to another son, Leon, who campaigned against Kvirike II of Kakheti on his father's orders.

To forestall further rivalry, Giorgi sent two younger sons, Teodos and Bagrat, to be raised in Constantinople, a precaution that failed when they returned. He also married his daughter Gurandukht to Gurgen, a Bagrationi prince of Kartli, a match that joined the Abkhazian and Bagratid houses and produced Bagrat III.

Three of his sons followed him in turn, Leon III, Demetre II, and Teodos II, whose quarrels undid much of his work. When the last proved unfit, the nobility turned to his grandson, and the chronicler remarks that Bagrat governed like his grandfather the great King Giorgi, but even better.