Ioane

Ioane Shavliani was a usurper who seized the throne of Abkhazia in the 870s after the death of Giorgi I Aghtsepeli, founding a short-lived dynasty that interrupted the old royal line for roughly a decade. The Chronicle of Kartli calls him a mtavari, a great noble, and says that Giorgi's widow, whom he had seduced, killed the late king's nephew, the eristavi of Chikha, and had the nephew's brother Bagrat cast into the sea, clearing Ioane's path to the crown. Modern writers suppose the Shavliani family to have been of Svan origin, but the sources do not say so.

Ioane's reign was brief; the chronicle records only that he wedded his son Adarnase to a daughter of Guaram Mampali, son of Ashot I Kuropalates, and so allied his house with the Bagrationi of Tao-Klarjeti, and that when he died Adarnase succeeded him. Adarnase in turn was slain about 887 by the returning Bagrat I, who married his widow.

The Divan of the Abkhazian Kings, drawn up under Bagrat III to assert his own legitimacy, omits both Shavliani kings from its list of twenty-two rulers, though a later Abkhazian king list preserved by the Patriarch Dositheos includes an Adarnase. Most modern handbooks date Ioane's reign 871 to 873; Toumanoff prefers 877/878 to 879. No source records his parentage or the year of his death.