Konstantini III

Konstantini III was king of Abkhazia at the turn of the tenth century and the ruler who made the western kingdom a lasting power in central Georgia. He was the son of Bagrat I, who had recovered the throne from the Shavliani usurpers, and he inherited a claim to Kartli that he pressed against both the Bagratids of Tao-Klarjeti and the Bagratid kings of Armenia. The Divan of the Abkhazian Kings gives him eighteen years; Toumanoff dates his reign about 898/899 to 916/917, while Georgian scholars prefer roughly 893 to 922.

The Chronicle of Kartli says that Konstantini marched out and captured Kartli, and that Sumbat I of Armenia, hostile to him, invaded Uplistsikhe and took the rock fortress by piling pack-saddles against its wall. Modern historians, drawing on Armenian sources, add that Adarnase IV of Kartli captured Konstantini and handed him to Sumbat, who imprisoned him in Ani. The two kings then made peace and became allied through marriage, and Sumbat restored Uplistsikhe and all Kartli to him. Inscriptions naming him at the churches of Eredvi and Samtsevrisi in Inner Kartli confirm his hold there. When the Sajid emir Abu'l-Qasim devastated Armenia and Georgia and hanged Sumbat, Konstantini emerged strengthened; he joined Kvirike of Kakheti in an invasion of Hereti, besieged its fortresses, and made peace with Adarnase, the patrikios of Hereti, who ceded fortresses to the two allies.

Byzantine sources of the period credit the ruler of Abkhazia with aiding the mission that brought Christianity to Alania, the Ossetian kingdom north of the mountains, a policy his son Giorgi continued. Konstantini died within days of returning from Hereti, and the chronicle says the land was for some time in turmoil, for he left two sons by different wives, Giorgi and Bagrat, whose strife lasted until Bagrat's death. Giorgi II succeeded him, and through Giorgi's daughter Gurandukht the line passed to the Bagrationi in the person of Bagrat III of Georgia.