Leon I

Leon I was the hereditary ruler of Abkhazia in the first half of the eighth century, a Byzantine dependent who emerged from the Arab invasion of Georgia with an imperial charter, a royal bride from the old Chosroid house of Kartli, and the crown of Kartli's kings. He is known almost entirely from the Georgian chronicle attributed to Juansher, which gives no dates. It calls him "the eristavi of the Caesar" and says that when Marwan ibn Muhammad, whom the Georgians called "the Deaf," ravaged Egrisi and reached the fortress of Anakopia, Leon was holding the fortress of Sobghisi on the pass toward Alania, while the Chosroid princes Mir and Archil, sons of the late king of Kartli, sheltered in Anakopia. The Arabs were repulsed with heavy losses, an event modern historians date to about 736 or 737.

Afterward, the chronicle continues, Mir, Archil, and Leon reported their victory to the emperor, who sent crowns to the two brothers and wrote to Leon confirming him and his descendants as eristavis of Abkhazia forever, while charging him to honor the kings of Kartli and respect the borders of Egrisi. Mir, dying of his wounds and without a son, arranged for his seven daughters to be married to eristavis and the land divided among them. Archil then gave his niece Guaranduxt, Mir's daughter, to Leon in marriage, together with the crown the emperor had sent to Mir, and Leon swore loyalty and obeyed Archil all his days. That marriage is the foundation of the later Abkhazian kings' claim to stand in the line of the Chosroids and of Mirian, the first Christian king of Kartli.

Modern scholars place Leon's rule variously between about 720 and 740 or about 745 and 767. The chronicle names his successor as another Leon, son of a Khazar king's daughter, and calls him Leon's kinsman, rendered as nephew or cousin in different translations; the Georgian editors of the chronicle allow that he may have been a son. The Khazar princess's relationship to Leon I is not stated. Leon II went on to throw off Byzantine authority and take the royal title.