Alexander I the Great of Georgia

Alexander I, called "the Great," was the last king to rule a united Georgia relatively free of foreign domination, and the ruler who tried hardest to repair the ruin left by Timur. The son of Constantine I and Natia Amirejibi, he was born in 1386 or 1390, according to differing accounts, and came to the throne in 1412 on his father's death. Through his father he was a grandson of Bagrat V, and his own reign closed the line of undivided kings. He began by asserting royal authority: in 1414 he defeated and forced into submission the rebellious atabeg Ivane Jaqeli of Samtskhe. Turkoman raiders remained a constant danger, sacking Akhaltsikhe in 1416, and much of his energy went to restoration. From 1425 to 1440 he levied a temporary building tax to pay for the reconstruction of churches, towns, and fortresses laid waste in the invasions; the historian Ivane Javakhishvili suggested that this program, rather than any military triumph, earned him his epithet, which dates almost from his own day. In 1431 he retook Lori, a border march occupied by the Qara Qoyunlu, and about 1434 he backed the Armenian prince Beshken Orbelian against them, granting him Lori as a vassal holding. Alexander married first, about 1411, Dulandukht Orbeliani, and about 1414 Tamar, a princess of the Imeretian branch of the Bagrationi, reuniting the two lines of the house. In 1425 a daughter married Emperor John IV of Trebizond. His sons were Vakhtang, Demetrius, George, David, who became catholicos, and Zaal. In 1433, following Byzantine practice, he associated his sons with him as co-kings, a device meant to counter the great nobles that instead prepared the kingdom's fragmentation. In 1442 Alexander abdicated and entered a monastery under the name Athanasius. He died between 26 August 1445 and 7 March 1446 and was buried at Svetitskhoveli in Mtskheta. Vakhtang IV succeeded him, followed by George VIII, under whose sons Georgia split into the kingdoms of Kartli, Kakheti, and Imereti.