Ashot I the Great

Ashot I, called the Great and known by his Byzantine title as Ashot Kouropalates, founded the Bagrationi power in Tao-Klarjeti and was the first of his family to hold the office of presiding prince of Iberia, which he attained around 813. The son of Adarnase I of Tao-Klarjeti and, according to the chronicles, of a daughter of the earlier presiding prince Nerse, he came to leadership in Kartli when Arab rule through the emirate of Tbilisi had made the heartland untenable for a Christian prince. He withdrew to the southwestern provinces, rebuilt the fortress of Artanuji, first raised by Vakhtang Gorgasali and ruined in the Arab conquest, and made it the seat of his house.

From Artanuji he sought Byzantine protection, and the emperor conferred on him the dignity of kouropalates, a title his descendants carried for two centuries. He also won recognition from the caliph, who around 818 found him a useful counterweight to a rebellious emir of Tbilisi. Ashot extended his authority from Tao across Kola, Artani, Javakheti, Samtskhe, and Trialeti into Shida Kartli, defeated the emir's forces on the Ksani in alliance with the Byzantine-backed Theodosius II of Abkhazia, and drove back Grigol of Kakheti, who had sided with the emir. Kakheti itself remained beyond his reach.

His fortunes turned when Khalid ibn Yazid, the caliph's governor of Arminiya, moved to reassert Arab control over the Caucasian princes. Driven from central Iberia, Ashot fell back to the Nigali valley, where he was killed by traitors at the altar of a church. The eleventh-century chronicler Sumbat Davitis-dze dates his death to 826; modern scholars generally prefer 29 January 830. He was buried in the church of Saints Peter and Paul he had built at Artanuji, and the Georgian church venerates him as a martyr.

His wife Guaramavri survived him, and his lands were divided among three sons: Adarnase II of Iberia, Bagrat I of Tao-Klarjeti, who succeeded to the office of presiding prince and the title of kouropalates, and Guaram Mampali. A daughter married Theodosius II of Abkhazia, an early link between the Bagrationi and the western kingdom whose crown their descendants would one day unite with their own.