George V the Brilliant

George V, surnamed Brtskinvale, "the Brilliant," restored the unity and independence of Georgia after decades of Mongol domination and dynastic fragmentation. Born in 1286, he was the son of King Demetrius II, executed by the Mongols in 1289, and of Natela, daughter of Beka I Jaqeli, the powerful prince of Samtskhe in southwestern Georgia, at whose court the boy was raised. He came to the throne of a diminished eastern Georgian kingdom in 1314, at a time when the country paid tribute to the Mongol Ilkhanate and royal authority barely extended beyond the central provinces.

George's method was patience. He cultivated good relations with the Ilkhanate, obtaining from its rulers the right to collect the Mongol tribute throughout Georgia himself, which placed the kingdom's resources back in royal hands. He used this position to crush the disobedient mountain clans of the north and to rebuild the administration. When the Ilkhanate fell into terminal crisis after the death of Abu Sa'id in 1335, George ceased tribute payments and expelled the remaining Mongol forces without a major war.

He then reassembled the divided kingdom. In 1329 he brought western Georgia (Imereti), where a rival Bagrationi line had ruled, back under the crown, and in 1334 he reincorporated the principality of Samtskhe, his mother's homeland. He issued two notable legal codes, one regulating the mountain districts and one, associated with his court, on royal justice, and struck a new silver coinage. Abroad, he maintained the dynasty's old connections: relations were renewed with Byzantium and with the Komnenoi of Trebizond, the empire founded a century earlier with Georgian support and long intertwined with the Bagrationi by blood and politics, while an exchange with the Mamluk sultans of Egypt secured the rights of Georgian monks at the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem and privileges for Georgian pilgrims.

George V died in 1346 and was buried at Gelati, the dynastic monastery founded by his ancestor David the Builder. His son David IX succeeded him. The reunified, prosperous kingdom he left proved to be the last sustained revival of medieval Georgia; within a generation of his death the invasions of Timur began the country's long decline.