Simon I of Kartli

Simon I, king of Kartli, fought Persia and then the Ottoman Empire for more than forty years, and both of his reigns ended in captivity. Born in 1537, he was the son of Luarsab I and Tamar of Imereti and commanded his father's army at Garisi in 1556, where Luarsab fell. He succeeded at once, ruling from Gori while a Persian garrison held Tbilisi. In 1559 he married Nestan-Darejan, daughter of Levan of Kakheti, to seal an alliance, but a joint attempt on Tbilisi in 1561 was shattered with heavy loss. That year his brother David went over to the Safavids, embraced Islam as Daud Khan, and was installed by the shah as ruler in Tbilisi. Simon fought on, winning at Digomi in 1567 and Samadlo in 1569, but in 1569 he was defeated and taken prisoner at Partskhisi. Refusing to convert, he was held in Persia for nine years, according to most sources at the fortress of Alamut. When war with the Ottomans resumed and Lala Mustafa Pasha drove the Persians from Georgia in 1578, the Safavid court released him and restored him as king so that he might fight the Turks. Simon reverted openly to Christianity and led the resistance, defeating the main Ottoman army at Mukhrani in 1582, besieging Tbilisi, and sending envoys to the pope and the king of Spain in search of allies. The Ottomans called him Deli Simon, "Mad Simon." In 1590 Persia formally recognized Georgia as Ottoman, leaving him to fight alone, yet in 1599 he retook Gori after a long siege. Later that year Jafar Pasha, beylerbey of Tabriz, marched into Kartli. Simon led the charge at Nakhiduri in the Algeti valley, but after hours of fighting the Georgians broke and he was captured in the pursuit. Taken to Constantinople, he was confined in the fortress of the Seven Towers, where he died in 1611, still a Christian. The Georgians ransomed his body and buried it at Svetitskhoveli beside his father. His son George X succeeded him; among his other children were Luarsab, Alexander, Vakhtang, Helen, and Fahrijan-Begum. His grandson Luarsab II would die a martyr in Persian hands, and his brother's son Rostom would rule Kartli as the shah's Muslim viceroy.