Solomon I of Imereti

Solomon I, called the Great, restored the authority of the crown in Imereti, defeated the Ottoman Empire in the field and ended its trade in Georgian slaves. Born in 1735, the son of King Alexander V of Imereti and Tamar Abashidze, he succeeded his father in 1752 at seventeen and at once moved against the great nobles who profited from selling peasants into slavery. A noble coup that same year briefly unseated him, but he recovered the throne and pressed on with reform.

His prohibition of the slave trade, dated to the mid-1750s by different sources, made him an enemy of the Porte, which sent an army into Imereti under the rebel noble Levan Abashidze. On 14 December 1757, at Khresili, Solomon, allied with the princes of Mingrelia, Guria, and Abkhazia, routed the invaders, and Abashidze fell in the battle. In 1758 he joined Teimuraz II and Erekle II of Kartli-Kakheti in a defensive alliance at Gori. Ottoman efforts to replace him drove him from the throne in 1765 or 1766, when his kinsman Teimuraz was installed, but he regained Kutaisi and the crown by 1768.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1768 to 1774 Solomon petitioned Catherine II for protection and campaigned with the Russian corps of General Totleben at Shorapani in 1769 and Poti in 1770 and 1771. The Treaty of Kucuk Kaynarca in 1774 left Imereti within the Ottoman sphere but ended the demand for tribute in slaves, and Solomon's own settlement with the Ottomans reduced him from vassal to a king under nominal protection owing a symbolic tribute he never paid. He then subdued Mingrelia and Guria and in 1779 defeated an Ottoman-backed rising at Rukhi.

Solomon married Tinatin Sharvashidze, Mariam Dadiani, who died in 1778, and Gulkan Tsulukidze. His son Alexander rebelled in 1778 and died in 1780; his daughters Darejan and Mariam survived him. Lacking a son, he designated as heir his nephew David, son of his brother Archil and of Helen, daughter of Erekle II, tying Imereti to the Kartli-Kakheti line; the boy later reigned as Solomon II. Solomon died on 23 April 1784 and was buried at Gelati. The Georgian Orthodox Church canonized him on 22 December 2016.