Teimuraz II of Kakheti

Teimuraz II, king of Kakheti and then of Kartli, was the ruler who, in the shadow of Nader Shah, brought the two eastern Georgian kingdoms under one family and prepared their union under his son Erekle II. Born in Tbilisi, in 1700 according to most accounts though 1695 is also given, he was the son of Erekle I of Kakheti and of Ana Cholokashvili. From 1709 to 1715 he governed Kakheti with his mother as regent for his absent brother David II, and he became king in 1732 after his brother Constantine II was killed by the Ottomans.

Nader Shah's invasion of the Caucasus in 1735 tested him severely. He refused to convert to Islam and was detained; he escaped in October 1735, was recaptured in 1736, and was released only in 1738 to help suppress anti-Persian rebellions. In 1744, rewarding his loyalty, Nader granted Kartli to Teimuraz and Kakheti to Erekle, and on 1 October 1745 father and son were crowned by Christian rite, the first Georgian kings so recognized by Persia since 1632. His wife Tamar, daughter of Vakhtang VI of Kartli, was acknowledged as queen of Kartli in her own right until her death in 1746, uniting the two royal lines of eastern Georgia.

When Nader was assassinated in 1747, Teimuraz and Erekle expelled the Persian garrisons and in 1749 and 1750 made the neighboring khanates their tributaries. In 1752 they sent an embassy to St. Petersburg seeking military aid, without result, and in 1758 they concluded a defensive alliance at Gori with Solomon I of Imereti. Teimuraz married three times: a daughter of the duke of Aragvi, divorced in 1711; Tamar of Kartli, in 1712; and Ana-Khanum Baratashvili, in 1746. He also wrote poetry and translated from Persian.

In 1760 the aging king traveled to Russia to seek support for a campaign in Persia, the first Georgian monarch to visit the Russian court in person. He died suddenly in St. Petersburg on 8 January 1762 and was buried in the Assumption Cathedral at Astrakhan beside his father-in-law Vakhtang VI. Erekle II inherited Kartli and, already king of Kakheti, united eastern Georgia politically for the first time in three centuries.