Waraz-Bakur

Waraz-Bakur, or Varaz-Bakur, appears in the genealogy of the Georgian Bagratids given by Sumbat Davitis-dze, the dynasty's eleventh-century historian, as the son and successor of Guaram the kouropalates and the great-grandfather of Ashot I the Great. Sumbat records three things about him: that he followed his father as ruler in Kartli, that he held the Byzantine dignity of anthypatos, rendered antipatrician in some translations, and that he converted the people of Gardabani to Christianity. He is succeeded by his son Nerse, whose sons include Adarnase, the father of Ashot. No date, wife, or other deed is attached to his name, and no other source mentions him.

His historicity is doubtful. The Guaram whom Sumbat makes his father belongs to the Guaramid house, which ruled Kartli intermittently between the late sixth and late eighth centuries and which Sumbat, erroneously or deliberately, presented as Bagratid in order to carry the dynasty's line back to the biblical David. The Guaramid succession reconstructed by modern historians from other sources contains no Varaz-Bakur; its later members are Guaram II, Guaram III, and Stepanoz III, who died in 786.

Cyril Toumanoff and those who follow him derive the historical Bagratids instead from an Armenian Bagratuni prince, Adarnase, who came to Kartli in the 770s. Waraz-Bakur is thus a link in the dynasty's own account of its origins, not a figure whose existence can be confirmed.