Juansher

Juansher was the last prince of the Khosroid line, and the man through whose marriage and childless death its inheritance passed to the Bagrationi. A son of the martyr Archil and of a Guaramid princess, he ruled Kakheti after his father's execution; modern reckonings give him the years 786 to 807, though the chronology rests on the Georgian Chronicles alone. The years 710 and 787 given here come from an older reconstruction and do not fit the chronicle's narrative. The chronicle's principal story about him concerns the Khazars. Their khagan asked for the hand of his sister Shushan; the family would rather have fled to Byzantine territory than give her to a pagan, and Shushan refused. Three years later the khagan's general Bluchan entered Kakheti, took the fortress where Juansher and Shushan were staying, and sacked Tbilisi. Shushan took poison rather than be delivered to the khagan, who had Bluchan strangled for it; Juansher was carried off and set free with gifts after seven years. Historians have connected the story with Khazar raids that Arab sources place in the 760s. On his return Juansher married Latori, called Latavri in Georgian, daughter of Adarnase of Erusheti and Artani, a Bagratid lord whom Archil had endowed with land. The union produced no children. When Juansher and his brother Ivane died, the chronicle says simply that their place was taken by the curopalates Ashot, Latavri's brother Ashot I the Great, and the Bagrationi inherited the Khosroid patrimony.