Mihr

Mihr is known only from the Georgian Chronicles, where he appears as one of the two sons of Stepanos, prince of Iberia, and the brother of the martyr Archil. His importance to the genealogy of the Caucasus lies in a single marriage: his daughter Goranduxt became the wife of Leon I, ruler of Abkhazia, and through her the later kings of Abkhazia claimed descent from the Khosroid line of Vakhtang Gorgasali. The chronicle places the brothers' story in the years of the Arab invasion under Marwan ibn Muhammad in the later 730s. Their father had divided his treasure between them and withdrawn westward; as Marwan's army pressed through Kartli, the lords of the country fled through Egrisi into Abkhazia, and Mihr and Archil joined Leon in holding the fortress of Anakopia, where the Arabs were repulsed. Mihr was wounded in the fighting, died of his wounds, and was buried at Mtskheta. Toumanoff's tables give his brief rule in Kakheti as 736 to 741; the year 668 given here derives from an older chronology that made him a son of the seventh-century Stepanos II and cannot be reconciled with the chronicle's story. Mihr left no son. The chronicle credits him with seven daughters, married into the leading houses of eastern Georgia; Goranduxt, the best known, went to Leon I, who at the same time received the Byzantine emperor's confirmation of his hereditary rule over Egrisi. It was Mihr's daughter who gave the future royal house of Abkhazia its link to the ancient kings of Iberia.