Adarnase Shavliani

Adarnase Shavliani was the second and last king of Abkhazia from the house of Shavliani, a family of Svan or Egrisian nobles that interrupted the rule of the Anosid dynasty in the late ninth century. He owes his place in the record chiefly to the manner of his fall, when the legitimate heir Bagrat I returned from Constantinople with Byzantine troops and killed him, and to his marriage to a Bagrationi princess who, as Bagrat's widow-bride, became the mother of the next Abkhazian king. The Chronicle of Kartli relates that when King George I of Abkhazia died, the heir Bagrat, son of George's brother Demetrius, was a minor. George's widow killed another nephew, the eristavi of Chikha, "seduced the mtavari Ivane Shavliani," and had Bagrat cast into the sea; the boy survived and reached Constantinople. Ioane then reigned as king and "wedded his son Adarnase to the daughter of Guaram, Ashot's son," that is, of Guaram Mampali, the Bagrationi ruler of Samtskhe. "Iovane, King of the Abkhazians, died, and his son Adarnase succeeded him." Adarnase's reign is recorded without events of its own. The chronicle continues: "Bagrat, son of the Abkhazian King Demetre, resided at Constantinople in Greece. The King of the Greeks gave him troops, sending him off by sea. Arriving in a ship, he landed in Abkhazia. Slaying Adarnase, son of Iovane, he captured Abkhazia and married Adarnase's widow, daughter of Guaram." The son of that marriage was Constantine III of Abkhazia, so that the Bagrationi blood Adarnase had brought into the Abkhazian royal house passed, through his widow, into the restored Anosid line. The chronicle gives no dates. Modern historians generally place Ioane's usurpation about 878 and Adarnase's death about 887, though reference works also print reigns of 880 to 887 and 887 to 893, and Toumanoff dated the father's brief reign to 877 or 878 to 879. The Divan of the Abkhazian Kings, the royal list compiled under Bagrat III around the year 1000, omits both Shavliani kings altogether, evidently because the dynasty regarded them as usurpers.