User:Kober/sandbox/Georgia 580–1008

1
The momentous campaigns of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius against the Persian Sasanian Empire concluded the last Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, with much of the South Caucasus under the Byzantine hegemony and the Sasanians critically weakened. This paved the way for a new force in the politics of the Middle East and Caucasus, one sweeping northwards from Arabia and destined to remain one of the leading claimants to regional hegemony for the centuries to come—the Islamic caliphate.

After the conquest of Syria and Mesopotamia, the Arabs made their first incursions in Armenia and Georgia in 642 or 643, followed by a definitive invasion under the command of Habib ibn Maslama al-Fihri in 654. In the wake of their occupation of Armenia, which was driven by strategic considerations in view of the Byzantine troop concentration in the region, the Arabs discovered new opportunities to expand northward, into the Georgian lands. As Habib crossed into Iberia, the ruler at Tbilisi (Arabic: Tiflis), Stephen II—referred to as bațrīq in the Muslim sources—sued for peace and was granted kitāb al-amān, a "charter of protection": Iberia had to pay jizya, a tax on non-Muslims of one dinar annually per household and respect and shelter Muslims in return of security of its people and inviolability of the Christian church. Several areas in or around Iberia offered their surrender on similar terms; the Arab sources mention Khunan, Jardaman, Tharyalit, Samsakhi, Artahal, Shaushit, Kalarjit, Khakhit, Khukhit, Bazalit, Bāb al-Lān, al-Sanariyah, and al-Dudaniyah as following the suit of Tiflis.


 * 1) Georgia in Arab sources (see Vacca); Arab rule in Georgia / Emirate of Tiflis
 * 2) Concept of Arminiya

2
A civil war of 656–661, wherein the Umayyad Caliphate replaced the Rashidun, appears to have weakened the Muslim positions in the Caliphate's northern periphery, for the contemporaneous prince of Iberia is mentioned with the Byzantine title of patrician, implying his acceptance of the imperial suzerainty. During the second civil war in the Caliphate, there was a revolt in Armenia and Iberia against the Umayyads in 681 or 682; the Iberian prince Nerses is reported by the 10th-century Armenian historian Hovhannes Draskhanakerttsi to have defeated an Arab commander in Armenia, named Barabay, an otherwise unknown personality. This was followed, in 684, by a surprise attack by the Khazars, from across the Greater Caucasus, in which—according to Łewond—Armenian, Albanian, and Iberian princes were killed.

In 685, the Byzantine emperor Justinian II resumed a bid, initially successful, to reclaim the Caucasus and made a short-lived peace treaty with the caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, which provided, among other things, for a condominium of the two empires in the Caucasus and their sharing the tribute from Armenia and Iberia. Justinian's eastern adventure was made abortive by the defeat at Sebastopolis in Cilicia in 692; Armenia, Iberia, and Albania reverted to the Caliphate. One consequence of these events was a change of the dynasty of presiding princes in Iberia: the Caliph transferred his favor from the Chosroids to the Guaramids; the remaining Chosroids—the Georgian chronicles assert—fled to the relative security of a then Byzantine-dominated Lazica.

Further, in 696 or 697, Sergius, Patrician of Lazica, revolted from the Byzantine overlordship and acknowledged the Caliph's suzerainty. By the early years of the 8th century, Iberia, Lazica with the exception of the maritime city of Phasis as well as Abasgia were in Arab hands as attested by the Byzantine historian Theophanes. Phasis sheltered the exiled Armenian prince Smbat VI Bagratuni, who, however, having quarreled with the Byzantines, pillaged the city and returned to an Arab-controlled Armenia in 711. Around 712, the Byzantines invoked the Alans to attack Abasgia and sent an army to recover Lazica, which after besieging Archaeopolis, was compelled to retreat before an Arab relief force; the remnants of the army were evacuated to safety by Leo the Isaurian, afterwards emperor.

3
The Arab successes made the Byzantines and Khazars natural allies against the common foe. Sporadic attacks and counterattacks such as the devastating Khazar raid in south Caucasus in 693 evolved into a more regular Arab–Khazar conflict around 722, the Caucasus being a major warfront. The main points of conflict were the two principal passes of Derbend (Bab al-Abwab or simply al-Bab) and the Darial (Bab al-Lan). In the process, in 724, the Arab commander al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah had to resubdue Tbilisi and resumed the previous charter of rights to its people, but additionally imposed kharaj, a tax on agricultural land and its produce. The disastrous defeat at Ardabil of the Muslim forces at the hands of the Khazars in December 730 enabled the Byzantines to recover Lazica and Abasgia.

Following the Khazar containment of the counteroffensive north of the Caucasus by the Arab general Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik in 731, the Muslim forces held the line at al-Bab. More than one military expedition was undertaken by the caliphate in the Georgian lands, but consolidation of the Umayyad hegemony became associated in the medieval Georgian historical tradition with the single event—an invasion commanded by Murvan Qru, "the deaf", that is, Marwan ibn Muhammad, eventually the last Umayyad caliph ((r. 744 – 750)). This endeavor was a prelude to Marwan's large-scale Khazar campaign of 737.

As recounted by the Georgian chronicle of Pseudo-Juansher, Marwan's appearance in Iberia displaced many of the Georgian nobles to the remote mountains. The Muslim army next marched to the west, in Lazica and Abasgia, reduced Archaeopolis—Tsikhe-Goji of the Georgian sources—and Tskhumi, and laid siege to Anacopia, defended by the Abasgians and Iberian fugitives. Marwan was forced to withdraw owing to an epidemic of dysentery which decimated his army. Marwan's subsequent victorious campaign against Khazaria—described in Muslim sources—failed to completely eliminate the Khazar military power, but largely stabilized the Caucasus frontline and secured the Muslim control of the mountainous passes.

4
The civil war of 744–750 and concomitant Abbasid Revolution in the Caliphate opened up the way for a more aggressive stance by the Byzantine Empire and stirred up anti-Arab elements in the Caucasus. Around 748, the Guaramids of Iberia were replaced by a new dynasty, the Nersianids, represented by Adarnase III, whose title of kouropalates indicated a return to imperial allegiance. However, once at the helm of the Caliphate in 750, the Abbasids tightened their grip on Armenia and Iberia.

The turmoil also pushed the Caliphate into a defensive position on the Khazar front. The Khazars struck Armenia in 762 and caused even greater damage to Albania, Iberia—including Tiflis—and Armenia in 764. They made their last great inroad south of the Caucasus mountains around 799. According to the Georgian chronicles, Juansher, the last male scion of the Chosroid royal house of Iberia, was captured by the Khazars and had to spend seven years in captivity. After 800, the Arab–Khazar relations changed dramatically. With the growing disarray in the South Caucasus, there was no more a centrally imposed overall policy towards the Khazars emanating from Baghdad. Rather, the relations with the Khazars were now largely determined by the Caucasian frontier rulers' parochial interests.

Wars added to heavy taxation imposed by the Abbasids occasioned a series of uprisings in the Caucasus to which the Caliphate responded with heavy-handed repression. After the Armenian rebellion of 771–772 was crushed, Iberia proper and the Chosroid princedom of Kakheti remained principal foci of discontent. Nerse, the Nersianid presiding prince of Iberia, was imprisoned in Baghdad from 772 to 775; after a sojourn in Khazaria and Abasgia, he was allowed to return to his country as a private citizen and disappeared, as did his dynasty, from history shortly after 780. Nerse's nephew and successor as presiding prince, Stephen III, proved to be the last male Guaramid, apparently put to death by the Arab governor Khuzayma ibn Khazim in 786. The Chosroids, too, approached their demise as Archil of Kakheti, eventually extolled as a martyr in the Georgian hagiography, was executed that same year; his two sons had no male descendants. After this, the office of presiding prince in Iberia, as well as in Armenia, was left vacant.

The country was devastated, its elite reduced and decimated. Nobles and peasants alike were forced to seek refuge in safer places, such as a Byzantine-dominated Lazica. The situation of oppression is vividly lamented in the Georgian hagiographic text Martyrdom of Saint Abo by Iovane Sabanisdze, composed at the end of the 8th century, shortly after its hero, Abo—a Christianized Arab and Prince Nerse's companion—was put to death at Tiflis in 786.

5
At the same time, this period of crisis was the turning point. The Arab demand that taxes and tribute be paid in money, not in kind, revitalized commerce and urban economy aided by the location of major Caucasian towns on the intersection of Eurasian trade-routes. Extermination and decline of many dynastic houses cleared the path to those who survived the crackdown and numerous small princely holdings began to coalesce into larger political formations.

The most important of these newly elevated aristocratic families were the Bagratids, with branches in both Armenia and Iberia. Between 786 and 813, the Georgian Bagratids—descending from a fugitive Armenian prince and matrimonially related to the leading families of Iberia, while claiming a biblical descent from the king David—inherited holdings of their extinct Guaramid cousins in southwest, or Upper, Iberia, and built up a hereditary principality on the Byzantine frontier, comprising Klarjeti, Javakheti, and Tao.

The Abbasids, facing a civil unrest at home and growing separatism among both Christian and Muslim vassals at the northern periphery of their empire, now sought allies among the native élites. They opted for the Bagratids and, in 813, allowed the Bagratid prince Ashot I to revive the dormant principate of Iberia, which the Guaramids had intermittently occupied. Eager to counterbalance the caliphate, the Byzantine court conferred upon Ashot the title of kouropalates. Under similar circumstances, the principate had been restored in Armenia for Ashot IV the Brave, an Armenian Bagratid, in 806.

After the assassination of Ashot I in 826 or 830, the Iberian Bagratids were weakened by the division of his heritage among his three sons, whose posterity formed the three separate lines of the dukes of Tao, the dukes of Klarjeti, with the important city of Artanuji, and the princes, later kings, and kouropalates of Iberia.

Besides, there were two other important entities in a now politically divided Iberia which eluded the Bagratid control: the Muslim-ruled enclave centered on Tiflis and the Christian principality of Kakheti.

6
Tiflis was the seat of an Arab emirate, the early history of which is poorly documented, but the establishment of some form of Muslim administration in the city is indicated by coins issued locally in the Caliph's name in. Already in the early years of the 9th century, the Muslim rulers of Tiflis veered towards separatism; shortly after al-Amin's accession to the caliphate in 809, the governor of Arminiya, Asad ibn Yazid al-Shaybani, had to respond militarily to the insubordination of Ismail ibn Shu'ayb, mawla ("client") of the Umayyads, in Iberia (Jurzan). By 833, the wayward ruler's son, Ishaq ibn Isma'il—known under the nisba al-Tiflisi—succeeded in carving himself out a principality, based in Tiflis and dominating parts of Inner and Lower Iberia. By that time, the city of Tiflis had become largely a Muslim enclave, "a town beyond which there is no Islam" and "a great thaghr ("outpost"), with many enemies from every direction"—as the contemporaneous Muslim authors put it.

7
Kakheti, in the east of Iberia, once the appanage of the Chosroids, became, after their extinction around 800, an independent principality, initially ruled by elective princes bearing the style of chorepiscopus. The Tsanars, a people in northern Kakheti, were at the forefront of local resistance to the Muslim encroachments, and al-Ṣanāriyya, the name derived from this tribal group, was used by the Arabs to designate Kakheti in general. At times, the princes of Kakheti laid claim to parts of Inner Iberia and, across the Kura, to Gardabani in Lower Iberia.

Immediately southeast of Kakheti, in a politically fragmented landscape of Caucasian Albania, a branch of the ancient Aranshahik dynasty took control of the territories on the left bank of the Kura—"trans-Cyran" Albania—Shaki and Hereti around 821. The latter toponym was used in medieval Georgian sources to denote both a district on the Iberian–Albanian frontier as well as far western Albania in general. The rulers of Shaki–Hereti in 893 restored the abeyant Albanian kingship, which endured until c. 958; the dynasty was eventually superseded by Kakheti in 1010.

8
In the meantime, as the major Arab–Khazar conflict neared its end, the growing Byzantine–Khazar rivalry along the northern and northeastern Black Sea littoral resulted in breaking away, with the Khazar help, of Abasgia from the Byzantine control around 790. Leon of Abasgia, an imperial duke and son of a Khazar princess according to the Georgian chronicles, was able to extend his rule to Lazica-Egrisi as far inland as the Likhi mountains and thus established the Kingdom of Abasgia (Ap'xazeti), virtually independent from the Byzantine Empire. The legitimist Georgian chronicler emphasizes that Leon assumed the royal title because the Iberian Chosroid royals neared their extinction. For the later monarchs of Abasgia, the Constantinopolitan court reserved the style of exousiastes of Abasgia.

9
Thus, in the early 9th century the Caucasus became a patchwork of Christian and Muslim principalities with varying degrees of dependence on the imperial powers. Loyalties and allegiances changed frequently, transpassing ethnic and confessional boundaries, and alliances were formed and dissolved expediently as these polities fought for survival and vied with each other.

Having acceded to the principate of Iberia, the Georgian Bagratids, from their base in Upper Iberia, made moves, with varying success, to expand into other parts of Iberia, especially its core region, Inner Iberia, which was also claimed by the emirs of Tiflis, at times coveted by the princes of Kakheti and, soon, by the kings of Abasgia. In the meanwhile, the Abbasids spared no effort to curb the growing Christian and Muslim independencies in the northern periphery. In 829, the Caliph's general Khalid ibn Yazid al-Shaybani forced Muhammad ibn Attab, a rebellious Muslim emir at Tiflis, into submission and defeated his allies, the Tsanars. A Georgian chronicler reports Khalid conquering Armenia, Iberia, and Albania.

In the reign of the caliph al-Wathiq ((r. 842 – 847)), Muhammad, son and successor of Khalid, battled inconclusively with the self-minded emir of Tiflis, Ishaq ibn Isma'il, and his Kakhetian allies, while the Bagratids, who feared the distant Abbasid imperial center less than the increasingly powerful emir of Tiflis, supported the caliph's general.

In 852, the caliph al-Mutawakkil dispatched Bugha al-Kabir with a large army bent on bringing the Caucasus into submission. Once again Muslims and Christians fought on both sides of the battle lines. After reducing the Armenian lands, Bugha took Tiflis by siege, deploying naphtha against the city's wooden buildings, and had Ishaq ibn Isma'il captured and beheaded in August 853. Bugha then defeated the Abasgian king Theodosius II in Inner Iberia, but failed in the highlands of Kakheti.

The Abbasid authority was, for the time being, reasserted in Iberia and Armenia, Bugha's campaign terminating, in the words of the British historian W. E. D. Allen, "the chance of Tiflis becoming the centre of an Islamic state in the Caucasus". Several leading Caucasian princes were deported to the caliph's court in Samarra. A medieval Georgian hagiographic source, corroborated by a stone inscription on the Ateni Sioni church, has one seasoned Iberian dignitary, Konstanti-Kakhay, being captured by Bugha's troops and then decapitated for his unrelenting Christianity on the caliph's order. The Bagratids of Iberia, particularly, the kouropalates Bagrat I, who was loyal to the caliph and had helped Bugha defeat the Abasgians, remained intact.

10
After al-Mutawakkil's death in 861, the Abbasid control over the outlying parts of the caliphate crumbled, while the Byzantine power was at its ascent. The caliphs now deemed it necessary to court the Caucasian princes in order to bolster whatever influence they still had in the region. This policy change primarily benefited the Armenian Bagratids who gained de facto independence from the caliph. They, in the person of Ashot I, restored the indigenous kingship in 885 and endeavored to extend their influence over their Iberian cousins, who—weakened by internal dissensions—became also vulnerable to the expansionism of their Abasgian in-laws.

Both Abasgians and Armenians interfered militarily in support of opposing factions in a Bagratid civil war in Iberia, which was triggered by the murder of the kouropalates David I by his cousin, Nasr, brother-in-law of Bagrat I of Abasgia, in 881. David's son, Adarnase IV, aided by the Armenians, emerged victorious in 888 and, having Armenia's example before him, he assumed the title of king. The Byzantine emperor, who had earlier sympathized with Adarnase's opponents, adapted to the new circumstances and conferred upon the new king the title of kouropalates in 891. The Armenian recognition of Adarnase's royal status occurred in 899.

The kingdom of Iberia was thus recovered from the abeyance of more than three hundred years, but the Bagratids suffered a major setback in 904, when Constantine III of Abasgia, competing with Adarnase IV for hegemony in the Georgian lands, divested him of his crownland in Inner Iberia. As a result, until the end of the Abasgian domination of the region in 975, the Iberian kings were relegated to their portion of the hereditary Bagratid lands in Upper Iberia, of which Lower Tao was held by them in an uninterrupted succession.

In the meantime, the Armenian Bagratid king Smbat I made significant territorial gains in Gogarene and Lower Iberia including the ancient city of Samshvilde. The Abasgians and Armenians clashed again, but Smbat's subsequent overtures to Constantine of Abasgia alienated his hitherto loyal ally, Adarnase IV. This break came in the face of rising power of the Sajid dynasty of Azerbaijan, largely autonomous vassals of the Caliphate, and weakened the Christian Caucasian monarchies. Between Yusuf ibn Abi'l-Saj's renewed onslaught against Armenia in 908 and his final conquest and execution of Smbat in 914, the Sajid forces also raided the Georgian lands, conquering some Kakhetian fortresses, rampaging Iberia, and subduing the fortress of Queli in the Bagratid territories; its youthful commander Gobron was captured and put to death. Another Sajid expedition is reported by the Georgian chronicles as having taken place sometime between 918 and 923, in the course of which Kakheti was ravaged, the ancient Iberian capital of Mtskheta was taken and the Monastery of the Holy Cross was pillaged. Muslim sources are unaware of these expeditions. After the Sajid-led efforts, the Abbasid hold of the caliphate's northern periphery irreversibly ebbed away.

11
Shortly after the Sajid invasion, around 915, there was a combined Abasgian–Kakhetian attack on Shaki–Hereti, whose ruler, Adarnase, had to buy peace by ceding three fortresses to the allies. In general, Hereti experienced growing influence from its Georgian neighbors, exemplified by the conversion of Ishkhanik from Armeno–Albanian non-Chalcedonian Christianity to the Chalcedonian creed through the ministry of his Georgian mother Dinar, a Bagratid princess of Tao.

Under two successive kings, George II ((r. 923 – 957)) and Leon III ((r. 957 – 967)), Abasgia was at the height of its power and prestige. Beyond western Georgia, it held sway over Inner Iberia, conquered from the Bagratids, but the local nobility— such as the great house of Tbeli—were prone to rebellion. One such insurrection, in 926, was led by King George II's own son and viceroy (eristavi) of Inner Iberia, Constantine, whom the king defeated with the help of the Bagratids of Tao and the Kakhetian chorepiscopus Padla II.

In addition, Abasgia must have acquired Achara and Nigali upon partition of the inheritance of the late Bagratid prince Gurgen II of Tao in 941. The kings of Abasgia were also in possession of parts of Javakheti as evidenced by the inscription of 964 on the Kumurdo cathedral. Farther to the east, the Abasgians encroached on Kakheti several times bettween 923 and 967, but the Kakhetian dynasty was able to maintain their independent existence. The kingdom of Abasgia, thus, in the words of the historian Cyril Toumanoff, "came close to achieving a unification of all the Georgian lands". However, repeated occasions of dynastic strife and civil unrest eroded the Abasgian monarchy by the end of the 10th century.

12
Tiflis remained a Muslim enclave ruled by a succession of emirs and surrounded by the resurgent Christian states. After a period of the caliph's reimposed suzerainty following Bugha's destructive campaign of 853, the banu Jafar—the Jafarids—acceded to the emirate around 880 and grew virtually independent of the caliphate. Still later, they boasted their autonomous status by displaying their own name, alongside with that of the caliph, on dirhams of the Tiflis mint. The first known coin of this kind, with the names of the emir Mansur ibn Jafar and the caliph al-Muti on it, was stuck in. The Jafarid family was to possess Tiflis for nearly 200 years.

13
[Fragmentation of political authority in Armenia] One of these was the kingdom of Lori, also known as Tashir-Dzoraget, set up around 980 in northern Armenia and the eastern Armeno-Georgian marchlands for a cadet branch of the Armenian Bagratids. This kingdom was in possession of the key fortress of Samshvilde and acquired some more lands in Lower Iberia at the expense of the emirate of Tiflis. Also, by virtue of holding the formerly Albanian principality of Gardman, the kings of Lori claimed the royal title of Albania.

14
The Bagratids of Iberia, in the meantime, relegated by the Abasgian conquest of Inner Iberia to their hereditary lands in Upper Iberia, remained divided in the three, frequently rivaling, lines of the dukes of Tao with their principal demesne in Upper Tao, the dukes of Klarjeti, with the strategic city of Artanuji, and the kings of Iberia, invested with Lower Tao, Kola, and Javakheti, and having the Byzantine court title of kouropalates attached to their office.

Sometime between 923 and 941, the expansionist duke Gurgen II of Tao seized Artanuji from the Bagratids of Klarjeti. He interfered in dynastic conflicts in Abasgia and made an attempt, ultimately unsuccessfully, to seize Samshvilde from the Armenians. With Gurgen's death in 941, the line of Tao became extinct and his possessions were partitioned between his relatives and neighbors; of these, Klarjeti reverted to its original ruling line, while Gurgen's patrimonial Upper Tao passed to the royal house of Iberia. Within two decades, the latter became divided into two lines. The elder line, "the second house of Tao"—stemming from the magistros Bagrat I—held the kouropalatate and most of the family's hereditary lands, including Upper Tao, and overshadowed the younger line, "the house of Iberia"—stemming from the kouropalates Sumbat I—whose heads remained titular kings of Iberia and ruled their demesne of Lower Tao.

15
The last prince of the elder line of Tao, the kouropalates David III of Upper Tao, rendered important service to the Byzantine emperor Basil II at the time of a great revolt of Bardas Skleros in 979. David reinforced the imperial commander and an old friend of his, Bardas Phokas, with 12,000 troops under the command of his vassal Tornikios, who temporarily abandoned his monastic cell on Mount Athos to resume the role of a general. In reward, David received, for lifetime possession, a vast tract of land in Byzantine Armenia stretching from Tao towards Lake Van and including the city of Theodosiopolis. Another reward for David's loyalty was the allocation of imperial funds for the foundation of a Georgian monastery on Mount Athos, a foundation known by the Greek appellation Iviron, "of the Iberians".

David's most enduring legacy was his role in setting stage for the political unification of Georgia. In putting into force the carefully assembled plan of the Abasgian viceroy of Inner Iberia Ivane Marushis-dze, David, being childless, adopted his young cousin Bagrat, the future Bagrat III, of the Bagratid line of Iberia. Bagrat was the son of Gurgen and the grandson of the titular king of Iberia, Bagrat II the Simple; his mother, Gurandukht, was sister of Theodosius III, king of Abasgia, who was childless and unpopular with the nobility. In the person of Prince Bagrat, thus, three major successions were to converge: Lower Tao and the crown of Iberia through his father, the crown of Abasgia through his mother, and the kouropalatate and Upper Tao through his adoptive father, David.

Theodosius had fought his brother Demetrius and had been blinded by him before acceding to the long-coveted throne of Abasgia c. 975, only to see his kingdom crumbling. The Abasgian control of Inner Iberia faded away and passed to a loose confederation of local feudal aristocracy. With the Abasgian monarchy in disarray, in 975, Ivane Marushis-dze ceded Inner Iberia to David of Tao, who forced the encroaching Kakhetians to withdraw and promulgated Bagrat's right to the three successions before the nobility at Uplistsikhe. The nucleal Iberian territory was thus restored to the Bagratid rule, but it was offered, not to its legitimate and titular king, Bagrat II the Simple, but to his grandson, Bagrat. As the latter was still a minor, his father Gurgen was made his regent and put in charge of Inner Iberia in the de jure capacity, as Cyril Toumanoff assumes, of a co-king with his father, Bagrat the Simple.

Three years later, in 978, Marushis-dze secured the support of David III of Tao and Smbat II of Armenia for a coup in Abasgia; Bagrat, now of age, was mounted on the throne, while the deposed king Theodosius the Blind was sent off to the court of Tao. Bagrat then went ahead with reinforcing the Bagratid authority in Inner Iberia, where he defeated an army of aristocratic opposition led by the Tbeli family.

The Bagratids moved from strength to strength, but their successes were marred by an outbreak of infighting in 988; a quarrel between the leading members of the dynasty led to a brief war, in which Bagrat III of Abasgia and Gurgen were defeated by David III of Tao, Bagrat II the Simple, and their Armenian allies, and were forced to sue for peace. This conflict coincided with a revolt, between 987 and 989, against the Byzantine emperor Basil II, in which David was on the rebels' side, the insurgency being led by his friend, Bardas Phokas. Upon Phokas's defeat, David, fearing a reprisal, appeased the emperor by making him heir of all his lands instead of his adopted son, Bagrat III.

David of Tao spent his last years fighting the neighboring Muslim rulers. He recaptured Manzikert from the Muslim Marwanid dynasty in 993 and, at the head of an Iberian-Armenian alliance, defeated two invasions from Azerbaijan's Rawadids, the second time decisively at Arjesh in 998.

Meantime, Bagrat III was able to consolidate his rule in Abasgia and also brought his fractious vassals, the Liparitids of Trialeti, into submission. In 994, the old Bagrat II the Simple died and his son Gurgen succeeded him to the crown of Iberia and the land of Lower Tao, assuming the title of King of Kings, the designation that had been an Armenian Bagratid monopoly since c. 922 and meant to emphasize the supremacy over other Caucasian dynasts.

Gurgen I and Bagrat III, a father and son, now sat on the thrones of Iberia and Abasgia, respectively. When David III of Tao died on 31 March 1000, the emperor Basil II hurried with a Byzantine army to gather his inheritance and annexed David's hereditary state of Upper Tao and all his lifetime possessions in Armenia to the empire. Bagrat III, David's former heir, and his father reconciled with the accomplished fact and were recompensed with the Byzantine court titles: Bagrat becoming a kouropalates and Gurgen a magistros. Gurgen did try to take hold of Upper Tao in the campaign of 1002–1003, but he was forestalled by the Byzantine commander Nikephoros Ouranos.

16
On the death of Gurgen in 1008, Bagrat succeeded him in Iberia, thus bringing both Abasgia and Iberia under his helm. With the key western and eastern realms united into a single state, the unified monarchy was, henceforth, to become known as the Kingdom of Georgia—natively, sak'art'velo.

Of the erstwhile territories of the Late Antique Iberia, four remained outside the newly-born kingdom: Klarjeti, a hereditary principality in Upper Iberia run by a Bagratid branch; Kakheti, now also a hereditary principality in far eastern Georgia with its own dynasty; parts of Gogarene and of Lower Iberia within the kingdom of the Armenian Kwirikids of Lori; and the Muslim emirate of Tiflis.