Bagrationi

The Bagrationi were the royal dynasty of Georgia from the early Middle Ages until the Russian conquest, and one of the oldest Christian ruling houses in Europe. Most scholars derive them from the Armenian Bagratuni family. The Georgian branch gained the Principality of Iberia in the late eighth century: Ashot I became its presiding prince in 813, Adarnase restored the Georgian kingship in 888, and Bagrat III united the Georgian lands into one kingdom early in the eleventh century. Under David IV the Builder, who retook Tbilisi from the Muslims in 1122, and Queen Tamar the Great (1184–1213), Georgia became the leading power of the Christian East, its empire reaching from the North Caucasus into northern Iran.

The Khwarezmian raid of 1225 and the Mongol invasion of 1236 ended that golden age, though George V the Brilliant, reigning in 1337, briefly restored the kingdom's strength. Timur's eight campaigns between 1386 and 1403 and the pressure of the Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu shattered its unity, and by 1491 the Bagrationi ruled three rival kingdoms, Kartli, Kakheti and Imereti, under Ottoman and Safavid suzerainty, with several kings converting to Islam. Erekle II reunited Kartli and Kakheti in 1762 and placed himself under Russian protection by the Treaty of Georgievsk of 1783, but Russia stood aside when the Qajar shah Agha Mohammad Khan sacked Tbilisi in 1795. Tsar Alexander I deposed the dynasty and annexed Kartli-Kakheti in 1801, and Imereti followed in 1810, when Solomon II was driven into exile.