Mariam Dadiani

Mariam was a daughter of Manuchar I, reigning prince of Mingrelia of the Dadiani dynasty, by his second wife, Tamar Jaqeli, daughter of Kaikhosro II Jaqeli, Prince of Samtskhe. Levan II Dadiani, Manuchar's successor as Prince of Mingrelia, to whose political calculations Mariam's subsequent fate was closely tied,[2] was her half-brother, born of Manuchar's first marriage to Nestan-Darejan, daughter of Alexander II of Kakheti. In 1621, Levan II arranged Mariam's marriage with Simon Gurieli, son of Mamia II Gurieli, Prince of Guria. Simon murdered his own father and seized control of Guria in 1625, prompting Levan to intervene militarily. Defeated and captured at Lanchkhuti, Simon lost his throne, sight, and family; Levan had him blinded, installed a loyal regime in Guria, and took Mariam and her son with him to Mingrelia.[2] Simon kept in touch with his ex-wife and died as a monk at Jerusalem in 1672.[3]

Simon Gurieli (left) and Rostom of Kartli (right), Mariam Dadiani's first and second husbands, as depicted in De Castelli's travel album.

A major turning point in Mariam's life came in 1638, when King Rostom of Kartli requested her hand in marriage. Rostom, a recent widower of around 70, was a Muslim Georgian, a natural son of the late king of Kartli, David XI (Daud-Khan). An influential courtier of the Safavid shahs of Iran, he had acceded to the throne of Kartli in 1633. His willingness to cooperate with his Safavid suzerains won for Kartli relative peace and a larger degree of autonomy. But Rostom's control otf Kartli was challenged by his deposed predecessor Teimuraz I, of the Kakhetian Bagrationi, who had spent decades fighting against the Iranian hegemony. In his quest of political allies, Rostom sent the diplomat and churchman Nikoloz Cholokashvili as a marriage broker to the Dadiani court. The union also furthered Levan II's desire to have King George III of Imereti, an in-law and ally of Rostom's arch-rival Teimuraz, in check. As a faithful vassal, Rostom consulted Shah Safi about the decision. The shah approved this strategic marital arrangement as it suited the Safavid interest to extend their influence over Mingrelia and, ultimately, to conquer Imereti, which was considered as its spheres of influence by the Ottoman Empire, then at war with Iran. Shah Safi sent wedding presents, paid Dadiani 50,000 marchil (about 1.5 tones of silver) and granted him an annual salary of 1,000 tumans (gold coins of 3 grams).[4][5]

The marriage preparations alarmed the Imeretians. The groom's party was a 30,000-strong army marching to meet Levan's heavily armed entourage. George III of Imereti blocked the border with Kartli, compelling Rostom's wedding suite to take a circuitous route via Akhaltsikhe, and intercepted Dadiani on his way to the marriage, but he was defeated and taken prisoner by Levan at the Kaka Bridge near Baghdati.[2][5]

The wedding was lavishly celebrated at Rostom's capital of Tbilisi. Rostom, an Iranian-raised Muslim known for his religious tolerance and determined to keep Kartli at peace and consolidate his hold of the country under the Safavid patronage, acceded to the request of his Christian bride and the ceremony was held in Christian rites, with the nominal ritual baptism of the king prior to the wedding, as reported by the Italian eyewitness, Don Pietro Avitabile. He further stresses that Rostom frequently crossed himself in Mariam's presence and attended the liturgy.[6]

A 17th-century fresco from the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta depicting Mariam and her son Otia.

The religious dichotomy of the court of Tbilisi added another, socio-cultural meaning to Rostom's political marriage to Mariam. Kartli, ruled by the Muslim king, whom his mostly Christian subjects accused of transplanting Iranian and Muslim customs into the country, acquired a patroness of the Christian church and culture.[7] Acting with the consent and approval of Rostom, sometimes even independently of him, Mariam was able to reduce taxes levied on the church institutions and perishes, repair and refurnish the churches across eastern Georgia, including the Sioni church in Tbilisi, the patriarchal cathedral of the Living Pillar in Mtskheta, and the Alaverdi church in Kakheti.[2] She was, however, unable to save her confessor, Catholicos Eudemus I, from Rostom's revenge; he was arrested and strangled in a prison cell in 1642 for having conspired with the exiled king Teimuraz to assassinate Rostom.[8]

Mariam also had the medieval Georgian chronicles, the Life of Kartli, copied, collated, and edited sometime between 1638 and 1645. The manuscript, known the Mariamiseuli ("Queen Mariam Variant"), was found in 1885 and represented, until the discovery of the 15th-century Anaseuli ("Queen Ana Variant") in 1913, the earliest known Georgian text of the Life of Kartli.[9][10][11]

Rostom had no children of either of his marriages. Anxious to secure the dynastic continuity in Kartli, he first adopted Mariam's son of her first marriage to Gurieli, Prince Otia, who was married to a daughter of Zaal, Duke of Aragvi. The prince died in 1645 or 1646 (according to the historian Cyril Toumanoff, "the date 1646, found on his tomb at the Mcxet'a Cathedral, must be taken to refer to its erection and not to the Prince's death."[9]). Another candidacy was Prince Mamuka of Imereti, a son of the late king George III of Imereti and a brother of the reigning king Alexander III of Imereti, whom Mariam's half-brother Levan Dadiani fought relentlessly. Mamuka had found refuge in Kartli, but he was again in Imereti in 1647, when Levan captured him in battle and had his eyes gorged out. Alexander III complained to Rostom, who was outraged and, with the consent of Queen Mariam, solemnly cursed Levan Dadiani.[12] The blinded prince Mamuka died in 1654.

Around 1639, Rostom's choice then fell on a son of his first cousin, the Iranian-raised Prince Luarsab, who was killed while on a hunt in 1652. Rostom then tried to entice Luarsab's brother, Vakhtang, to become his heir, but the king's envoy found him already dead of illness in Iran. The envoy, Prince Bakhuta, of the collateral Bagrationi branch of Mukhrani, was eventually adopted by Rostom as his son and heir in 1653.[13]

Rostom died at the age of 93 in 1658. The Iranian officials at Tbilisi sent his remains to be buried in Qom, the "holy city" of Shia Islam, and ordered the queen dowager Mariam to relocate to the citadel of Tbilisi. She was summoned by the shah to Isfahan, but she sent Prince Papuna Tsitsishvili as a messenger carrying a lock of her grey heir to show that she was too old to travel to Iran and a letter assuring the shah of the loyalty of her family.[14] Rostom's adopted son, the prince of Mukhrani, was confirmed as the new king under the name of Vakhtang V or, upon his adoption of Islam, Shah-Navaz Khan.[15]

Pursuant to the shah's order, Vakhtang, then aged 40, reluctantly divorced Princess Rodam Orbeliani, by whom he had several children, and married his adopted mother, the queen dowager Mariam.[11] On Vakhtang's accession large areas of Kartli were seething with unrest. Vakhtang's internal policy of patience and patronage coupled with Mariam's prestige among the Georgians relatively pacified Kartli. In the subsequent years, the aging queen Mariam was less actively involved in the politics,[2] although she influenced her husband's decision to more energetically intervene in the power struggles in Mingrelia and Imereti in 1661.[16] She also lent support to the church reforms undertaken by Patriarch Domentius III of Georgia.[17]

Mariam died in 1682, during the reign of her step-son George XI, outliving her third husband by seven years. She was buried with full Reginal honors at the Cathedral of the Living Pillar in Mtskheta, where her only son, Otia, had been interred.[16]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mariam Dadiani.

• Gelashvili, Nana (2012). "Iranian–Georgian Relations during the Reign of Rostom (1633–58)". In Floor, Willem; Herzig, Edmund (eds.). Iran and the World in the Safavid Age. London: I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-85043-930-1.
• Lang, David Marshall (1957). The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 1658–1832. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Maeda, Hirotake (2012). "Slave Elites Who Returned Home: Georgian Vali-king Rostom and the Safavid Household Empire" (PDF). Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko. 69: 97–127.
• Rapp, Stephen H. (2003). Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts And Eurasian Contexts. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. ISBN 90-429-1318-5.
• Rayfield, Donald (2012). Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. London: Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-78023-030-6.
• Surguladze, Mzia. "მარიამ დედოფალი, XVII ს." [Queen Mariam, 17th century]. ქართველი ისტორიული მოღვაწენი (Georgian historical figures) (in Georgian). National Center of Manuscripts. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
• Toumanoff, Cyril (1943). "Medieval Georgian Historical Literature (VIIth-XVth Centuries)". Traditio. I: 139–182. doi:10.1017/S0362152900017530.
• Tughushi, Abesalom (1992). ცხოვრება და ღვაწლი დედოფალ მარიამ დადიანისა [Life and work of Queen Mariam Dadiani] (PDF) (in Georgian). Tbilisi: Ornati.

• Brosset, Marie-Félicité (1856). Histoire de la Géorgie depuis l'Antiquité jusqu'au XIXe siècle. IIe partie. Histoire moderne [History of Georgia from Antiquity to the 19th century. Part II. Modern History] (in French). S.-Pétersbourg: A la typographie de l'Academie Impériale des Sciences.