01 — Foundations
The world into which David IV was born and the ruin he inherited: the united Bagrationi kingdom forged in the eleventh century, and its near-destruction in the “Great Turkish Troubles” (didi turkoba) when the Seljuks overran the land after Manzikert (1071); and the accession of the sixteen-year-old David in 1089, at the lowest ebb of Georgian fortunes.
Tradition: Georgian Orthodox
This section sets the stage. David the Builder is remembered as the restorer of Georgia, and the word means something exact: there was a kingdom to restore, and it had been all but undone. The first file traces the making of the united Georgian monarchy under the Bagrationi dynasty and its catastrophe under the Seljuk onslaught of the later eleventh century — the devastation that Georgian tradition calls the didi turkoba, the “Great Turkish Trouble.” The second follows the young David to the throne in 1089, a boy of about sixteen raised up amid disaster, and the first hard measures by which he began to pull the kingdom back from the edge.
Both files draw on the near-contemporary Life of the King of Kings David and on the standard scholarly narratives, and they are careful to distinguish what the sources attest from the national memory that has grown around them.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| georgia-before-david.md | The Bagrationi unification of Georgia in the eleventh century under Bagrat III and his successors; Byzantine and then Seljuk pressure; Manzikert (1071) and the “Great Turkish Troubles” that reduced Georgia to a tributary of the Seljuk sultan and emptied its lowlands. |
| the-young-king-1089.md | The abdication of George II in favor of his son; David’s accession at about sixteen in 1089; the ruined inheritance; the First Crusade’s diversion of Seljuk energies; and David’s first steps — rallying the army, curbing the raiders, and beginning to rule in fact as well as name. |
See Also
- Rebuilding the State and the Army — the reconstruction that followed the ruin described here
- The Liberation of the Land — the reversal of the Seljuk conquest
- St. Nina of Georgia — the apostolic origin of the Christian Georgia the Bagrationi ruled
References
- The Life of the King of Kings David (Cxovreba mepet-mepisa Davitisi), in Kartlis Tskhovreba: A History of Georgia, ed. Roin Metreveli, trans. Dmitri Gamq’relidze et al. (Tbilisi: Artanuji, 2014).
- Ronald Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
- Donald Rayfield, Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia (London: Reaktion Books, 2012).
- Cyril Toumanoff, Studies in Christian Caucasian History (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1963).