This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Constantine II of Georgia is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
Constantine II (Georgian: კონსტანტინე II, Konstantine II) (c. 1447 – 1505), of the Bagrationi dynasty, was a king of Georgia since 1478. Early in the 1490s, he had to recognise the independence of his rival rulers of Imereti and Kakheti, and to confine his power to Kartli.
He was the son of Demetre, son of the king Alexander I of Georgia. In 1465, together with his uncle, the Georgian king George VIII, Constantine was taken prisoner by the rebel prince Qvarqvare II Jakeli, atabeg of Samtskhe (principality in southern Georgia). He managed, however, to escape the captivity, and taking opportunity of the Imeretian king Bagrat VI’s absence at the campaign in Kartli, vainly attempted to seize control of the Imeretian capital Kutaisi. Despite the failure, he considered himself king and later won some power in Kartli. However, only with Bagrat’s death in 1478 was Constantine able to drive out Bagrat’s son, Alexander II, and become king of Georgia, though already fragmentised and torn apart with the bitter civil wars. In 1483, he was defeated by Qvarqvare II of Samtskhe at the Battle of Aradeti. Alexander took advantage and established himself in Imereti but lost Kutaisi to Constantine again in 1484. In the winter of 1488, the Ak Koyunlu Turkomans led by Halil Bey attacked Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, and took the city after a long-lasted siege in February 1489. Though the foreign occupation of the capital did not last long, the situation was immediately exploited by Alexander who seized control of Kutaisi and the rest of Imereti. From 1490 to 1493, Constantine was compelled to de jure recognise his cousin Alexander I of Kakheti and Alexander II of Imereti as independent sovereigns and to grant Qvarqvare II significant autonomy. Constantine himself was left with Kartli as the extent of his kingdom. Thus, by the end of the 15th century, Georgia was divided into three independent kingdoms (Kartly, Kakheti, and Imereti) and five autonomous principalities (Samtskhe, Mingrelia, Guria, Abkhazia, and Svaneti).
Between 1492-1496, Constantine attempted to win an international support to reunite the country and defend it against the increasingly aggressive Muslim empires of Ottoman Turkey and Persia. For this purpose, Georgian ambassadors were sent to the Burji sultan of Egypt Qaitbay, and also to Pope Alexander VI and Isabella of Castile. The embassies, however, proved to be fruitless.
He died on April 27, 1505, leaving the throne to his son, David X.
Marriage and children
He married in 1473 Thamar (died c. 1492) who bore him seven sons:
- David X
- George IX of Kartli
- Demetre
- Vakhtang
- Alexander
- Bagrat I of Mukhrani
- Melkisedek II, Catholicos Patriarch of Georgia (Kartli) (1524-1529, 1540-1542, 1548-1552)
External links
| Preceded by Alexander II |
King of Georgia (Kartli) 1478-1505 |
Succeeded by David X |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 18 August 2008, at 14:42.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Constantine II of Georgia".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.