David Soslan
Encyclopedia
David Soslan (died 1207) was an Alan
prince and a King Consort
of Georgia
as the second husband of Queen Regnant
Tamar
who married him c. 1189. He is chiefly known for his military exploits during Georgia’s wars against its Muslim
neighbors.
David Soslan was a member of the royal house which ruled Alania
(Ovseti or Oseti of the Georgian sources; hence, the modern designation of Ossetia
), an Orthodox Christian kingdom in the North Caucasus
, and frequently intermarried with the Bagrationi Dynasty
of Georgia. A relatively later chronicler, writing during the reign of George IV Lasha
(son of Tamar and David Soslan; 1212–1223), ascribes David Soslan, though vaguely, the Bagrationi ancestry. A version of David’s Bagratid origin found further development in the works of the 18th-century Georgian scholar Prince Vakhushti Bagrationi. He considered David Soslan a descendant of George I of Georgia
(1014–1027) and his Alan wife Alde
who were the parents of Demetrius
(Demetre), an unfortunate pretender to the Georgian crown whose son, David, was forced by Bagrat IV of Georgia
to flee to Alania. According to Vakhushti, David and his descendants - Aton and Jadaron - married into the Alan ruling family and became "kings of the Osi [i.e., Alans]". This Jadaron is said to have been David Soslan's father. While this account is considered credible by some scholars of Georgia, the issue of David's dynastic origin still remains controversial.
A passage from the 13th-century anonymous Georgian Histories and Eulogies of Sovereigns relates that David was under the patronage of Tamar’s paternal aunt Rusudan
and came of "the descendants [ძენი; literally, "sons"] of Ephraim, which are Osi, handsome and strong in battle." The Georgian scholar Korneli Kekelidze
suggested that David Soslan’s family – the "Ephraimids" – might have claimed descent from the biblical Ephraim
, and compared this family legend to that of the Bagratids who considered themselves descendants of David
, the second king of the Israelites.
In 1946, the North Ossetian archaeologist Evgeniya Pchelina announced that, during the digs at the Nuzal chapel in the Ardon Gorge, North Ossetian ASSR, she discovered the tomb allegedly belonging to David Soslan whom she identified with the certain Soslan mentioned in the Georgian asomtavruli inscription in the chapel, and suggested that David Soslan might have been a member of the Tsarazon family , a heroic clan from Nuzal known to the Ossetic oral folk tradition. The hypothesis has not been accepted by most Georgian scholars, but enjoys much currency among the Ossetian historians.
between 1187 and 1189 after she divorced her first husband, the Rus'
prince Yuri Bogolyubsky
. As the Armenia
n chronicler Mkhitar Gosh
reports in his Ishatarakan ("Memorabilia"), Tamar "married a man from the Alan kingdom, her relative on the mother’s side, whose name was Soslan, named David upon his ascension to the [Georgian] throne".
In contrast to Yuri who was a candidate of the powerful nobles party, David was Tamar's personal choice. David, a capable military commander, became Tamar's major supporter and was instrumental in defeating the rebellious nobles rallied behind Yuri. Tamar and David had two children. In 1191, the queen gave birth to a son, George – the future king George IV (Lasha)
– an event which was widely celebrated in the kingdom. The daughter, Rusudan
, was born c. 1193 and would succeed her brother as a sovereign of Georgia.
David Soslan's status of consort, as well as his presence in art, on charters, and on coins, was strictly dictated by the necessity of male aspects of kingship, but he remained a subordinate ruler who shared throne with Tamar but had no independent authority, his power being derived from his reigning spouse.
David energetically supported Tamar's expansionist policy and was responsible for Georgia's military successes in a series of conflicts of those years. All medieval Georgian sources are unequivocal in praising his handsomeness, military talents, valor, and devoutness to Tamar. In the 1190s, David Soslan led the Georgian raids against Barda
, Erzurum
, Geghark'unik', Beylaqan and Ganja. His victories over the Ildegizids of Azerbaijan
at Shamkor
(1195) and the Seljuqids
of Rüm
at Basian
(1202) secured the Georgian positions in the eastern and western Caucasian
marches, respectively. He died shortly thereafter, c. 1207.
Alania
Alania may refer to:*Alania, the medieval state of the Alans or Alani people in the North Caucasus*The short name of the modern North Ossetia-Alania, one of the Caucasian republics in the Russian Federation...
prince and a King Consort
King consort
King consort is an alternative title to the more usual "prince consort" - which is a position given in some monarchies to the husband of a reigning queen. It is a symbolic title only, the sole constitutional function of the holder being similar to a prince consort, which is the male equivalent of a...
of Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
as the second husband of Queen Regnant
Queen regnant
A queen regnant is a female monarch who reigns in her own right, in contrast to a queen consort, who is the wife of a reigning king. An empress regnant is a female monarch who reigns in her own right over an empire....
Tamar
Tamar of Georgia
Tamar , of the Bagrationi dynasty, was Queen Regnant of Georgia from 1184 to 1213. Tamar presided over the "Golden age" of the medieval Georgian monarchy...
who married him c. 1189. He is chiefly known for his military exploits during Georgia’s wars against its Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
neighbors.
Origins
Alania
Alania may refer to:*Alania, the medieval state of the Alans or Alani people in the North Caucasus*The short name of the modern North Ossetia-Alania, one of the Caucasian republics in the Russian Federation...
(Ovseti or Oseti of the Georgian sources; hence, the modern designation of Ossetia
Ossetia
Ossetia Ossetic: Ир, Ирыстон Ir, Iryston; Russian: Осетия, Osetiya; Georgian: ოსეთი, Oset'i) is an ethnolinguistic region located on both sides of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, largely inhabited by the Ossetians. The Ossetian language is part of the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European...
), an Orthodox Christian kingdom in the North Caucasus
North Caucasus
The North Caucasus is the northern part of the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas and within European Russia. The term is also used as a synonym for the North Caucasus economic region of Russia....
, and frequently intermarried with the Bagrationi Dynasty
Bagrationi Dynasty
The Bagrationi dynasty was the ruling family of Georgia. Their ascendency lasted from the early Middle Ages until the early 19th century. In modern usage, this royal line is frequently referred to as the Georgian Bagratids, a Hellenized form of their dynastic name.The origin of the Bagrationi...
of Georgia. A relatively later chronicler, writing during the reign of George IV Lasha
George IV of Georgia
George IV Lasha of the Bagrationi Dynasty, was a king of Georgia from 1213 to 1223....
(son of Tamar and David Soslan; 1212–1223), ascribes David Soslan, though vaguely, the Bagrationi ancestry. A version of David’s Bagratid origin found further development in the works of the 18th-century Georgian scholar Prince Vakhushti Bagrationi. He considered David Soslan a descendant of George I of Georgia
George I of Georgia
Giorgi I , of the House of Bagrationi, was the king of Georgia from 1014 until his death in 1027. He spent most of his seven-year-long reign waging a bloody and fruitless territorial war with the Byzantine Empire.-Early reign:...
(1014–1027) and his Alan wife Alde
Alda of Alania
Alda or Alde was an 11th-century Alan princess and the second wife of King George I of Georgia . The couple had a son, Demetre, who played a notable role in the civil unrest of Georgia during the reign of his half-brother Bagrat IV....
who were the parents of Demetrius
Demetrius of Anacopia
Demetrius was a Georgian prince of the Bagrationi royal dynasty, and a claimant to the throne of Georgia. He was the younger son of George I of Georgia by his second wife Alda, daughter of the king of Alania....
(Demetre), an unfortunate pretender to the Georgian crown whose son, David, was forced by Bagrat IV of Georgia
Bagrat IV of Georgia
Bagrat IV , of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the King of Georgia from 1027 to 1072. During his long and eventful reign, Bagrat sought to repress the great nobility and to secure Georgia's sovereignty from the Byzantine and Seljuqid empires...
to flee to Alania. According to Vakhushti, David and his descendants - Aton and Jadaron - married into the Alan ruling family and became "kings of the Osi [i.e., Alans]". This Jadaron is said to have been David Soslan's father. While this account is considered credible by some scholars of Georgia, the issue of David's dynastic origin still remains controversial.
A passage from the 13th-century anonymous Georgian Histories and Eulogies of Sovereigns relates that David was under the patronage of Tamar’s paternal aunt Rusudan
Rusudan, daughter of Demetre I of Georgia
Rusudan was a 12th-13th-century Georgian princess of the Bagrationi royal family. She was a daughter of King Demetrius I of Georgia, sister of the kings David V and George III, and a paternal aunt of the famous Queen Tamar of Georgia....
and came of "the descendants [ძენი; literally, "sons"] of Ephraim, which are Osi, handsome and strong in battle." The Georgian scholar Korneli Kekelidze
Korneli Kekelidze
Korneli Kekelidze was a Georgian philologist, scholar of Georgian literature, and one of the founding fathers of the Tbilisi State University where he chaired the Department of the History of Old Georgian Literature from 1918 until his death.Kekelidze left a diverse literary and scholarly legacy...
suggested that David Soslan’s family – the "Ephraimids" – might have claimed descent from the biblical Ephraim
Ephraim
Ephraim ; was, according to the Book of Genesis, the second son of Joseph and Asenath. Asenath was an Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the daughter of Potipherah, a priest of On. Ephraim was born in Egypt before the arrival of the children of Israel from Canaan...
, and compared this family legend to that of the Bagratids who considered themselves descendants of David
David
David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...
, the second king of the Israelites.
In 1946, the North Ossetian archaeologist Evgeniya Pchelina announced that, during the digs at the Nuzal chapel in the Ardon Gorge, North Ossetian ASSR, she discovered the tomb allegedly belonging to David Soslan whom she identified with the certain Soslan mentioned in the Georgian asomtavruli inscription in the chapel, and suggested that David Soslan might have been a member of the Tsarazon family , a heroic clan from Nuzal known to the Ossetic oral folk tradition. The hypothesis has not been accepted by most Georgian scholars, but enjoys much currency among the Ossetian historians.
Consort of Georgia
Tamar married David Soslan at the Didube Palace near TbilisiTbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
between 1187 and 1189 after she divorced her first husband, the Rus'
Rus' (people)
The Rus' were a group of Varangians . According to the Primary Chronicle of Rus, compiled in about 1113 AD, the Rus had relocated from the Baltic region , first to Northeastern Europe, creating an early polity which finally came under the leadership of Rurik...
prince Yuri Bogolyubsky
Yuri Bogolyubsky
Yury Bogolyubsky , known as Giorgi Rusi in Georgia, was a Rus' prince of Novgorod . Married to Queen Regnant Tamar of Georgia, he was a consort of the Kingdom of Georgia from 1185 until being expelled from the country in 1188....
. As the Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
n chronicler Mkhitar Gosh
Mkhitar Gosh
Mkhitar Gosh was an Armenian scholar, writer, public figure, thinker, and priest. He was born in the city of Gandzak. He got his early education from public institutions. When he reached his adolescence he decided to dedicate his life to church...
reports in his Ishatarakan ("Memorabilia"), Tamar "married a man from the Alan kingdom, her relative on the mother’s side, whose name was Soslan, named David upon his ascension to the [Georgian] throne".
In contrast to Yuri who was a candidate of the powerful nobles party, David was Tamar's personal choice. David, a capable military commander, became Tamar's major supporter and was instrumental in defeating the rebellious nobles rallied behind Yuri. Tamar and David had two children. In 1191, the queen gave birth to a son, George – the future king George IV (Lasha)
George IV of Georgia
George IV Lasha of the Bagrationi Dynasty, was a king of Georgia from 1213 to 1223....
– an event which was widely celebrated in the kingdom. The daughter, Rusudan
Rusudan of Georgia
Queen Rusudan , from the Bagrationi dynasty, ruled Georgia in 1223–1245.- Life :Daughter of Queen Tamar of Georgia by David Soslan, she succeeded her brother George IV of Georgia on January 18, 1223. George’s untimely death marked the beginning of the end of the Georgian “golden age”...
, was born c. 1193 and would succeed her brother as a sovereign of Georgia.
David Soslan's status of consort, as well as his presence in art, on charters, and on coins, was strictly dictated by the necessity of male aspects of kingship, but he remained a subordinate ruler who shared throne with Tamar but had no independent authority, his power being derived from his reigning spouse.
David energetically supported Tamar's expansionist policy and was responsible for Georgia's military successes in a series of conflicts of those years. All medieval Georgian sources are unequivocal in praising his handsomeness, military talents, valor, and devoutness to Tamar. In the 1190s, David Soslan led the Georgian raids against Barda
Barda
Barda may refer to:*Barda Rayon, a district in Azerbaijan*Barda, Azerbaijan, a town in Azerbaijan* Bârda, a village in Malovăţ Commune, Mehedinţi County, Romania*Barda, Russia, a rural locality in Perm Krai, Russia*Jean-Pierre Barda*Olaf Barda...
, Erzurum
Erzurum
Erzurum is a city in Turkey. It is the largest city, the capital of Erzurum Province. The city is situated 1757 meters above sea level. Erzurum had a population of 361,235 in the 2000 census. .Erzurum, known as "The Rock" in NATO code, served as NATO's southeastern-most air force post during the...
, Geghark'unik', Beylaqan and Ganja. His victories over the Ildegizids of Azerbaijan
Atabegs of Azerbaijan
The Ildegizids, Eldiguzids or Ildenizids, also known as Atabegs of Azerbaijan were a Turkic dynasty of Kipchak origin which controlled most of northwestern Persia/eastern Transcaucasia, including Arran, most of Azerbaijan, and Djibal...
at Shamkor
Battle of Shamkor
Battle of Shamkor was fought on June 1, 1195 near the city of Shamkor, Arran , the Battle of Shamkor was a major victory won by the Georgian army, commanded by David Soslan, over the army of the Azerbaijani Atabeg Abu Bakr.The battle was fought as part of several conflicts between the Atabeg State...
(1195) and the Seljuqids
Seljuq dynasty
The Seljuq ; were a Turco-Persian Sunni Muslim dynasty that ruled parts of Central Asia and the Middle East from the 11th to 14th centuries...
of Rüm
Sultanate of Rûm
The Sultanate of Rum , also known as the Anatolian Seljuk State , was a Turkic state centered in in Anatolia, with capitals first at İznik and then at Konya. Since the court of the sultanate was highly mobile, cities like Kayseri and Sivas also functioned at times as capitals...
at Basian
Battle of Basian
The Battle of Basian was fought, in the 13th century, between the armies of the Kingdom of Georgia and the Seljuqid Sultanate of Rüm in the Basian vale 60 km northeast of the city of Erzurum in what is now northeast Republic of Turkey. The battle is variously dated between 1202 and 1205, but...
(1202) secured the Georgian positions in the eastern and western Caucasian
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
marches, respectively. He died shortly thereafter, c. 1207.