page_title: Bagrat IV of Georgia
section_title: Early reign
hierarchical_section_title: Bagrat IV of Georgia / Early reign
caption_attribution_description: GEORGIA, Kingdom. Bagrat IV. 1027-1072. AR Dram (1.84 g, 12h). Struck 1060-1072. +HA ΓI A O KOC ("The Holy Th[eoto]kos" in Greek), nimbate facing bust of the Virgin Mary, orans / Georgian – "+God preserve Bagrat, King of the Abkhazians, Sebastos", in margin and continuing in central field. Kapanadze 46; Dobrovolsky -; Lang p. 19. Good VF, strong strike. One of the great rarities of Georgian numismatics; perhaps five other examples known, all in museums. ($3000) Bagrat followed his father Giorgi I to the throne of Georgia at the age of nine, and his reign was a constant struggle with opponents seeking the throne and expansionist Byzantine emperors. Bagrat saw off two pretenders from other branches of the royal family, but the Duke of Kldekari, Liparit, was a constant thorn in his side, and in 1051 Bagrat had to flee to Constantinople, seeking Byzantine neutrality while he returned to deal with Liparit. Liparit fled in 1058, but only a few years later Georgia faced a greater threat – the Seljuq sultan Alp Arslan who ravaged southern Georgia in a series of raids. Bagrat IV died in 1072, having fought the Seljuqs to a draw and preserved Georgian unity and independence.
context_page_description: 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. In a series of intermingled conflicts, Bagrat succeeded in defeating his most powerful vassals and rivals of the Liparitid family, bringing several feudal enclaves under his control, and reducing the kings of Lorri and Kakheti, as well as the emir of Tbilisi to vassalage. Like many medieval Caucasian rulers, he bore several Byzantine titles, particularly those of nobelissimos, curopalates, and sebastos.
context_section_description: Bagrat was the son of the king George I (r. 1014–1027) by his first wife Mariam of Vaspurakan. At the age of three, Bagrat was surrendered by his father as a hostage to the Byzantine emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025) as a price for George's defeat in the 1022 war with the Byzantines. The young child Bagrat spent the next three years in the imperial capital of Constantinople and was released in 1025. He was still in Byzantine territory when Basil died and was succeeded by his brother Constantine VIII (r. 1025–1028). Constantine ordered the retrieval of the young prince, but the imperial courier was unable to overtake Bagrat – he was already in the Georgian kingdom.
  After George I died in 1027, Bagrat, aged eight, succeeded to the throne. Queen Dowager Mariam then returned to prominence and became a regent for her underage son. She shared the regency with the grandees, particularly Liparit IV, Duke of Trialeti, and Ivane, Duke of Kartli.
  By the time Bagrat became king, the Bagratids’ drive to complete the unification of all Georgian lands had gained irreversible momentum. The kings of Georgia sat at Kutaisi in western Georgia from which they ran all of what had been the Kingdom of Abkhazia and a greater portion of Iberia/Kartli; Tao/Tayk had been lost to the Byzantines while a Muslim emir remained in Tbilisi and the kings of Kakheti obstinately defended their autonomy in easternmost Georgia. Furthermore, the loyalty of great nobles to the Georgian crown was far from stable. During Bagrat's minority, the regency had advanced the positions of the high nobility whose influence he subsequently tried to limit when he assumed full ruling powers. Simultaneously, the Georgian crown was confronted with two formidable external foes: the Byzantine Empire and the rising Seljuq Turks. Although the Byzantine Empire and Georgia had centuries-long cultural and religious ties, and the Seljuqs posed a substantial threat to the empire itself, Constantinople's aggressiveness on the Caucasian political scene contributed to an atmosphere of distrust and recrimination, and prevented the two Christian nations from effective cooperation against the common threat. With assertion of the Georgian Bagratid hegemony in the Caucasus being the cornerstone of Bagrat's reign, his policy can be understood as the attempt to play the Seljuqs and Byzantines off against one another.
caption: Coin of Bagrat IV, struck between 1060 and 1072.
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