page_title: Prince Svimon of Kartli
section_title: Regency
hierarchical_section_title: Prince Svimon of Kartli / Regency
caption_attribution_description: English: Prince-Regent Simon of Kartli coin, 1712.
context_page_description: Svimon was a Georgian prince royal of the Bagrationi dynasty of House of Mukhrani of Kartli and a natural son of Levan of Kartli by an unknown concubine. Svimon ruled Kartli as a regent from 1712 to 1714 during the absence of his half-brother Vakhtang VI at the Safavid court in Iran. Afterwards, he switched sides between Vakhtang and his renegade sibling Jesse and ended up in exile in the Russian Empire as part of Vakhtang's entourage.
context_section_description: After the death of Kaikhosro on the Afghan front in 1711, Vakhtang repaired to Isfahan to receive his investiture from Shah Sultan Husayn in 1712, leaving Svimon as a regent (janeshin) in Kartli. Vakhtang was detained in Iran and was unable to return to his kingdom until after he had to accede to the shah's request to convert to Islam in 1716. During his tenure, Svimon continued to support Vakhtang's cultural projects, such as sponsoring the recently opened printing press in Tbilisi and, further, revived a monetary series in copper with specifically Georgian features in parallel to the standard Safavid silver coinage struck at the shah's mint in Tbilisi.
  In the meantime, political intrigues in Tbilisi were rife. Uncertainty over Vakhtang's prospect of returning was seen by Svimon no less than Vakhtang's other siblings—Prince Jesse and, as suspected, even the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church Catholicos Domentius—as an opportunity to advance their regal ambitions. Svimon arrested the catholicos and sent him for punishment to Vakhtang's son Prince Bakar, but the prelate was saved thanks to the intervention of Vakhtang's wife Rusudan. The shah was dissatisfied with Svimon, ostensibly, on account of his abuse of power. In this time of a general crisis in the country, Svimon had indeed amassed personal wealth. Another possible reason of him falling out of favor with the shah was Svimon's connection with the French Lazarist missionary, the abbé Jean Richard, who accompanied Vakhtang's envoy Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani in a mission to Rome and Paris, pleading for pressure on the shah to release Vakhtang.
caption: Coin struck at the behest of Prince-Regent Svimon of Kartli in 1712.
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