page_title: Georgian feudalism
section_title: Feudal hierarchy
hierarchical_section_title: Georgian feudalism / Feudal hierarchy
caption_attribution_description: Georgian shepherd
context_page_description: Georgian feudalism, or patronqmoba, as the system of personal dependence or vassalage in ancient and medieval Georgia is referred to, arose from a tribal-dynastic organization of society upon which was imposed, by royal authority, an official hierarchy of regional governors, local officials and subordinates. It is thought to have its roots into the ancient Georgian, or Iberian, society of Hellenistic period.
context_section_description: This hierarchical division of Georgian feudal society was later codified by King Vakhtang VI (r. 1716–24) in an official table of "weregild" or blood money rates, which had the force of law.   
  At the time of the Russian annexation, Georgian society was rigidly hierarchical. A comparatively large proportion, 5% of the population, belonged to the nobility. The highest circles of society were the members of the royal Bagrationi family. Immediately below them came the princes, the tavadi. In Kingdom of Kartli, the most prestigious princes were the heads of the five "most noble" clans—the Orbeliani, Amilakhvari, Tsitsishvili, and the two Eristavi clans—and the melik of Somkhiti. Members of these clans outranked other noble clans. Below the princes were the untitled nobility, aznauri, consisting of the takhtis aznauri, dependent on the king, and mtsire aznauri, dependent on the princes, tahhtis aznauri, and the Church. Royal vassals, like the mouravi, outranked the vassals of the church, who in turn outranked the vassals of nobles. Many aznauri were quite poor and lived no better than peasants, but their status carried certain privileges and exemptions from obligations. Before the Russian annexation in the 1800s, the Georgian princes not only enjoyed nearly unlimited power over their estates and the enserfed peasantry but exercised police and judicial power. The highest official appointed by the king to govern the towns and countryside, the mouravi, was almost always a noble from the upper ranks and often held the position as a hereditary privilege.  
  After the Russian annexation of Georgia, the former basis of Georgian society, patronqmoba or lord-vassal relationship, was replaced by the principle of batonqmoba (ბატონყმობა, from batoni, "master", and qmoba), which may best be rendered as "proprietor-serf relationship". The code of Vakhtang survived under the Russian rule into the 1840s, when the feudal system in Georgia was finally organized along the lines of Russian serfdom.
caption: A Georgian peasant (shepherd) (1880s).
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