Giorgi Saakadze Giorgi Saakadze the Grand Mouravi ( ) ( c . 1570 – October 3 , 1629 ) was a Georgian politician and military commander who played an important but contradictory role in the politics of the early 17th - century Georgia . He was also known as Grand Mouravi ( დიდი მოურავი , " didi mouravi " ) in Georgia , Mūrāv - Beg in Iran and Maghraw - Bek in the Ottoman Empire for having served as a mouravi ( appointed royal official which can be rendered by seneschal or bailiff ) of Tbilisi . Biography . Saakadze ' s family came of the petty nobility ( aznauri ) . His father , Siaush , rose in prominence through a loyal service to King Simon I of Kartli , whom Giorgi joined in military service in his early career . Under the young king Luarsab II , he was appointed a mourav of Tbilisi , Tskhinvali , and Dvaleti in 1608 . Saakadze ’ s influence and prestige especially grew after he destroyed an Ottoman invasion force at the battle of Tashiskari in June 1609 , thereby saving Luarsab from being dislodged . In 1611 , the king married Saakadze ’ s sister , Macrine , annoying the great nobles , who grew increasingly suspicious of the ambitious and aspiring officer who had had risen from the ranks of the petty nobility to become the most powerful man in Kartli . The animosity between the two nobles parties centered on the princes P ’ arsadan Tsitsishvili and Shadiman Baratashvili on one hand , and Saakadze on the other , culminated in May 1612 , when a threat to his life led Saakadze to defect to Iran . Having converted to Islam and displayed his military ability in Iran ’ s war with the Ottomans , he quickly won the confidence of Shah Abbas I of Iran and was regularly consulted on the Georgian affairs . In 1614 , Saakadze avenged Luarsab and his nobles by aiding Shah Abbas in the invasion of Georgia which brought Luarsab ’ s reign to an end . In 1619 , the shah appointed him a vekil ( regent ) to Bagrat Khan , the Iranian nominee to the throne of Kartli . Saakadze turned into a de facto ruler of Kartli . Once the hostilities with the Ottomans resumed , Saakadze served as one of the leading commanders in the shah ’ s ranks from 1621 to 1623 . His military exploits led Abbas to appoint him to the staff of Qarchiha - Khan who led a 35 , 000 - strong army to crush the rebellion in Georgia . Saakadze , however , conspired with the rebel leaders – his brother - in - law Zurab of Aragvi and king Teimuraz I of Kakheti – and ambushed the Iranian army at Martqopi on March 25 , 1625 , inflicted a decisive defeat on the invaders . Saakadze went on to annihilate the Turkic nomads transplanted by the Iranian government to replace the exiled Georgian population , and raided the Iranian garrisons as far as Ganja and Karabakh . In an act of revenge , Shah Abbas put Saakadze ’ s younger son , Paata , to death , and sent his severed head to the Georgians . The punitive Iranian expedition followed soon thereafter , and won a costly victory over the Georgians at the battle of Marabda . Saakadze withdrew into the mountains , and organized a powerful guerrilla resistance which forced Abbas I to recognize Teimuraz ’ s royal status . The unity of Georgian nobles quickly collapsed , however . Saakadze ’ s opposition to Teimuraz ’ s control of Kartli led to a bitter conflict which culminated in the fratricidal battle of Bazaleti in the fall of 1626 . The royal army won a victory , driving Saakadze into exile to Istanbul where he entered the service of Sultan Ibrahim I . He briefly served as a governor of the Konya Vilayet and fought against the Iranians at Erzurum ( 1627 - 1628 ) , and in Meskheti ( 1628 ) . However , Grand Vizier Ekrem Hüsrev Pasha soon accused Saakadze of treason and had him , along with his son Avt ’ andil and a Georgian entourage , assassinated at Aleppo on October 3 , 1629 . His last surviving son , Ioram , later attained to the princely rank in Georgia , and founded the Tarkhan - Mouravi noble family . In culture . Saakadze ’ s controversial career has always been a source of conflicting perceptions of his role in Georgia ’ s history . The traditional historiography of Georgia , heavily influenced by Prince Vakhushti and Marie Brosset , continued to view him as a feudal adventurer and ambitious warlord involved in the turbulent whirl of intrigues and disturbances which fill the history of seventeenth - century Georgia . The first attempt at the rehabilitation of Saakadze was made by his relative Metropolitan Joseph of Tbilisi in his poem The Grand Mouravi ( დიდმოურავიანი , " didmouraviani " ; 1681 – 87 ) . Beginning from the early 20th century , some Georgian authors have also tried to emphasize the positive aspects of Saakadze ’ s biography , particularly his contribution to the 1625 rebellion which frustrated Shah Abbas ’ s plan to convert eastern Georgian lands into the Qizilbash khanate s . In the 1940s , Joseph Stalin ’ s wartime propaganda established Saakadze as a major symbol of Georgian patriotism . In October 1940 , Stalin commented on Saakadze , proclaiming that the Grand Mouravi ’ s hopes for Georgia ’ s " unification into one state through the establishment of royal absolutism and of the liquidation of the power of the princes " had been progressive . In an apparent move to encourage Georgian nationalism in order to gain the loyalty of the population during the war with Germany , Stalin himself was involved in modifying the script for an epic movie , " Giorgi Saakadze " , commissioned from the Georgian film director Mikheil Chiaureli in 1942 - 1943 . Stalin dismissed a script by the Georgian writer Giorgi Leonidze and approved the one by Anna Antonovskaya and Boris Chenry , adopted from Antonovskaya ’ s 1942 Stalin Prize - winning six - volume novel , " The Great Mouravi " ( ) . The film emphasized that Saakadze , initially an obscure squire , was a victim of machinations at the hands of the wealthy feudal lords who would sacrifice everything , including their motherland , for their own benefit . It intentionally avoided any mention of Saakadze ’ s own adventures and illustrated him as a popular leader against the external aggressors . In the atmosphere of suspicion and spy mania in the Soviet Union during these years , the movie also served to current propaganda by emphasizing that the treason threatening to the popular leader , and hence to the country , was to be punished cruelly . Ironically , Giorgi Saakadze was also the name of the Wehrmacht ' s 797th Battalion , one of Georgian battalions formed by the Germans to fight the Soviet Union .