Grigol Orbeliani

Prince Grigol Orbeliani
Born	1804 Tbilisi
Died	1883 Tbilisi
Resting place	Kashveti Church, Tbilisi
Occupation	general, poet
Nationality	Georgian
Literary movement	Romanticism

Prince Grigol Orbeliani or Jambakur-Orbeliani (Georgian: გრიგოლ ორბელიანი; ჯამბაკურ-ორბელიანი) (October 2, 1804 – March 21, 1883) was a Georgian Romanticist poet and soldier in the Imperial Russian service. One of the most colorful figures in the 19th-century Georgian culture, Orbeliani is noted for his patriotic poetry, lamenting Georgia's lost past and independent monarchy. At the same time, he spent decades in the Russian military service, rising through ranks to highest positions in the imperial administration in the Caucasus.

Grigol Orbeliani was born into a prominent aristocratic family in the Georgian capital of Tiflis (Tbilisi), three years after the Russian government deposed the Bagrationi dynasty of Georgia and annexed their kingdom. His father Dimitri (Zurab), a prince of the House of Orbeliani, served at the court of the last Georgian kings, while mother Khoreshan née Andronikashvili was a granddaughter, on her mother, Princess Elene’s, side, of Erekle II, the penultimate and popular king of Georgia, whose cult would later be introduced into Georgian literature by Grigol Orbeliani himself.

Orbeliani had close family and friendly ties with the contemporary Georgian aristocratic and literary élite: Nikoloz Baratashvili, the most important poet of Georgian Romanticism, was his sisterly nephew; Orbeliani was in love with Griboyedov’s widow and Alexander Chavchavadze’s daughter, Nino, who inspired the poet with desperate, but courtly passion for nearly thirty years, although he had been betrothed in the cradle to Princess Sopio Orbeliani. He was a cousin of the two poets and generals - Alexander and Vakhtang Orbeliani. To distinguish himself from his namesake cousins, Grigol Orbeliani also used an ancestral name "Qaplanishvili".

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