House of Gurieli

The House of Gurieli (Georgian: გურიელი) was a Georgian princely (mtavari) family and a ruling dynasty (dukes) of the southwestern Georgian province of Guria, which was autonomous and later, for a few centuries, independent. A few ducal rulers of the dynasty also rose in the 17th-18th centuries to be kings of the whole western Caucasus in place of the hereditary Bagrationi kings of Imereti.

Bearing a hereditary title for governors (Eristavi) of Guria since the mid-13th century, Gurieli (literally, "of Guria") was adopted as a dynastic name by the Vardanisdze family (ვარდანისძე), hereditary rulers of Svaneti (a highland province in western Georgia). The other notable branch of the Vardanisdze was the Dadiani (დადიანი) of Samegrelo. Both of these branches occasionally used double names: Gurieli-Dadiani or Dadiani-Gurieli.

The medieval Gurieli were vassals of the Georgian crown but, at the same time, seem to have paid some kind of homage (Greek: προςκυνησις) to the rulers of the neighboring Empire of Trebizond, whose last emperor, David Komnenos (reigned from 1459 to 1461), is documented as having been 'gambros' of Mamia Vardanisdze-Gurieli (c. 1450 - 69), which is interpreted to mean that Mamia married his daughter or sister or close kinswoman. If the couple had issue, possibly the subsequent ruler Kakhaber (1469–83), the latter-day Gurieli would descend from several Byzantine and Trapezuntine emperors.

In the 1460s, when the power of the Bagrationi Dynasty of Georgia was on the decline, the Gurieli pursued a policy of separation and became virtually (formally acknowledged at times) independent rulers (mtavari) of the Principality of Guria in the mid-16th century, but were forced to pay tribute to the Ottoman Empire, nominally recognizing also the authority of the princes of Mingrelia and kings of Imereti. Throughout the following two centuries, the politics of the Gurieli dynasty were dominated by conflicts with the neighboring Georgian rulers, Ottoman encroachment, and repeated occasions of civil strife and palace coups.

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