Prince Ioane Bagrationi | |
---|---|
Head of the Royal House of Georgia | |
Reign | 13 May 1819 – 15 February 1830 |
Predecessor | David Bagrationi |
Successor | Grigol Bagrationi |
Born |
Tbilisi, Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti |
16 May 1768
Died | 15 February 1830 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire |
(aged 61)
Burial | Alexander Nevsky Monastery |
Spouse | Ketevan Tsereteli |
Issue | Grigol Bagrationi |
House | Bagrationi |
Father | George XII of Georgia |
Mother | Ketevan Andronikashvili |
Religion | Georgian Orthodox Church |
Occupation | writer and encyclopedist |
Ioane Bagrationi (Georgian: იოანე ბაგრატიონი) (16 May 1768 in Tbilisi, Georgia – 15 February 1830 in Saint Petersburg, Russia) was a Georgian prince (batonishvili), writer and encyclopaedist.
A son of George XII, the last king of Kartl-Kakheti kingdom, eastern Georgia, by his first wife Ketevan Andronikashvili, Ioane commanded an avant-garde of a Georgian force annihilated by the Persian army at the Battle of Krtsanisi in 1795.
Following the battle, the kingdom entered a period of economic crisis and political anarchy. To eradicate the results of a Persian attack and to overcome the retardation of the feudal society, Prince Ioane proposed on 10 May 1799, a project of reforms of administration, army and education. This project was, however, never materialized due to the weakness of George XII and a civil strife in the country. In 1800, he commanded a Georgian cavalry in the joined Russian-Georgian forces that defeated his uncle, Alexandre Bagrationi, and the Dagestani allies at the battle of Niakhura.
Upon the death of George XII, Kartl-Kakheti was incorporated into the expanding Russian Empire, and Ioane was deported to Russia. He settled in Saint Petersburg where he wrote most of his works with a didactic encyclopedic novel Kalmasoba (1817–1828) being the most important of them.
He is also an author of a naturalist encyclopedia (1814), a children encyclopedia (1829), a Russian-Georgian dictionary, a Georgian lexicon, and of several poems.
His manuscripts were discovered in 1861 by a Georgian scholar, Dimitri Bakradze, who published them in an abridged version in 1862.