Mamia V Gurieli

Mamia V Gurieli (Georgian: მამია V გურიელი; 1789 – 21 November 1826), of the House of Gurieli, became Prince of Guria, in western Georgia, in 1797. From 1797 to 1809, he was under the regency of his paternal uncle, Prince Kaikhosro. Mamia was a Europeanizing ruler, presiding over efforts to reform Guria's administration and education. Rejecting the vestiges of Ottoman overlordship, he made Guria an autonomous subject of the Russian Empire in 1810 and remained steadfast in allegiance to the new order even when his uncle Kaikhosro and leading nobles of Guria rose in arms against the Russian hegemony in 1820. Mamia's loyalty, even it was timidly displayed during a pacification campaign in Guria, was appreciated by the Russian government. Mamia himself grew increasingly depressed after the uprising and died in 1826, leaving his son David to become the last titular Prince of Guria.

Mamia was the third child and only son of Simon II Gurieli, Prince-regnant of Guria, and Princess Marine née Tsereteli. At the time of Simon's death in 1792, Mamia was three years old and the government of Guria was taken over by Simon's younger brother Vakhtang II Gurieli. The princess-dowager Marine, who felt persecuted by Vakhtang, sought and gained protection from the next younger brother, Kaikhosro, who deposed Vakhtang in 1797, declared the boy-prince Mamia as Guria's next ruler and himself a regent until Mamia was of age to take power. During the years of his regency, Kaikhosro brought a degree of stability to Guria and effected rapprochement with the expanding Russian Empire, much to the ire of the Ottoman government, which claimed suzerainty over all of western Georgia.

In 1809, Kaikhosro retired from the government and ceded all ruling powers to Mamia. That same year, the Russo-Ottoman war brought hostilities to the borders of Guria; the Russian forces under General Dimitri Orbeliani besieged the Ottoman stronghold of Poti, on the Black Sea, immediately north of Guria. Initially reluctant to overtly join the Russians, Mamia kept correspondence with the Ottoman commanders, but he eventually rallied to the Russian cause and attacked the Ottoman defenders of Poti in their rear at Grigoleti, contributing to the Russian victory in November 1809. In March 1810, Mamia and the neighboring ruler Levan V Dadiani of Mingrelia joined the Russian army in its conquest of the western Georgian Kingdom of Imereti.

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