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Prince Mamuka of Imereti


Mamuka (Georgian: მამუკა); died 1654) was a member of the Bagrationi dynasty of Imereti, a kingdom in western Georgia. A son of King George III of Imereti, he was a leading commander in a series of wars with Levan II Dadiani, Prince of Mingrelia, who captured Mamuka in 1647 and had him blinded. Mamuka died as Dadiani's prisoner. At one point in the 1630s, Mamuka had been considered by the childless king Rostom of Kartli as his heir apparent.

Mamuka was a son of King George III of Imereti (r. 1605–1639) by his wife Tamar, and a younger brother of George's successor, Alexander III (r. 1639–1660). Both these kings were perpetually harassed by their expansionist neighbor, Levan II Dadiani, Prince of Mingrelia. An able soldier praised by the Georgian chroniclers for his bravery, Mamuka played a prominent role in the war with Dadiani. Levan attempted to win over Mamuka by marrying the prince with his daughter; instead, Mamuka married an Imeretian princess from the Chkheidze family. He had a son, Archil (fl. 1675–1683), whose son, Mamuka (fl. 1685–1687), was the last known descendant of this family.

In 1634, George III fell into the Mingrelian hands and Alexander had to pay a ransom. Prince Mamuka and his father-in-law Bezhan Chkheidze took refuge with Yusuf I, an Ottoman pasha of Akhaltsikhe, and lived there, at times raiding Imereti and Guria, until being summoned by Rostom, the childless king of Kartli, to become his adopted son and heir apparent. However, a group of nobles of Kartli, who had persuaded Rostom to adopt Mamuka by virtue of his bravery, royal descent, and dynastic kinship, then conspired with Chkheidze to murder Rostom and make Mamuka king of Kartli. The plot collapsed when an assassin mistook a royal bath servant for the king and had to flee, leaving the servant wounded. Rostom refrained from publicizing the incident and, through a private letter, patiently forced Mamuka back to his exile in Akhaltsikhe. Chkheidze and his numbers remained in Kartli to continue their struggle with Rostom.


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