Holy Right-believing Queen Tamar (+1213)

Icon of the holy Queen Tamar from the convent of Upper Vardzia

In 1166 King George III and his wife Burdukhan had a daughter, Tamar. King George proclaimed her king in his own lifetime. The nobles swore allegiance and knelt before the twelve-year-old monarch, to whom providence had given the heavy cross of leading the nation.

For five years father and daughter governed the kingdom together. In 1184 King George died, and the eighteen-year-old Tamar became the sole ruler and sovereign of Georgia. And the country received “the sun of suns and light of lights” faithfully and with love. Observing the order of the royal court, the worthy and grace-filled hierarch, Anton Saghirisdze, Archbishop of Kutaisi, and Kakhaber Kakhaberisdze, eristavi of Racha and Takveri, set the royal crown upon her, while the Vardanisdzes, the Saghirisdzes and the Amanelisdzes girded her with the sword. All Georgia rejoiced. “They sounded the trumpets, the drums and the cymbals, and there was a ringing and a din in the city, joy, gladness and hope for those who had lost hope.” So began the reign of Tamar, the chosen among monarchs, “the sun of suns and queen of queens, shining forth above all the crowned” — a road full of glory and victories, of building and labour, of sleepless nights and tearful prayers.

Tamar marked her coming to power with a godly work: she called a church council, and she humbly addressed the multitude of hierarchs and fathers gathered there with a brilliant speech. Encouraged by the sovereign’s support, the council deposed unworthy bishops, “appointed men of God” in their place, and “set right other church orders that had been loosened by the negligent”.

Tares were mixed with the good fruit. In the very year of Tamar’s coronation the lord treasurer, Qutlu-Arslan, who coveted the office of amirspasalar, demanded that a tent be set up at Isani, where by his plan all home and foreign affairs were to be discussed and the result made known to the sovereign. The tent of Isani was to take the chief rights of the monarch into its own hands. By this not only would the royal throne be weakened, but the unity of the country too would be threatened.

By Tamar’s command Qutlu-Arslan was seized, but his supporters, weapons in hand, demanded his release. The country faced the danger of war between brothers. The sovereign resorted to the noblest of means: she sent into the conspirators’ camp two distinguished and honoured ladies, Khushak Tsokali, mother of Rati, eristavi of Kartli, and Kravai Jakeli. The embassy of these honourable women so worked upon the rebels that they “followed the command of the honourable one and, coming before her, bowed down on their knees, received an oath from their sovereign, and gave her their word of loyalty and obedience”.

The country felt the sovereign’s strong hand. Tamar appointed her own supporters to the offices of state.

The clergy and the nobles demanded that Tamar marry, and they chose as her bridegroom a Russian prince, George (Yury), son of Andrew Bogolyubsky, prince of Suzdal. The sovereign tried to resist: “How is it fitting to do this without trial? We know neither the conduct nor the deeds of this stranger, neither his soldiering, nor his nature, nor his manners. Give me time, until all may see his goodness or his weakness.”

Her subjects did not heed the sovereign’s word, and soon the great merchant Zankan Zorobabeli brought to Georgia “a youth comely of face, perfect in build, and in the eyes of those who beheld him a scion of noble stock”.

The handsome George the Rus’ lacked neither valour nor courage. Under his leadership the Georgian host always came home victorious.

Unhappily George soon showed his evil character. “In the Scythian way, as is their nature, he began to commit many lawless deeds in loathsome drunkenness.” For two and a half years Tamar endured her husband’s unseemly conduct; at last she called the catholicos, the bishops and the nobles and declared: “Though by the divine law I have been taught ‘not to part from the first bed’, yet one who does not keep his bed pure is not to be borne with, for he is a defiler of the temple of God; and I cannot straighten the shadow of a crooked tree, and, being guiltless, I shake off even the dust that has clung to me from thee.”

George the Rus’ was given countless treasure and sent away to Constantinople.

Many kings of the neighbouring states were captivated by Tamar’s beauty and desired her in marriage. The sovereign of the Georgians no longer wished to marry, but the court “opposed her, spoke of her childlessness, murmured at the barrenness of her house”. So Tamar took the advice of her aunt Rusudan and was married to David Soslan, son of the king of the Ossetians, a descendant of the Bagrationi — namely of George I. David, “fair of colour and build, broad-shouldered, handsome of face and well-proportioned of stature, of royal blood on both sides”, had been brought up by Rusudan.

George the Rus’ could not reconcile himself to the loss of Tamar and of Georgia: he came into Karnu-kalaki, won to his side Guzan, eristavi of Klarjeti, Botso, spasalar of Samtskhe, the Meskhian nobles, and the men of Imereti and Svaneti, and proclaimed himself king at Kutaisi. “O great cry, astonishing to the mind of men! Who, or whose successor, has sat upon the throne of David?” The host loyal to Tamar repaid the traitors as they deserved.

In 1193 a son was born to Tamar and David, “in all things like his grandfather, and they called his name George”, and since he was very beautiful they gave him the byname Lasha (the radiant, the one who gives light to the land).

At the end of 1193 George the Rus’ came back once more from Constantinople and, with the help of the Persian atabeg, took Ran and laid waste Kambechovani. Saghir Makhatlisdze of Khornabuji was the first to learn of the Rus’ coming; he gathered a small band and bravely attacked the invaders. Tamar’s righteousness gave the Georgians the victory. They wiped out the enemy entirely and took back what they had plundered. George the Rus’ barely escaped with two servants.

In the following year, 1194, a daughter was born to Tamar and David. Alarmed by the Georgians’ victories, the Turks in 1195 organised a great campaign of a Muslim coalition under the command of Abu Bakr, atabeg of Adarbadagan.

Tamar at once ordered a general levy and charged Anton Chqondideli: “Write quickly and send out the command, that the host may gather speedily; and give word to all the churches and monasteries, that vigils and litanies be kept without ceasing in every place; and send much money and what is needful for the poor, that they may give themselves to prayer and move God to mercy. Let the heathen nowhere say: Where is now their God?”

In ten days she gathered “hosts from this side and that side” of the mountains. Before the battle Tamar addressed the army: “My brothers, let not your hearts be troubled at all by their multitude and your fewness, for God is with us. Have you heard of Gideon’s three hundred and the countless multitude of the Midianites slain by them, and again of the camp of the Assyrians that fell in a moment by the angel at the prayer of Hezekiah? Trust in God alone, and keep your hearts upright before Him, and let all your hope be in the Cross of Christ. Hasten into their land with the help of the all-holy Theotokos, and go forward in the power of the invincible Cross.”

Then the king of kings blessed the army and commended to God the host that had given itself for Christ; “she sent the Tree of Life before them and sent Anton Chqondideli with them”. She herself took off her shoes and “came barefoot to the church of the Theotokos at Metekhi and, lying before that holy icon, did not cease to pray with tears”.

The Lord looked with a merciful eye upon the God-loving sovereign and upon Georgia, the lot of the Theotokos. The unequal battle at the fortress-city of Shamkor, where the Turks far outnumbered the Georgian host, ended in victory for the Christians. Saint Shalva of Akhaltsikhe (commemorated 17 July) seized the royal banner from the Hagarenes; later Tamar offered this banner, together with a precious necklace, to the Theotokos of Khakhuli.

To mark this victory and for the glory of God the holy sovereign wrote an iambic poem:

“Through Thee, O Virgin, before whom David danced, that Thou shouldst be Mother of the Son of God, I, Tamar, Thy dust, by Thee also made worthy of anointing and of kinship, ruler from Eden to Gadir, from south to north, offer Thee the spoil: the Caliph’s banner I have joined to the necklace — the banner that led the warriors of the teacher of the false law, whom David, the archer of the sons of Ephraim, crushed and slew together with sultan and atabeg…”

In Tamar’s time a very important dispute about the faith took place between the Georgians and the Armenians. Tamar’s foremost courtiers, Zakaria and Ivane Mkhargrdzeli, were Armenianised Kurds and followed the Gregorian faith. Once, after the evening Liturgy, Zakaria wished to receive the blessed bread, but Catholicos John would not allow it.

The angry amirspasalar brought the Armenian catholicos: “I am a soldier and do not know the law of faith; dispute with him.” The dispute went on for a long time. At last Catholicos John said: let us show our righteousness by deed. Let us starve dogs for three days. On the third day let us offer the bloodless sacrifice and set the Lamb before the dogs. Whose Lamb the dog eats, his faith is false. Hearing this, the sovereign and the people were struck with horror. Saint Tamar said to the catholicos: “What shall I say? Who is able to do this, to think of it or to hear it, for it is fearful?” The catholicos answered quietly: “I do not do this trusting in myself, but I do it in hope in Christ God, that He may show the faithful whose faith is true, and who confess aright, and by whose priestly ministry He accepts the bloodless sacrifice, and into whose hands the Lamb of God gives Himself to be slain.”

At the Sunday Divine Liturgy Catholicos John, who was celebrating, took in his hands the Lamb offered in the Orthodox manner. The sovereign and the people watched the wondrous sight with trembling. The catholicos prayed: “O Christ our Master, made man for the salvation of men, crucified for us, buried and risen and ascended into heaven to the Father, who hast given us Thy Body, that we may do this in remembrance of Thee: Thou, O Master, knowest the faith of the Georgians, Thou knowest this our faith. Keep untouched and unapproached this Thy dread Body, offered by us; Thou hast already accepted this unshaken sacrifice — show this people the true way, look upon this sacrifice, and put to shame those who oppose us.” The dog, starved for three days, as soon as it came near the holy Gifts, drew back from the place yelping in fear, while it swallowed at once what the Armenians had offered. The people who saw this wonder glorified the Lord: “Great art Thou, O Lord, and wonderful are Thy works.”

The Armenian doctors of the law went back put to shame. Ivane Mkhargrdzeli at once confessed Orthodoxy and was baptised by Catholicos John, while Zakaria said: “The faith of the Georgians is sound,” but nevertheless kept to the Gregorian faith.

Time after time the Georgians defeated the Turks in Adarbadagan and Armenia, at Khlat and Erzurum. So at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Georgia was a huge state stretching across the meeting-place of Europe and Asia, with which both the Christian West and the Muslim East had to reckon.

The rise of Georgia struck terror into the Turks. This time Rukn ad-Din, sultan of Rum-Iconium, undertook a campaign against Christendom. He deceitfully swore love to Queen Tamar and sent her gifts, while secretly gathering an army. He assembled a vast host: “he gathered forty myriads, which is four hundred thousand.” Basil the Ezosmodzghvari writes that Rukn ad-Din led out an army of 800,000. In all his vast domain “he left none in their villages save the women, but set them all on horseback”. Nor did he spare gold and silver to win allies and to meet the costs of war.

All the Turks gathered against Georgia. Rukn ad-Din encamped his army near Basiani, and sent an envoy to Tamar and, grown insolent from the size of his army, offered to take her as his wife as the price of changing her faith; and if Tamar remained a Christian, the sultan threatened to make her his concubine. Hearing these blasphemous words, Zakaria Mkhargrdzeli dealt the sultan’s envoy such a blow that he fell senseless to the ground.

From Nikopsia to Derbent all Georgia gathered: “in a few days they came together, like leopards in swiftness and like lions in heart.”

By Tamar’s command the envoy sent by Rukn ad-Din was richly rewarded, and a letter was sent with him to the sultan together with a Georgian envoy: “…Thou, trusting in the multitude of hirelings gathered with gold, knowest not the judgements of God. But I trust neither in riches, nor in the multitude of my soldiers, nor in any other human thing, but in the power of God Almighty and the help of the Cross of Christ, which thou revilest…” Let the will of God be done and not thine! His be the judgement and not thine! As for me, I know the looseness of thy servants. Therefore I have sent my servant, that he may bring thee the answer to thy letter quickly and warn thee, for behold, the feet of the hosts sent by me already stand at thy gates,” the holy sovereign wrote to the foul sultan.

Tamar commended the Georgian host to the Theotokos of Vardzia, then went barefoot before the army and accompanied it to the city gate. “Then she herself took the precious… Cross in her hands, and over the horsemen she traced the sign of the cross three times on every side, and blessed them, and so they set out, trusting in God and in Tamar’s tears.”

God heard the fervent prayer of the holy sovereign and of His peculiar people, and the Georgians utterly routed the enemy at Basiani. The Georgians’ victory in this war was of the greatest importance not only for Georgia but for the whole of Christendom.

Such victories made the king of kings still more devout. By day, clothed in royal splendour, she wisely governed the affairs of the realm, and by night, on bended knees, she prayed, begging the Lord with tears for the strengthening of Christendom; she wove, embroidered and sewed, and distributed her handiwork to the poor.

Once Tamar, weary with prayer and handiwork, dozed off and saw a vision: she entered a beautiful and well-built house and saw a golden throne adorned with precious stones and pearls, and thought: “I am the sovereign ruler, and this highest and most honourable seat is mine.” She went forward to sit on it. Suddenly a man clothed in light stopped her and said: “That seat is not thine, for thou art not able to take it.” Astonished, Tamar asked: “Who is more honourable than I, to take the more honourable seat?” He answered: “That throne belongs to a woman of thy household, because she clothed her twelve priests in garments spun by her own hands, when they stand before the dread and awesome table to offer the bloodless and precious sacrifice. For this she is higher than thou; though thou art sovereign, this glory is enough for thee, even though thy dwelling too is here,” and he showed her another place.

When she awoke, Tamar began to spin and weave with her own hands, and she clothed twelve priests.

The sovereign, who cared beyond measure for the poor and the needy, gave alms from her own labour, like her great forefather, the right-believing King David the Builder (commemorated 26 January).

History has preserved a moving story from the holy sovereign’s life. Once, it is said, Queen Tamar was about to go to the festal Liturgy at Gelati and was fastening rubies to her royal mantle, when they came and told her that a beggar standing by the monastery tower was asking for alms. The queen ordered the beggar to wait. When she came out of the palace and wished to give the alms, she could no longer find the beggar. The dismayed queen reproached herself that in the person of this poor, destitute woman she had refused the Lord Jesus Himself; she took off what had held her back — the royal mantle — and offered it to the icon of the Theotokos.

Tamar was never idle herself, nor did she let others be idle. In Tamar’s time the rock-cut city of Vardzia was built, in whose monastery the God-clad sovereign spent Great Lent. At this time Pitareti, Kvabtakhevi, Betania… were built. The holy sovereign enriched not only the churches and monasteries of Georgia, but also generously adorned lavras and monasteries in Palestine, on Cyprus, on Mount Sinai, in Greece, on the mountain of Athos, at Petritsoni, in Macedonia, in Thrace, in Romania, in Isauria, in Constantinople.

Once the sovereign gave boundless treasure to monks of the Black Mountain who had come asking for help, and sent them away in peace. When the monks came to Constantinople, the emperor Alexius Angelus, a fratricide, seized them and took everything from them. When Tamar heard this, she gave the monks more gold than before, and “by this put the devil to still greater shame”, while against the emperor she sent her host and took from him Lazia, Trebizond, Limonia, Samsun, Kerasunt, Kytoros, Amastris, Heraclea, Paphlagonia and the places of Pontus. Afterwards she gave these places, which she named the kingdom of Trebizond, to Alexius Komnenos, a kinsman of the Georgians.

The God-loving sovereign established a binding rule for the royal court: she herself prayed according to the typikon of the monasteries of Palestine and required the same of others. “No one at the court could miss a service: Vespers, Matins, the midday office, as is laid down.”

In the domain of this merciful, kind and wise judge there was no oppressor, robber, brigand or thief. She herself used to say: “I am a father of the fatherless and a judge of the widows.” The prudent and God-enlightened sovereign strictly forbade the death penalty and mutilation. Constant fasting, barefoot processions and lying on the stone bed of the monastery undermined the health of the revered sovereign. For a long time the sovereign hid her illness, not wishing to trouble others; day by day the sickness grew heavier on her, and when the pain became unbearable, “only then did she make it known”.

The sovereign was brought from Nacharmagevi to Tbilisi. Then she was taken out of the city — perhaps the quiet and beauty of the forest would do her good — but “that merciless sickness grew very grievous”. The dying queen was brought back to Tbilisi.

All Georgia rose up in prayer: it kept litanies, watched through the nights, and with tears begged the Lord for the healing of its sun-like crowned sovereign; the lords struck their faces, the poor beat their heads, every Georgian held out himself and his children to the Lord and pleaded: “Let her alone remain, and let us all be slain.”

Standing on the border between life and death, the sovereign called the court and said to them: “My brothers and children! Behold, I am summoned by the dread Judge, more dreadful than the kings of the earth, who taketh away the spirit of princes.

You are all yourselves witnesses that I have loved you as myself, and have not withheld from you profit and good, from each according to his worth, while by God’s providence I was sovereign over you. Now I too go the way of our fathers, a way unknown to me, by a dread command and a wondrous parting. I beseech you all: always remember me in goodness. Behold, I leave you as heirs of my house the children God gave me, George and Rusudan. Take them in my stead, and let them make up to you for my loss.”

Then the king of kings commended Georgia to the icon of the Saviour and to the life-giving Cross, wished peace to those around her, looked for the last time upon her faithful subjects, signed herself with the cross for the last time, and said for the last time: “O Christ, my only God, endless King of heaven and earth! To Thee I commend this kingdom, entrusted to me by Thee, and this people, redeemed by Thy precious Blood, and these my children whom Thou gavest me, and after them my soul.”

To this day the place of Queen Tamar’s grave is wrapped in mystery. Some historical sources name Gelati as Queen Tamar’s burial place, and others the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem. And the nation adorns with legends its longing for its greatest monarch, and so expresses its dream-like bond with the holy crowned sovereign and with the Georgia of her day.

“Lives of the Saints”, vol. II, Tbilisi, 2001.

“O holy fathers, you are appointed by God as our teachers and as rulers of the holy Church, and it is for you to give account for our souls. Search out all things well and confirm what is right, and expose what is crooked. Begin with me, for this crown is of kingship and not of fighting against God. Show no favour to princes for their riches, and do not despise the poor for their lowliness — you by word and I by deed, you by teaching and I by being taught, you by correcting and I by being corrected; let us together set our hand to keeping the divine laws undefiled, that we may not together be punished: you as priests and I as sovereign, you as watchmen and I as keeper.”