Saint Luarsab I of Kartli

Luarsab I (Georgian: ლუარსაბ I) (c. 1502–1509 – c. 1556–1558), of the Bagrationi dynasty, was a king (mepe) of the Georgian Kingdom of Kartli from 1527 to 1556 or from 1534 to 1558. Persistent in his resistance against Safavid Persian aggression, he was killed in the Battle of Garisi. The eldest son of David X by his second wife, Princess Tamar Jaqeli, he succeeded on the abdication of his uncle, George IX, in 1527 (more accepted date) or 1534. When young, he distinguished himself as a commander in his father’s army, particularly at the Battle of Teleti (1522), won by a Persian invasion army in spite of heavy losses. He established close contacts with Bagrat III of Imereti, king of Imereti (western Georgia) and married in 1526 his daughter. A year later, he was crowned king of Kartli and launched a series of measures to strengthen the kingdom’s defence capacity amid the ongoing war between the Safavid Empire and Ottoman Empire (1514–1555). In alliance with Bagrat of Imereti, Luarsab fought both empires trying to preserve his independence and reestablish close cooperation between various Georgian polities. In 1535, Bagrat conquered a pro-Ottoman southern Georgian principality of Samtskhe, granting its province Javakheti to Kartli. The Kartlian-Imeretian alliance was soon joined by another Georgian monarch, Levan I of Kakheti. However, the 1541 invasion by the Persian shah Tahmasp I forced Levan out of a Georgian coalition, it left most of Kartli in ruins, and the capital Tbilisi garrisoned by a Persian force. The year 1545 brought another misfortune: a combined army of the Imeretian and Kartlian kings were crushed by the Ottomans at the Battle of Sokhoista and expelled from Samtskhe. From 1547 to 1554, Kartli suffered three more invasions by Tahmasp of Persia, who overran the country, but failed to force the king into submission.