Second Village, With King Tamar's Tower, Ushguli, Upper Svaneti, Georgia
Ushguli is a community of four villages located at the head of the Enguri gorge in Svaneti, Georgia. Recognized as the Upper Svaneti UNESCO World Heritage Site, Ushguli is one of the highest continuously inhabited settlements in Europe. Ushguli isn't in an accessible location, which has preserved many of the village's most charming characteristics.
Ushguli is located at an altitude of 2,100 metres (6,900 ft) near the foot of Shkhara, one of the highest summits of the Greater Caucasus mountains. About 70 families (about 200 people) live in the area, enough to support a small school. The area is snow-covered for 6 months of the year, and often the road to Mestia is impassable.
Typical Svaneti defensive tower houses are found throughout the village. The Ushguli Chapel located on a hilltop near the village dates back to the 12th century.
King Tamar's castle originally had 4 defensive stone towers, of which one survives, connected by a curtain wall. The castles three other towers were destroyed by the Soviets in the 1930’s. The stones were used to build farms and other buildings.
Queen Tamar, also known as Tamar the Great ruled Georgia from 1184 to 1213, at the summit of the Georgian Golden Age. She was the first woman to govern Georgia in her own right.
A member of Bagrationi Dynasty and the only daughter of George III, King of Georgia, Tamar was born in 1160. Her youth corresponded with a significant outbreak in Georgia. In 1177 George III faced a rebellious group of local nobles, who planned to dethrone him in favor of his nephew Demna.
George III was able to defeat the uprising. Once the revolt was suppressed and eliminated, George started to include Tamar in government and crowned her as a co-ruler in 1178, when she was only 18 years old. This action was intended to stop any controversy after his death and legitimize his family on the throne of Georgia.
Tamar and her father co-ruled for six years, and when George died in 1184, she continued as sole ruler of the country by being crowned for the second time in Gelati Cathedral in Kutaisi.
However, her reign wasn’t met with full support. Another opposition came, perceiving her gender as weakness. As the country had never had a female ruler before, the nobles questioned her legitimacy and tried to use her age against her. The young queen was pushed into making important concessions to the nobility, including the removal of King George’s appointees. Thus, the aristocracy came into the center of power again.
Slowly Tamar started to gain confidence in her rights as a queen. The death of the persuasive Catholicos-Patriarch Michael, who was not a big supporter of Tamar played a big role in her future governance. She appointed her advocate Anton Gnolistavisdze as a chancellor and gradually increased her own power-base to high positions at the court.
After an unsuccessful arranged first mariage to Prince Yuri, son of the assassinated prince Andrei I Bogolyubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal, Tamar divorced Yuri and sent him off to Constantinople.
She then chose her second husband herself – David Soslan, an Alan prince and a great military commander, who became Tamar’s primary advocate and was effective in crushing the rebellious aristocracy united behind Yuri.
King Tamar and David had two children; Lasha-Giorgi, the future King George IV; and Rusudan, who later replaced her brother as a monarch of Georgia.
Tamar’s kingdom extended from the Greater Caucasus to Erzurum, and from the Zygii to the proximity of Ganja building a pan-Caucasian empire. The royal title increased and reflected not only her power over the regular subdivisions of the Georgian Kingdom but also introduced new elements that highlighted the Georgian crown’s authority over the neighboring lands.
Besides expanding Georgian territories, her governance brought a golden age in culture. Locals continued to identify themselves with the Byzantine West, rather than Islamic East. This period brought architectural development to the country when a great number of impressive domed cathedrals were built.
Tamar continued to be identified among Georgia’s ‘King of the Kings’, as the language has no grammatical genders, unlike ‘king’ in English, it does not significantly imply a male connotation.
Second Village, With King Tamar's Tower, Ushguli, Upper Svaneti, Georgia
Ushguli is a community of four villages located at the head of the Enguri gorge in Svaneti, Georgia. Recognized as the Upper Svaneti UNESCO World Heritage Site, Ushguli is one of the highest continuously inhabited settlements in Europe. Ushguli isn't in an accessible location, which has preserved many of the village's most charming characteristics.
Ushguli is located at an altitude of 2,100 metres (6,900 ft) near the foot of Shkhara, one of the highest summits of the Greater Caucasus mountains. About 70 families (about 200 people) live in the area, enough to support a small school. The area is snow-covered for 6 months of the year, and often the road to Mestia is impassable.
Typical Svaneti defensive tower houses are found throughout the village. The Ushguli Chapel located on a hilltop near the village dates back to the 12th century.
King Tamar's castle originally had 4 defensive stone towers, of which one survives, connected by a curtain wall. The castles three other towers were destroyed by the Soviets in the 1930’s. The stones were used to build farms and other buildings.
Queen Tamar, also known as Tamar the Great ruled Georgia from 1184 to 1213, at the summit of the Georgian Golden Age. She was the first woman to govern Georgia in her own right.
A member of Bagrationi Dynasty and the only daughter of George III, King of Georgia, Tamar was born in 1160. Her youth corresponded with a significant outbreak in Georgia. In 1177 George III faced a rebellious group of local nobles, who planned to dethrone him in favor of his nephew Demna.
George III was able to defeat the uprising. Once the revolt was suppressed and eliminated, George started to include Tamar in government and crowned her as a co-ruler in 1178, when she was only 18 years old. This action was intended to stop any controversy after his death and legitimize his family on the throne of Georgia.
Tamar and her father co-ruled for six years, and when George died in 1184, she continued as sole ruler of the country by being crowned for the second time in Gelati Cathedral in Kutaisi.
However, her reign wasn’t met with full support. Another opposition came, perceiving her gender as weakness. As the country had never had a female ruler before, the nobles questioned her legitimacy and tried to use her age against her. The young queen was pushed into making important concessions to the nobility, including the removal of King George’s appointees. Thus, the aristocracy came into the center of power again.
Slowly Tamar started to gain confidence in her rights as a queen. The death of the persuasive Catholicos-Patriarch Michael, who was not a big supporter of Tamar played a big role in her future governance. She appointed her advocate Anton Gnolistavisdze as a chancellor and gradually increased her own power-base to high positions at the court.
After an unsuccessful arranged first mariage to Prince Yuri, son of the assassinated prince Andrei I Bogolyubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal, Tamar divorced Yuri and sent him off to Constantinople.
She then chose her second husband herself – David Soslan, an Alan prince and a great military commander, who became Tamar’s primary advocate and was effective in crushing the rebellious aristocracy united behind Yuri.
King Tamar and David had two children; Lasha-Giorgi, the future King George IV; and Rusudan, who later replaced her brother as a monarch of Georgia.
Tamar’s kingdom extended from the Greater Caucasus to Erzurum, and from the Zygii to the proximity of Ganja building a pan-Caucasian empire. The royal title increased and reflected not only her power over the regular subdivisions of the Georgian Kingdom but also introduced new elements that highlighted the Georgian crown’s authority over the neighboring lands.
Besides expanding Georgian territories, her governance brought a golden age in culture. Locals continued to identify themselves with the Byzantine West, rather than Islamic East. This period brought architectural development to the country when a great number of impressive domed cathedrals were built.
Tamar continued to be identified among Georgia’s ‘King of the Kings’, as the language has no grammatical genders, unlike ‘king’ in English, it does not significantly imply a male connotation.