Bektash of Kakheti

Bektash Beg Torkman, also commonly referred to as Bektash of Kakheti (d. 1615), was a Safavid military leader, who was the first member of the Qizilbash to govern Kakheti.[1]

Biography

Bektash's father was an influential Qizilbash commander named Mohammad Khan Torkman, while his mother was a daughter of king Alexander II of Kakheti.[2] By that, he was both the brother-in-law of Prince Constantine I of Kakheti (also referred to as Kustandil),[3] as well as being his cousin at the same time, as Alexander II was the father of Constantine I.[1] According to Professors Willem Floor and Edmund Herzig, this was part of the intentions of king Abbas I (r. 1588–1629) to make the Georgian royal house and Qizilbash leaders related to each other, and to incorporate them into Safavid elite society.[1] A member of the "Torkman tribe", who traditionally held the governorship of Tabriz, Bektash was sent to Kakheti by Abbas I together with Prince Constantine and fellow Torkman tribesmen in the 1610s.[1]

In the ensuing period in Kakheti, Constatine killed his own father Alexander II and Prince Giorgi and controlled Kakheti for a period, but the Georgians soon revolted and Constantine was killed as a result.[1] Ten years later, when the shah himself led a punitive expedition to Georgia by which Safavid Iranian rule over eastern Georgia (Kartli, Kakheti) would be decisively cemented, Bektash was officially appointed as the first Qizilbash governor of Kakheti.[1]

During the general revolt in Georgia in 1615 against the Safavid rule, Bektash, alongside Mohammad Hosayn of Shaki and Ali Qoli of Kartli, were all slain on the spot.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Floor & Herzig 2012, p. 478.
  2. ↑ Floor & Herzig 2012, p. 479.
  3. ↑ Floor & Herzig 2012, p. 474.

Sources


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