Samtskhe atabegate

The Samtskhe-Saatabago, also called the Samtskhe Atabegate or Principality of Samtskhe, was a Georgian feudal principality ruled by the Jaqeli family for nearly three and a half centuries. It covered the present-day Samtskhe-Javakheti region and the historic district of Tao-Klarjeti, in the mountainous south-west of Georgia and north-eastern Anatolia. The Jaqelis rose to prominence during the Mongol invasion of Georgia in the thirteenth century. Ivane I Jaqeli resisted the Mongols before submitting in 1238, and his descendants took the title atabeg, or tutor, which gave the polity its name. From 1268 the atabegate acted as an autonomous principality within the Georgian kingdom and later under Mongol and Timurid overlordship. Its capital was Akhaltsikhe. The atabegate controlled important routes between the Black Sea and eastern Anatolia and was often contested by the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran. In the sixteenth century it became an Ottoman vassal, and in 1625 the last Jaqeli atabeg was killed and the territory was absorbed into the Ottoman province of Samtskhe. Its churches and monasteries remain a distinctive part of Georgian heritage.