Adarnase I
A bas-relief from Mtskheta depicting Adarnase I praying before Jesus.
Ruler of Iberia
Reign627 -637/642
PredecessorStephen I
SuccessorStephen II
DynastyChosroid dynasty

Adarnase I (Georgian: ადარნასე I) or Adrnerse (ადრნერსე, also transliterated as Atrnerseh), of the Chosroid dynasty, was a presiding prince of Iberia (Kartli, eastern Georgia) from 627 to 637/642.

The name Adarnase derives from Middle Persian Ādurnarsēh, with the second component of the word (Nase) being the Georgian attestation of the Middle Persian name Narseh, which ultimately derives from Avestan nairyō.saŋya-.[1] The Middle Persian name Narseh also exists in Georgian as Nerse.[1] The name Ādurnarsēh appears in the Armenian language as Atrnerseh.[2]

He was the son of Bakur III, the last king of Iberia, and a hereditary duke (eristavi) of Kakheti. In 627, he assisted the Byzantine-Khazar army with the siege of Tbilisi and was made ruler of Iberia by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius who had the pro-Sasanid prince Stephanus I executed. Somewhere between 637 and 642 (i.e., after the battle of al-Qādisiyyah and before that of Nihawānd), he joined his forces with the Albanian prince Javanshir in an attack on Iranian garrisons in Albania.[3]

According to the seventh-century historian Movses Daskhurantsi, Adarnase wore three Byzantine titles. He is identified by the art historian Wachtang Djobadze with the honorary consul Adarnase (Adrnerse hypatos) recorded on an inscription from the Jvari Monastery at Mtskheta, Georgia. Cyril Toumanoff argues, however, that this Adrnerse is actually Adarnase II active in the late seventh century.[4] His other titles are likely to have been those of patrikios and perhaps stratelates.[3] He was the father of and was succeeded by Stephen II of Iberia.

References

  1. ^ a b Chkeidze, Thea (2001). "GEORGIA v. LINGUISTIC CONTACTS WITH IRANIAN LANGUAGES". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. X, Fasc. 5. pp. 486–490.
  2. ^ Rapp, Stephen H. Jr (2014). The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes: Caucasia and the Iranian Commonwealth in Late Antique Georgian Literature. Routledge. p. 335. ISBN 978-1-4724-2552-2.
  3. ^ a b Martindale, John Robert (1992), The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, pp. 13-14. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-07233-6.
  4. ^ Rapp, Stephen H. (2003), Studies In Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts And Eurasian Contexts, p. 344. Peeters Bvba, ISBN 90-429-1318-5.
Preceded byStephen I Prince of Iberia 627–637/642 Succeeded byStephen II


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