Hunara: Journal of Ancient Iranian Arts and History

Abstract Until recently, little was known about the third Sasanian shahanshah, Hormizd I (Hormizd-Ardashir), whose short reign left no royal inscription. Scholars therefore reconstruct his biography through the inscriptipns of other Sassanian rulers and indirect evidences. This article offers an attempt to fill some missing parts of Hormizd I’s life and continues the author’s earlier studies. In previous works, the author identified the “King of the Persians Ardashir”, named by the eleventh-century Georgian historian Leonti Mroveli as the father of Mirian III, the first Christian king of Kartli (Iberia), with Hormizd-Ardashir. According to Leonti Mroveli, Mirian—born from Hormizd’s concubine—ascended the Kartlian throne at the age of seven through an agreement between Georgian and Iranian political elites. Leonti MroveIi describes the mutual benefits of this arrangement: Kartli avoided destructive Iranian raids without losing its religious identity, while Iran secured stability in a strategically crucial region of the Byzantine–Iranian rivalry. Kartli, as Leonti Mroveli notes, could offer the most effective defense of Iran from northern attacks. Although the medieval historian is silent on this point, the author’s earlier studies argue that the agreement also served Hormizd’s personal goal of ensuring that his own son—not his younger brother Narseh, king of Armenia and a likely heir—would succeed to the Sasanian throne. Hormizd’s early death prevented the realization of this plan, but it persisted thanks to the strong military force he left in Kartli and Mirian’s regent Mirvanoz, who governed the kingdom, including its religious sphere, until Mirian came of age. After the Shahanshah Narseh’s death, Mirian, according to Leonti Mroveli, launched a campaign into Iran in an attempt to implement his father’s “Georgian Project” and occupy the imperial throne. This article offers the first detailed analysis of that campaign and its narrative. Though previously dismissed as implausible, the account is shown here to be fully compatible with the historical context and therefore credible, despite the lack of direct corroboration. It reflects both Hormizd’s dynastic strategy and Mirian’s evolving political self-assertion.

Abstract In Late Antiquity, the political and cultural influence of Sasanian Iran on Kartli (the pre-modern Georgian state known to classical and Byzantine authors as Iberia) was considerable. Hence, it is not astonishing at all that Georgian sources preserve a great amount of evidence concerning Iran and the Iranians. Though this body of evidence has long been a topic of lively interest among scholars, many aspects have yet to be studied in depth.
This paper investigates the data provided by the 11^th-century Georgian historian Leonti Mroveli, whose work, The Life of Georgian Kings and Their Progeny, serves as a primary source within the principal compendium of medieval Georgian historiography, Kartlis Tskhovreba (Life of Kartli), which is conventionally referred to in English as the Georgian Royal Annals or Georgian Chronicles.
According to Leonti Mroveli, the first Christian king of Kartli, Mirian, was the illegitimate son of a Sasanian shahanshah, identified by name as Ardashir. Some researchers, however, reject this claim, arguing that Leonti Mroveli fabricated this information to glorify the kings of Kartli.
In this paper, I will argue that the “Persian king” Ardashir mentioned by Leonti Mroveli should be identified with Hormizd I, the third ruler of the Sasanian dynasty, who is also referred to as Hormizd-Ardashir.