Heraclius II of Georgia
Georgian monarch; King of Kakheti (1744–62), King of Kartli and Kakheti (1762–98)
Heraclius II (Georgian: ერეკლე II, romanized: erek'le II), also known as The Little Kakhetian (Georgian: პატარა კახი, romanized: p'at'ara k'akhi; 7 November 1720 – 11 January 1798), of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the king (mepe) of the Kingdom of Kakheti from 1744 to 1762, and of the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti from 1762 until his death in 1798.
From being granted the kingship of Kakheti by his overlord Nader Shah in 1744 as a reward for his loyalty, to becoming the penultimate king of the united kingdoms of Kakheti and Kartli in eastern Georgia, his reign is regarded as the swan song of the Georgian monarchy. Aided by his personal abilities and the unrest in Iran following Nader Shah's death, Heraclius established himself as a de facto autonomous ruler, unified eastern Georgia politically for the first time in three centuries, and attempted to modernize the government, economy, and military. Overwhelmed by the internal and external menaces to Georgia's precarious independence and its temporary hegemony in eastern Transcaucasia, he placed his kingdom under the formal Russian protection in 1783, but the move did not prevent Georgia from being devastated by the Persian invasion in 1795. Heraclius died in 1798, leaving the throne to his moribund heir, George XII.
Early years
Heraclius was born on 7 November 1720 in Telavi, capital of the Kingdom of Kakheti, son of Teimuraz II and his wife, Tamar of Kartli, daughter of Vakhtang VI. His childhood and early teens coincided with the Ottoman occupation of Kakheti from 1732 until 1735, when they were expelled by Nader Shah's Persian troops in two successive campaigns in 1734 and 1735, by which the latter quickly reestablished Persian rule over Georgia.
Teimuraz sided with the Persians and was installed as a Persian vali (governor) in Kakheti, while Kilij Ali-Khan (Khanjal) was made that of neighboring Kartli. However, many Georgian nobles refused to accept the new regime and rose in rebellion in response to heavy tribute levied by Nader upon the Georgian provinces. Nonetheless, Teimuraz and Heraclius remained loyal to the shah, partly in order to prevent the comeback of the rival Mukhrani branch, whose fall early in the 1720s had opened the way to Teimuraz's accession in Kartli.
From 1737 to 1739, Heraclius commanded a Georgian auxiliary force during Nader's expedition in India and gained a reputation of an able military commander. He then served as a lieutenant to his father and assumed the regency when Teimuraz II was briefly summoned for consultations in the Persian capital of Isfahan in 1744.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Heraclius II of Georgia” as georgian monarch; King of Kakheti (1744–62), King of Kartli and Kakheti (1762–98). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as georgian monarch; King of Kakheti (1744–62), King of Kartli and Kakheti (1762–98). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q379624. VIAF identifies the subject as 47499949. The Library of Congress control number is no88006246. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1720, 1798, 1744 and 1762.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heraclius II of Georgia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.