When the king of a great unified Iberia,
Bakur III, died in 580, the Sassanid government of Persia under
Hormizd IV (578–590) seized on the opportunity to abolish the Iberian monarchy. Thus, the establishment of the principate marked the ascendancy of the dynastic aristocracy in Iberia and was a compromise solution amid the Byzantine-Sassanid rivalry for the control of the Caucasus. The presiding princes of Iberia, as the leading local political authority, were to be confirmed and sanctioned by the court of
Constantinople. They are variously entitled in Georgian sources, ''
erist'avt'-mt'avari, eris-mt'avari
, erist'avt'-erist'avi
, or simply erist'avi
(normally translated in English as "prince", "arch-duke", or "duke"). Most of them were additionally invested with various Roman/Byzantine titles. For example, eight out of the fourteen presiding princes held the dignity of curopalates'', one of the highest in the Eastern Empire. The medieval Georgian chronicles make it clear, however, that these princes, although they enjoyed the loyalty of the great nobles, were of limited capabilities since they "could not remove the dukes of Iberia from their duchies because they had charters from the
Great King and from the Emperor confirming them in their duchies". Guaram's successor, the second presiding prince
Stephen I, reoriented his politics towards Persia in a quest to reunite a divided Iberia, but this cost him his life when the Byzantine emperor
Heraclius attacked
Tbilisi in 626. Heraclius reinstated a member of the more pro-Byzantine Chosroid house, which, nevertheless, was forced to recognize the suzerainty of the
Umayyad Caliph in the 640s, but revolted, unsuccessfully, against the Arab hegemony in the 680s. Dispossessed of the principate of Iberia, the Chosroids retired to their appanage in Kakheti where they ruled as regional princes until the family became extinct by the early 9th century. The Guaramids returned to power and faced the difficult task of manoeuvring between the Byzantines and Arabs. The Arabs, primarily concerned with maintaining control of the cities and trade routes, dispossessed them of Tbilisi where a
Muslim emir was installed in the 730s. The dynasts of Iberia sat at
Uplistsikhe whence they exercised only a limited authority over local Georgian lords who, entrenched in their mountain castles, maintained a degree of freedom from the Arabs. The Guaramids were briefly succeeded by the
Nersianids between c. 748 and 779/80, and had vanished once and for all by 786. This year witnessed a bloody crackdown upon the rebellious Georgian nobles organized by
Khuzayma ibn Khazim, an Arab viceroy (
wali) of the Caucasus. The extinction of the Guaramids and near-extinction of the Chosroids allowed their energetic cousins of the Bagratid family, in the person of
Ashot I (r. 786/813–830) to gather their inheritance in parts of Iberia. Having accepted the Byzantine protection, the Bagratids, from their base in the region of
Tao-Klarjeti, presided over the period of cultural revival and territorial expansionism. In 888,
Adarnase I, of the Bagratids, who had emerged as a winner in protracted dynastic strife, succeeded in restoring the Georgian royal authority by assuming the title of the King of the Georgians. == Presiding princes of Iberia ==