Rusudan, daughter of Demetrius I of Georgia

Rusudan (Georgian: რუსუდანი) was a 12th-13th-century Georgian princess of the Bagrationi royal family. She was a daughter of King Demetrius I of Georgia, sister of the kings David V and George III, and a paternal aunt of the famous Queen Tamar of Georgia.

Before 1152 she married sultan Masud Temirek, but the marriage only lasted a few years before his death 2 October 1152. She later married Hiyas ad-Din Sanjar Shah, a Seljuq sultan. When her second husband died, she returned to Georgia and ruled over it as a regent in the first years of Queen Tamar’s reign. She was also a tutor and patron of the Alan prince Soslan-David whom Tamar married as her second husband in 1189. Some historians believe that in 1154^[1] Rusudan was also married to Iziaslav II of Kiev,^[1] possibly confusing her with her sister Bagrationi.

In her eighties, Rusudan withdrew to a monastery c. 1210.

Further reading

• Toumanoff, Cyril. On the Relationship between the Founder of the Empire of Trebizond and the Georgian Queen Thamar. Speculum, Vol. 15, No. 3. (Jul., 1940), p. 305.

References