Vakhtang VI (1675-1737), Governor-General (Janishin) of Kartli (East Georgia) and later (1705-24), the King of Kartli. He was the nephew of King-poet Archil II. Vakhtang VI was well-known as a scholar, poet and translator. He spent years 1712-19 in Iran because the Shah of Iran suspended his royal faculties. In 1719 he was sent back to Georgia. In foreign policy Vakhtang VI pursued the course of establishing close ties with the Christian Russia. After the failure of political-military links with Russian Emperor Peter I and the Osman occupation of Georgia in 1723, he was impelled to leave his homeland for Russia and take along his retinue. In the immigration he endeavored to liberate his homeland with the Russian help but his efforts proved to be futile. Vakhtang VI and his coterie set up a Georgian colony in Moscow. Later on the members of Georgian settlement actively participated in cultural and educational activities. Vakhtang himself settled down in the city of Astrakhan. Apart from a political figure, Vakhtang VI was a man of law, scientist and translator. He created Dasturlamali, a book of rights and duties for state officials, wrote a collection of works on legislation and translated from Arabic into Georgian Kalila Wa Dimna. On his initiative a printing house was set up in Tbilisi, where in 1712, Sh. Rustaveli’s The Man In Panther’s Skin was printed along with the scientific-literary research by Vakhtang VI, which gave birth to the scientific Rustvelology. He was instrumental in coordinating the cultural activity of the group of scientists, which was named the ‘Commission of Learned Men’. He never stopped his literary work in the immigration.
Vakhtang VI died in Astrakhan and was buried there at the Monastery of the Assumption of Virgin Mary.
