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Tamar of Georgia

Tamar the Great (თამარ მეფე, lit. 'King Tamar'; c. 1160 – 18 January 1213) reigned as the Queen of Georgia from 1184 to 1213, presiding over the apex of the Georgian Golden Age. A member of the Bagrationi dynasty, her position as the first woman to rule Georgia in her own right was emphasized by the title mepe ("king"), afforded to Tamar in the medieval Georgian sources.

Tamar was proclaimed heir and co-ruler by her reigning father George III in 1178, but she faced significant opposition from the aristocracy upon her ascension to full ruling powers after George's death. Tamar was successful in neutralizing this opposition and embarked on an energetic foreign policy aided by the decline of the hostile Seljuk Turks. Relying on a powerful military elite, Tamar was able to build on the successes of her predecessors to consolidate an empire which dominated the Caucasus until its collapse under the Mongol attacks within two decades after Tamar's death.

Tamar was married twice, her first union being, from 1185 to 1187, to the prince Yuri of the Grand Principality of Vladimir, whom she divorced and expelled from the country, defeating his subsequent coup attempts. For her second husband Tamar chose, in 1191, the Alan prince David Soslan, by whom she had two children, George and Rusudan, the two successive monarchs on the throne of Georgia.

Tamar's reign is associated with a period of marked political and military successes and cultural achievements. This, combined with her role as a female ruler, has contributed to her status as an idealized and romanticized figure in Georgian arts and historical memory. She remains an important symbol in Georgian popular culture.

Early life and ascent to the throne
Tamar was born in circa 1160 to George III, King of Georgia, and his consort Burdukhan, a daughter of the king of Alania. While it is possible that Tamar had a younger sister, Rusudan, she is only mentioned once in all contemporary accounts of Tamar's reign. The name Tamar is of Hebrew origin and, like other biblical names, was favored by the Georgian Bagrationi dynasty because of their claim to be descended from David, the second king of Israel.

Tamar's youth coincided with a major upheaval in Georgia; in 1177, her father, George III, was confronted by a rebellious faction of nobles. The rebels intended to dethrone George in favor of the king's fraternal nephew, Demna, who was considered by many to be a legitimate royal heir of his murdered father, David V. Demna's cause was little but a pretext for the nobles, led by the pretender's father-in-law, the amirspasalar ("high constable") Ivane II Orbeli, to weaken the crown. George III was able to crush the revolt and embarked on a crackdown campaign on the defiant aristocratic clans; Ivane Orbeli was put to death and the surviving members of his family were driven out of Georgia. Demna, castrated and blinded on his uncle's order, did not survive the mutilation and soon died in prison. Once the rebellion was suppressed and the pretender eliminated, George went ahead to co-opt Tamar into government with him and crowned her as co-ruler in 1178. By doing so, the king attempted to preempt any dispute after his death and legitimize his line on the throne of Georgia. At the same time, he raised men from the Kipchaks as well as from the gentry and unranked classes to keep the dynastic aristocracy away from the center of power.

Early reign and first marriage
For six years, Tamar was a co-ruler with her father upon whose death, in 1184, Tamar continued as the sole monarch and was crowned a second time at the Gelati cathedral near Kutaisi, western Georgia. She inherited a relatively strong kingdom, but the centrifugal tendencies fostered by the great nobles were far from being quelled. There was considerable opposition to Tamar's succession; this was sparked by a reaction against the repressive policies of her father and encouraged by the new sovereign's other perceived weakness, her sex. As Georgia had never previously had a female ruler, a part of the aristocracy questioned Tamar's legitimacy, while others tried to exploit her youth and supposed weakness to assert greater autonomy for themselves. The energetic involvement of Tamar's influential aunt Rusudan and the Catholicos-Patriarch Michael IV was crucial for legitimizing Tamar's succession to the throne. However, the young queen was forced into making significant concessions to the aristocracy. She had to reward the Catholicos-Patriarch Michael's support by making him a chancellor, thus placing him at the top of both the clerical and secular hierarchies.

Tamar was also pressured into dismissing her father's appointees, among them the constable Kubasar, a Georgian Kipchak of ignoble birth, who had helped George III in his crackdown on the defiant nobility. One of the few untitled servitors of George III to escape this fate was the treasurer Qutlu Arslan who now led a group of nobles and wealthy citizens in a struggle to limit the royal authority by creating a new council, karavi, whose members would alone deliberate and decide policy. This attempt at "feudal constitutionalism" was rendered abortive when Tamar had Qutlu Arslan arrested and his supporters were inveigled into submission. Yet, Tamar's first moves to reduce the power of the aristocratic élite were unsuccessful. She failed in her attempt to use a church synod to dismiss the Catholicos-Patriarch Michael, and the noble council, Darbazi, asserted the right to approve royal decrees.

Queen Tamar's marriage was a question of state-importance. Pursuant to dynastic imperatives and the ethos of the time, the nobles required Tamar to marry in order to have a leader for the army and to provide an heir to the throne. Every group strove to select and secure the acceptance of its candidate in order to strengthen its position and influence at court. Two main factions fought for the influence in Tamar's court: clan of Mkhargrdzeli and Abulasan. The faction of the Abulasan won, the choice was approved by Tamar's aunt Rusudan and council of feudal lords. Their choice fell on Yuri, son of the murdered prince Andrei I Bogolyubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal, who later lived as a refugee among the Kipchaks of the North Caucasus. They called an influential person in the kingdom, the great merchant Zankan Zorababeli. He was given the mission of bringing the bridegroom to Tbilisi. He fulfilled his mission with zeal, the prince was brought to Georgia to marry the queen in 1185.

The young man – valiant, perfect of body and pleasant to behold – Yuri proved to be an able soldier, but a difficult person and he soon ran afoul of his wife. The strained spousal relations paralleled a factional struggle at the royal court in which Tamar was becoming more and more assertive of her rights as a queen regnant. The turning point in Tamar's fortunes came with the death of the powerful Catholicos-Patriarch Michael whom the queen replaced, as a chancellor, with her supporter, Anton Gnolistavisdze. Tamar gradually expanded her own power-base and elevated her loyal nobles to high positions at the court, most notably the Mkhargrdzeli.

Second marriage
In 1187, Tamar persuaded the noble council to approve her to divorce Yuri, who was accused of addiction to drunkenness and "sodomy" and was sent off to Constantinople. Assisted by several Georgian aristocrats anxious to check Tamar's growing power, Yuri made two coup attempts, but failed and went off to obscurity after 1191. The queen chose her second husband herself. He was David Soslan, an Alan prince, to whom the 18th-century Georgian scholar Prince Vakhushti ascribes descent from the early 11th-century Georgian king George I. David, a capable military commander, became Tamar's major supporter and was instrumental in defeating the rebellious nobles who rallied behind Yuri.

Tamar and David had two children. In 1192 or 1194, the queen gave birth to a son, George-Lasha, the future king George IV. The daughter, Rusudan, was born c. 1195 and would succeed her brother as a sovereign of Georgia.

David Soslan's status of a king consort, as well as his presence in art, on charters, and on coins, was dictated by the necessity of male aspects of kingship, but he remained a subordinate ruler who shared the throne with and derived his power from Tamar. Tamar continued to be styled as mep’et’a mep’e – "king of kings". In Georgian, a language with no grammatical genders, mep'e ("king") does not necessarily imply a masculine connotation and can be rendered as a "sovereign". The female equivalent of mep'e is dedop'ali ("queen"), which was applied to wives or other senior female relatives of kings. Tamar is occasionally called dedop'ali and dedop'alt’a dedop'ali in the Georgian chronicles and on some charters. Thus, the title of mep'e might have been applied to Tamar to mark out her unique position among women.

Muslim neighbors
Once Tamar succeeded in consolidating her power and found a reliable support in David Soslan, the Mkhargrdzeli, Toreli, and other noble families, she revived the expansionist foreign policy of her predecessors. Repeated occasions of dynastic strife in Georgia combined with the efforts of regional successors of the Seljuk Empire such as the Eldiguzids, Shirvanshahs, and Ahlatshahs, had slowed down the dynamic of the Georgians achieved during the reigns of Tamar's great-grandfather, David IV, and her father, George III. However, the Georgians became again active under Tamar, more prominently in the second decade of her rule. Early in the 1190s, the Georgian government began to interfere in the affairs of the Eldiguzids and of the Shirvanshahs, aiding rivaling local princes and reducing Shirvan to a tributary state. The Eldiguzid atabeg Abu Bakr attempted to stem the Georgian advance, but suffered a defeat at the hands of David Soslan at the Battle of Shamkor and lost his capital to a Georgian protégé in 1195. Although Abu Bakr was able to resume his reign a year later, the Eldiguzids were only barely able to contain further Georgian forays.

The question of the liberation of Armenia remained of prime importance in Georgia's foreign policy. Tamar's armies led by two Armenian generals, Zakare and Ivane Mkhargrdzeli (Zakarian), overran fortresses and cities towards the Ararat Plain, reclaiming one after another fortresses and districts from local Muslim rulers.

Alarmed by the Georgian successes, Süleymanshah II, the resurgent Seljuqid sultan of Rûm, rallied his vassal emirs and marched against Georgia, but his camp was attacked and destroyed by David Soslan at the Battle of Basian in 1203 or 1204. The chronicler of Tamar describes how the army was assembled at the rock-hewn town of Vardzia before marching on to Basian and how the queen addressed the troops from the balcony of the church. Exploiting her success in this battle, between 1203 and 1205 Georgians seized the town of Dvin and entered Ahlatshah possessions twice and subdued the emir of Kars (vassal of the Saltukids in Erzurum), the Ahlatshahs, and the emirs of Erzurum and Erzincan.

In 1206, the Georgian army, under the command of David Soslan, captured Kars and other fortresses and strongholds along the Araxes. This campaign was evidently started because the ruler of Erzerum refused to submit to Georgia. The emir of Kars requested aid from the Ahlatshahs, but the latter was unable to respond, it was soon taken over by the Ayyubid Sultanate in 1207. By 1209 Georgia challenged Ayyubid rule in eastern Anatolia and led a liberation war for south Armenia. The Georgian army besieged Khlat. In response Ayyubid Sultan al-Adil I assembled and personally led a large Muslim army that included the emirs of Homs, Hama, and Baalbek as well as contingents from other Ayyubid principalities to support al-Awhad, emir of Jazira. During the siege, Georgian general Ivane Mkhargrdzeli accidentally fell into the hands of the al-Awhad on the outskirts of Ahlat. Using Ivane as a bargaining chip, al-Awhad agreed to release him in return for a thirty year truce with Georgia, thus ending the immediate Georgian threat to the Ayyubids. This brought the struggle for the Armenian lands to a stall, leaving the Lake Van region to the Ayyubids of Damascus.

In 1209, starting the Eldiguzid campaign of Tamar of Georgia, the brothers Mkhargrzeli laid waste to Ardabil – according to the Georgian and Armenian annals – as a revenge for the local Muslim ruler's attack on Ani and his massacre of the city's Christian population. In a great final burst, the brothers led an army marshaled throughout Tamar's possessions and vassal territories in a march, through Nakhchivan and Julfa, to Marand, Tabriz, and Qazvin in northwest Iran, pillaging several settlements on their way. Georgians reached countries where nobody had heard of either their name or existence.

Trebizond and the Middle East
Among the remarkable events of Tamar's reign was the foundation of the Empire of Trebizond on the Black Sea coast in 1204. This state was established by Alexios I Megas Komnenos (r. 1204–1222) and his brother, David, in the northeastern Pontic provinces of the crumbling Byzantine Empire with the aid of Georgian troops. Alexios and David, Tamar's relatives, were fugitive Byzantine princes raised at the Georgian court. According to Tamar's historian, the aim of the Georgian expedition to Trebizond was to punish the Byzantine emperor Alexios IV Angelos (r. 1203–1204) for his confiscation of a shipment of money from the Georgian queen to the monasteries of Antioch and Mount Athos. However, Tamar's Pontic endeavor can better be explained by her desire to take advantage of the Western European Fourth Crusade against Constantinople to set up a friendly state in Georgia's immediate southwestern neighborhood, as well as by the dynastic solidarity to the dispossessed Komnenoi.

Tamar sought to make use of the weakness of the Byzantine Empire and the Crusaders' defeat at the hands of the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in order to gain Georgia's position on the international stage and to assume the traditional role of the Byzantine crown as a protector of the Christians of the Middle East. Christian Georgian missionaries were active in the North Caucasus and the expatriate monastic communities were scattered throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Tamar's chronicle praises her universal protection of Christianity and her support of churches and monasteries from Egypt to Bulgaria and Cyprus. The Georgian court was primarily concerned with the protection of the Georgian monastic centers in the Holy Land. By the 12th century, eight Georgian monasteries were listed in Jerusalem. Saladin's biographer, Bahā' ad-Dīn ibn Šaddād, reports that after the Ayyubid conquest of Jerusalem in 1187, Tamar sent envoys to the sultan to request that the confiscated possessions of the Georgian monasteries in Jerusalem be returned. Saladin's response is not recorded, but the queen's efforts seem to have been successful: Jacques de Vitry, who attained to the bishopric of Acre shortly after Tamar's death, gives further evidence of the Georgians’ presence in Jerusalem. He writes that the Georgians were – in contrast to the other Christian pilgrims – allowed a free passage into the city, with their banners unfurled. Ibn Šaddād furthermore claims that Tamar outbid the Byzantine emperor in her efforts to obtain the relics of the True Cross, offering 200,000 gold pieces to Saladin who had taken the relics as booty at the Battle of Hattin – to no avail, however.

Feudal monarchy
Georgia's political and cultural exploits of Tamar's epoch were rooted in a long and complex past. Tamar owed her accomplishments most immediately to the reforms of her great-grandfather David IV (r. 1089–1125) and, more remotely, to the unifying efforts of David III and Bagrat III who became architects of a political unity of Georgian kingdoms and principalities in the opening decade of the 11th century. Tamar was able to build upon their successes. By the last years of Tamar's reign, the Georgian state had reached the zenith of its power and prestige in the Middle Ages. Tamar's realm stretched from the Greater Caucasus crest in the north to Erzurum in the south, and from the Zygii in the northwest to the vicinity of Ganja in the southeast, forming a pan-Caucasian empire, with the loyal Zachariad regime in northern and central Armenia, Shirvan as a vassal and Trebizond as an ally. A contemporary Georgian historian extols Tamar as the master of the lands "from the Sea of Pontus [i.e., the Black Sea] to the Sea of Gurgan [i.e., the Caspian Sea], from Speri to Derbend, and all the Hither and the Thither Caucasus up to Khazaria and Scythia."

The royal title was correspondingly aggrandized. It now reflected not only Tamar's sway over the traditional subdivisions of the Georgian realm, but also included new components, emphasizing the Georgian crown's hegemony over the neighboring lands. Thus, on the coins and charters issued in her name, Tamar is identified as:

The queen never achieved autocratic powers and the noble council continued to function. However, Tamar's own prestige and the expansion of patronq'moba – a Georgian version of feudalism – kept the more powerful dynastic princes from fragmenting the kingdom. This was a classical period in the history of Georgian feudalism. Attempts at transplanting feudal practices in the areas where they had previously been almost unknown did not pass without resistance. There was a revolt among the mountainers of Pkhovi and Dido on Georgia's northeastern frontier in 1212, which was put down by Ivane Mkhargrzeli after three months of heavy fighting.

With flourishing commercial centers now under Georgia's control, industry and commerce brought new wealth to the country and the court. Tribute extracted from the neighbors and war booty added to the royal treasury, giving rise to the saying that "the peasants were like nobles, the nobles like princes, and the princes like kings."

Culture
With this prosperity came an outburst of the distinct Georgian culture, emerging from the amalgam of Christian, secular, as well as Byzantine and Iranian influences. Despite this, the Georgians continued to identify with the Byzantine West, rather than Islamic East, with the Georgian monarchy seeking to underscore its association with Christianity and present its position as God-given. It was in that period that the canon of Georgian Orthodox architecture was redesigned and a series of large-scale domed cathedrals were built. The Byzantine-derived expression of royal power was modified in various ways to bolster Tamar's unprecedented position as a woman ruling in her own right. The five extant monumental church portraits of the queen are clearly modeled on Byzantine imagery, but also highlight specifically Georgian themes and Persian-type ideals of female beauty. Despite Georgia's Byzantine-leaning culture, the country's intimate trade connections with the Middle East is evidenced on contemporary Georgian coinage, whose legends were composed in Georgian and Arabic. A series of coins minted in circa 1200 in the name of Queen Tamar depicted a local variant of the Byzantine obverse and an Arabic inscription on the reverse proclaiming Tamar as the "Champion of the Messiah".

The contemporary Georgian chronicles enshrined Christian morality and patristic literature continued to flourish, but it had, by that time, lost its earlier dominant position to secular literature, which was highly original, even though it developed close contact with neighboring cultures. The trend culminated in Shota Rustaveli's epic poem The Knight in the Panther's Skin (Vepkhistq'aosani), which celebrates the ideals of an "Age of Chivalry" and is revered in Georgia as the greatest achievement of native literature.

Death and burial
Tamar outlived her consort, David Soslan, and died of a "devastating disease" not far from her capital Tbilisi, having previously crowned her son, Lasha-Giorgi, coregent. Tamar's historian relates that the queen suddenly fell ill when discussing state affairs with her ministers at the Nacharmagevi castle near the town of Gori. She was transported to Tbilisi and later to the nearby castle of Agarani where Tamar died and was mourned by her subjects. Her remains were transferred to the cathedral of Mtskheta and later to the Gelati Monastery, a family burial ground of the Georgian royal dynasty. The traditional scholarly opinion is that Tamar died in 1213, although there are several indications that she might have died earlier, in 1207 or 1210. In later times, a number of legends emerged about Tamar's place of burial. One of them has it that Tamar was buried in a secret niche at the Gelati monastery so as to prevent the grave from being profaned by her enemies. Another version suggests that Tamar's remains were reburied in a remote location, possibly in the Holy Land. The French knight Guillaume de Bois, in a letter dated from the early 13th century, written in Palestine and addressed to the bishop of Besançon, claimed that he had heard that the king of the Georgians was heading towards Jerusalem with a huge army and had already conquered many cities of the Saracens. He was carrying, the report said, the remains of his mother, the "powerful queen Tamar" (regina potentissima Thamar), who had been unable to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in her lifetime and had bequeathed her body to be buried near the Holy Sepulchre.

In the 20th century, the quest for Tamar's grave became a subject of scholarly research, as well as the focus of broader public interest. The Georgian writer Grigol Robakidze wrote in his 1918 essay on Tamar: "Thus far, nobody knows where Tamar's grave is. She belongs to everyone and to no one: her grave is in the heart of the Georgian. And in the Georgians' perception, this is not a grave, but a beautiful vase in which an unfading flower, the great Tamar, flourishes." An orthodox academic view still places Tamar's grave at Gelati, but a series of archaeological studies, beginning with Taqaishvili in 1920, has failed to locate it at the monastery.

Medieval
Over the centuries, Queen Tamar has emerged as a dominant figure in the Georgian historical pantheon. The construction of her reign as a "Golden age" began in the reign itself and Tamar became the focus of the era. Several medieval Georgian poets, including Shota Rustaveli, claimed Tamar as the inspiration for their works. A legend has it that Rustaveli was even consumed with love for the queen and ended his days in a monastery. A dramatic scene from Rustaveli's poem where the seasoned King Rostevan crowns his daughter Tinatin is an allegory to George III's co-option of Tamar. Rustaveli comments on this: "A lion cub is just as good, be it female or male".

The queen became a subject of several contemporary panegyrics, such as Chakhrukhadze's Tamariani and Ioane Shavteli's Abdul-Mesia. She was eulogized in the chronicles, most notably in the two accounts centered on her reign – The Life of Tamar, Queen of Queens and The Histories and Eulogies of the Sovereigns – which became the primary sources of Tamar's sanctification in Georgian literature. The chroniclers exalt her as a "protector of the widowed" and "the thrice blessed", and place a particular emphasis on Tamar's virtues as a woman: beauty, humility, love of mercy, fidelity, and purity. Although Tamar was canonized by the Georgian church much later, she was even named as a saint in her lifetime in a bilingual Greco-Georgian colophon attached to the manuscript of the Vani Gospels.

The idealization of Tamar was further accentuated by the events that took place under her immediate successors; within two decades of Tamar's death, the Khwarezmian and Mongol invasions brought Georgian ascendancy to an abrupt end. Later periods of national revival were too ephemeral to match the achievements of Tamar's reign. All of these contributed to the cult of Tamar which blurred the distinction between the idealized queen and the real personality.

In popular memory, Tamar's image has acquired a legendary and romantic façade. A diverse set of folk songs, poems and tales illustrate her as an ideal ruler, a holy woman onto whom certain attributes of pagan deities and Christian saints were sometimes projected. For example, in an old Ossetian legend, Queen Tamar conceives her son of a sunbeam which shines through the window. Another myth, from the Georgian mountains, equates Tamar with the pagan deity of weather, Pirimze, who controls winter. Similarly, in the highland district of Pshavi, Tamar's image fused with a pagan goddess of healing and female fertility.

While Tamar occasionally accompanied her army and is described as planning some campaigns, she was never directly involved in the fighting. Yet, the memory of the military victories of her reign contributed to Tamar's other popular image, that of a model warrior-queen. It also echoed in the Tale of Queen Dinara, a popular 16th-century Russian story about a fictional Georgian queen fighting against the Persians. Tsar of All the Russias Ivan the Terrible before the seizure of Kazan encouraged his army by the examples of Tamar's battles by describing her as "the most wise Queen of Iberia, endowed with the intelligence and courage of a man".

Modern
Much of the modern perception of Queen Tamar was shaped under the influence of 19th-century Romanticism and growing nationalism among Georgian intellectuals of that time. In the Russian and Western literatures of the 19th century, Georgia was perceived as having "oriental tendencies", thus the image of Queen Tamar reflected some of these Western conceptions of the Orient and the characteristics of women in it. The Tyrolean writer Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer described Tamar as a "Caucasian Semiramis". Fascinated by the "exotic" Caucasus, the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov wrote the romantic poem Tamara (Тамара; 1841) in which he utilized the old Georgian legend about a siren-like mountainous princess whom the poet gave the name of Queen Tamar. Although Lermontov's depiction of the Georgian queen as a destructive seductress had no apparent historical background, it has been influential enough to raise the issue of Tamar's sexuality, a question that was given some prominence by the 19th-century European authors. Knut Hamsun's 1903 play Queen Tamara was less successful; the theatre critics saw in it "a modern woman dressed in a medieval costume" and read the play as "a commentary on the new woman of the 1890s." Russian conductor Mily Balakirev composed a symphonic poem named "Tamara".

In Georgian literature, Tamar was also romanticized, but very differently from the Russian and Western European view. The Georgian romanticists followed a medieval tradition in Tamar's portrayal as a gentle, saintly woman who ruled a country permanently at war. This sentiment was further inspired by the rediscovery of a contemporary, 13th-century wall painting of Tamar in the then-ruined Betania Monastery, which was uncovered and restored by Prince Grigory Gagarin in the 1840s. The fresco became a source of numerous engravings circulating in Georgia at that time and inspired the poet Grigol Orbeliani to dedicate a romantic poem to it. Furthermore, the Georgian literati, reacting to Russian rule in Georgia and the suppression of national institutions, contrasted Tamar's era to their contemporary situation, lamenting the irretrievably lost past in their writings. Hence, Tamar became a personification of the heyday of Georgia, a perception that has persisted down to the present time.

During World War II, three battalions of the collaborationist Georgian Legion were named after Tamar.

Tamar's marriage to the prince Yuri of the Grand Principality of Vladimir has become a subject of two resonant prose works in modern Georgia. Shalva Dadiani's play, originally entitled The Unfortunate Russian (უბედური რუსი; 1916–1926), was attacked by Soviet critics for distorting the "centuries-long friendship of the Russian and Georgian peoples." Under Communist Party pressure, Dadiani had to revise both the title and plot in accordance with the official ideology of the Soviet state. In 2002, a satirical short story The First Russian (პირველი რუსი) penned by the young Georgian writer Lasha Bughadze and focused on a frustrated wedding night of Tamar and Yuri outraged many conservatives and triggered a nationwide controversy, including heated discussions in the media, the Parliament of Georgia and the Patriarchate of the Georgian Orthodox Church.

She is a playable leader of Georgia in the 4X video game Civilization VI, in the Rise and Fall expansion. She also has a dedicated campaign in Age of Empires II introduced with the Mountain Royals expansion.

Veneration

Tamar has been canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church as the Holy Righteous Queen Tamar (წმიდა კეთილმსახური მეფე თამარი, ts'mida k'etilmsakhuri mepe tamari; also venerated as "Right-believing Tamara"), with her feast day commemorated on 1 May (of the Julian Calendar, which equates to 14 May on the Gregorian Calendar) and on Sunday of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women. The Antiochian Orthodox observe the feast of St Tamara on 22 April.

Genealogy
The chart below shows the abbreviated genealogy of Tamar and her family, tracing it from Tamar's grandfather to her grandchildren.

title: Tamar of Georgia


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Hippopotamus

The hippopotamus (: hippopotamuses or hippopotami; Hippopotamus amphibius), also shortened to hippo (: hippos), further qualified as the common hippopotamus, Nile hippopotamus, or river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae, the other being the pygmy hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis or Hexaprotodon liberiensis). Its name comes from the ancient Greek for "river horse" (ἱπποπόταμος).

After elephants and rhinoceroses, the hippopotamus is the next largest land mammal. It is also the largest extant land artiodactyl. Despite their physical resemblance to pigs and other terrestrial even-toed ungulates, the closest living relatives of the hippopotamids are cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises, etc.), from which they diverged about 55 million years ago. Hippos are recognisable for their barrel-shaped torsos, wide-opening mouths with large canine tusks, nearly hairless bodies, pillar-like legs, and large size: adults average 1500 kg for bulls (males) and 1300 kg for cows (females). Despite its stocky shape and short legs, it is capable of running 30 km/h over short distances.

Hippos inhabit rivers, lakes, and mangrove swamps. Territorial bulls each preside over a stretch of water and a group of five to thirty cows and calves. Mating and birth both occur in the water. During the day, hippos remain cool by staying in water or mud, emerging at dusk to graze on grasses. While hippos rest near each other in the water, grazing is a solitary activity and hippos typically do not display territorial behaviour on land. Hippos are among the most dangerous animals in the world due to their aggressive and unpredictable nature. They are threatened by habitat loss and poaching for their meat and ivory (canine teeth).

Etymology
The Latin word hippopotamus is derived from the ancient Greek ἱπποπόταμος, from ἵππος horse and ποταμός  river, together meaning horse of the river. In English, the plural is "hippopotamuses", but "hippopotami" is also used.

Classification
The modern hippopotamus and the pygmy hippopotamus are the only living members of the family Hippopotamidae. Some taxonomists place hippos and anthracotheres in the superfamily Anthracotheroidea. Hippopotamidae are classified along with other even-toed ungulates in the order Artiodactyla.

Five subspecies of hippos have been described based on morphological differences in their skulls as well as differences in geographical range: The suggested subspecies above were never widely used or validated by field biologists; the described morphological differences were small enough that they could have resulted from simple variation in nonrepresentative samples. A study examining mitochondrial DNA from skin biopsies taken from 13 sampling locations found "low, but significant, genetic differentiation" among H. a. amphibius, H. a. capensis, and H. a. kiboko. Neither H. a. tschadensis nor H. a. constrictus have been tested.
 * H. a. amphibius – (the nominate subspecies) ranges from Gambia east to Ethiopia and then south to Mozambique and historically ranged as far north as Egypt; its skull is distinguished by a moderately reduced preorbital region, a bulging dorsal surface, elongated mandibular symphysis and larger chewing teeth.
 * H. a. kiboko – found in Kenya and Somalia; was noted to be smaller and more lightly coloured than other hippos with wider nostrils, somewhat longer snout and more rounded and relatively raised orbits with the space between them being incurved.
 * H. a. capensis – found in Zambia and South Africa; distinguished by wider orbits.
 * H. a. tschadensis – ranges between Chad and Niger; featured a slightly shorter but broader face, and pronounced, forward-facing orbits.
 * H. a. constrictus – ranged from the southern Democratic Republic of Congo to Angola and Namibia; skull characterised by a thicker preorbital region, shorter snout, flatter dorsal surface, reduced mandibular symphysis and smaller chewing teeth.

Evolution
Until 1909, naturalists classified hippos together with pigs based on molar patterns. Several lines of evidence, first from blood proteins, then from molecular systematics, DNA and the fossil record, show their closest living relatives are cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises). The common ancestor of hippos and whales branched off from Ruminantia and the rest of the even-toed ungulates; the cetacean and hippo lineages split soon afterwards.

The most recent theory of the origins of Hippopotamidae suggests hippos and whales shared a common semiaquatic ancestor that branched off from other artiodactyls around. This hypothesised ancestral group likely split into two branches again around.

One branch would evolve into cetaceans, possibly beginning about, with the protowhale Pakicetus and other early whale ancestors collectively known as Archaeoceti. This group eventually underwent aquatic adaptation into the completely aquatic cetaceans. The other branch became the anthracotheres, a large family of four-legged beasts, the earliest of which in the late Eocene would have resembled skinny hippos with comparatively smaller, narrower heads. All branches of the anthracotheres, except that which evolved into Hippopotamidae, became extinct during the Pliocene, leaving no descendants.

A rough evolutionary lineage of the hippo can thus be traced from Eocene and Oligocene species: from Anthracotherium and Elomeryx to the Miocene species Merycopotamus and Libycosaurus and finally the very latest anthracotheres in the Pliocene. These groups lived across Eurasia and Africa. The discovery of Epirigenys in East Africa, which was likely a descent of Asian anthracotheres and a sister taxon to Hippopotamidae, suggests that hippo ancestors entered Africa from Asia around. An early hippopotamid is the genus Kenyapotamus, which lived in Africa from 15 to. Hippopotamid species would spread across Africa and Eurasia, including the modern pygmy hippo. From 7.5 to, a possible ancestor to the modern hippo, Archaeopotamus, lived in Africa and the Middle East. The oldest records of the genus Hippopotamus date to the Pliocene (5.3-2.6 million years ago). The oldest unambiguous records of the modern H. amphibius date to the Middle Pleistocene, though there are possible Early Pleistocene records.

Extinct species
Three species of Malagasy hippopotamus became extinct during the Holocene on Madagascar, the last of them within the past 1,000 years. The Malagasy hippos were smaller than the modern hippo, a likely result of the process of insular dwarfism. Fossil evidence indicates many Malagasy hippos were hunted by humans, a factor in their eventual extinction. Isolated individual Malagasy hippos may have survived in remote pockets; in 1976, villagers described a living animal called the kilopilopitsofy, which may have been a Malagasy hippo.

Hippopotamus gorgops from the Early Pleistocene-early Middle Pleistocene of Africa and West Asia grew considerably larger than the living hippopotamus, with an estimated body mass of over 4000 kg. Hippopotamus antiquus ranged throughout Europe, extending as far north as Britain during the Early and Middle Pleistocene epochs, before being replaced by the modern H. amphibius in Europe during the latter part of the Middle Pleistocene. The Pleistocene also saw a number of dwarf species evolve on several Mediterranean islands, including Crete (Hippopotamus creutzburgi), Cyprus (the Cyprus dwarf hippopotamus, Hippopotamus minor), Malta (Hippopotamus melitensis), and Sicily (Hippopotamus pentlandi). Of these, the Cyprus dwarf hippo survived until the end of the Pleistocene or early Holocene. Evidence from the archaeological site Aetokremnos continues to cause debate on whether or not the species was driven to extinction, or even encountered, by man.

Characteristics

The hippopotamus is a megaherbivore and is exceeded in size among land animals only by elephants and some rhinoceros species. The mean adult weight is around 1480 kg for bulls and 1365 kg for cows. Exceptionally large males have been recorded reaching 2660 kg. Male hippos appear to continue growing throughout their lives, while females reach maximum weight at around age 25. Hippos measure 2.90 to 5.05 m long, including a tail of about 35 to 56 cm in length and 1.30 to 1.65 m tall at the shoulder, with males and females ranging 1.40 to 1.65 m and 1.30 to 1.45 m tall at the shoulder respectively. The species has a typical head-body length of 3.3 – and an average standing height of 1.4 m at the shoulder.

Hippos have barrel-shaped bodies with short tails and legs, and an hourglass-shaped skull with a long snout. Their skeletal structures are graviportal, adapted to carrying their enormous weight, and their dense bones and low centre of gravity allows them to sink and move along the bottom of the water. Hippopotamuses have small legs (relative to other megafauna) because the water in which they live reduces the weight burden. The toes are webbed and the pelvis rests at an angle of 45 degrees. Though chubby-looking, hippos have little fat. The eyes, ears, and nostrils of hippos are placed high on the roof of their skulls. This allows these organs to remain above the surface while the rest of the body is submerged. The nostrils and ears can close when underwater while nictitating membranes cover the eyes. The vocal folds of the hippo are more horizontally positioned, much like cetaceans. Underneath are throat tissues, where vibrations are transmitted to produce underwater calls.

The hippo's jaw is powered by huge masseter and digastric muscles which give them large, droopy cheeks. The jaw hinge allows the animal to open its mouth at almost 180°. A folded orbicularis oris muscle allows the hippo to attain an extreme gape without tearing any tissue. On the lower jaw, the incisors and canines grow continuously, the former reaching 40 cm, while the latter can grow to up to 50 cm. The lower canines are sharpened through contact with the smaller upper canines. The canines and incisors are used mainly for combat instead of feeding. Hippos rely on their flattened, horny lips to grasp and pull grasses which are then ground by the molars. The hippo is considered to be a pseudoruminant; it has a complex three-chambered stomach, but does not "chew cud".

Hippo skin is 6 cm thick across much of its body with little hair. The animal is mostly purplish-grey or blue-black, but brownish-pink on the underside and around the eyes and ears. Their skin secretes a natural, red-coloured sunscreen substance that is sometimes referred to as "blood sweat" but is neither blood nor sweat. This secretion is initially colourless and turns red-orange within minutes, eventually becoming brown. Two highly acidic pigments have been identified in the secretions; one red (hipposudoric acid) and one orange (norhipposudoric acid), which inhibit the growth of disease-causing bacteria and their light-absorption profile peaks in the ultraviolet range, creating a sunscreen effect. Regardless of diet, all hippos secrete these pigments so food does not appear to be their source; rather, they may be synthesised from precursors such as the amino acid tyrosine. This natural sunscreen cannot prevent the animal's skin from cracking if it stays out of water too long.

The testes of the males do not fully descend and a scrotum is not present. In addition, the penis retracts into the body when not erect. The genitals of the female hippos are unusual in that the vagina is ridged and the vulval vestibule has two large, protruding diverticula. Both of these have an unknown function.

A hippo's lifespan is typically 40 to 50 years. Donna the Hippo was one of the oldest living hippos in captivity. She lived at the Mesker Park Zoo in Evansville, Indiana, in the US until her death in 2012 at the age of 61. The oldest hippo ever recorded was called Bertha; she had lived in the Manila Zoo in the Philippines since it first opened in 1959. When she died in 2017, her age was estimated to be 65. The oldest living hippopotamus in captivity is Lu the Hippo, from the Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. As of 2024, he is 64 years old.

Distribution and status
Hippopotamus amphibius arrived in Europe around 560-460,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene. The distribution of Hippopotamus amphibius in Europe during the Pleistocene was largely confined to Southern Europe, including the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and Greece, but extended into northwestern Europe, including Great Britain (as far north as North Yorkshire), the Netherlands, and western Germany during the Eemian interglacial (130–115,000 years ago). The youngest records of the species in Europe are from the Late Pleistocene of Greece, dating to around 40-30,000 years ago.

Archaeological evidence exists of its presence in the Levant, dating to less than 3,000 years ago. The species was common in Egypt's Nile region during antiquity, but it has since been driven out. According to Pliny the Elder, in his time, the best location in Egypt for capturing this animal was in the Saite nome; the animal could still be found along the Damietta branch of the Nile after the Arab Conquest in 639. Reports of the slaughter of the last hippo in Natal Province were made at the end of the 19th century. Hippos are still found in the rivers and lakes of the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya, north through to Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan, west to The Gambia, and south to South Africa.

Genetic evidence suggests common hippos in Africa experienced a marked population expansion during or after the Pleistocene, attributed to an increase in water bodies at the end of the era. These findings have important conservation implications, as hippo populations across the continent are currently threatened by loss of access to fresh water. Hippos are also subject to unregulated hunting and poaching. The species is included in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meaning international export/import (including in parts and derivatives) requires CITES documentation to be obtained and presented to border authorities.

As of 2017, the IUCN Red List drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the species as vulnerable, with a stable population estimated between 115,000 and 130,000 animals. The hippo population has declined most dramatically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By 2005, the population in Virunga National Park had dropped to 800 or 900 from around 29,000 in the mid-1970s. This decline is attributed to the disruptions caused by the Second Congo War. The poachers are believed to be Mai-Mai rebels, underpaid Congolese soldiers, and local militia groups. Reasons for poaching include the belief hippos are harmful to society, as well as financial gain. As of 2016, the Virunga hippo population appears to have increased again, possibly due to better protection from park rangers, who have worked with local fishermen. The sale of hippo meat is illegal, but black-market sales are difficult for Virunga National Park officers to track. Hippo meat is highly valued in some areas of central Africa and the teeth may be used as a replacement for elephant ivory.

A population of hippos exists in Colombia, descended from captive individuals that escaped from Pablo Escobar's estate after his death in 1993. Their numbers grew to 100 by the 2020s and ecologists believe the population should be eradicated, as they are breeding rapidly and are an increasing menace to humans and the environment. Attempts to control them include sterilisation and culling.

Behaviour and ecology
Hippos are semiaquatic and require enough water to immerse in, while being close to grass. They mostly live in freshwater habitat, but can be found in estuaries. They prefer relatively still waters with gently sloping shores, though male hippos may also be found in very small numbers in more rapid waters with rocky slopes. Like most herbivores, hippos will consume a variety of plants if presented with them in captivity, but their diet in nature consists almost entirely of grass, with only minimal consumption of aquatic plants. Hippos spend most of the day in water to stay cool and hydrated. Just before night begins, they leave the water to forage on land. A hippo will travel 3 – per night, eating around 40 kg of grass. By dawn, they are back in the water.

Despite being semiaquatic, an adult hippo is not a particularly good swimmer, nor can it float. It rarely enters deep water; when it does, the animal moves by bouncing off the bottom. An adult hippo surfaces every four to six minutes, while young need to breathe every two to three minutes. Hippos move on land by trotting, and limb movements do not change between speeds. They can reach an airborne stage (a stage when all limb are off the ground) when they move fast enough. Hippos are reported to reach 30 km/h but this has not been confirmed. They are incapable of jumping but can walk up steep banks. The hippopotamus sleeps with both hemispheres of the brain resting, as in all land mammals, and usually sleeps on land or in water with the nostrils exposed. Despite this, it may be capable of sleeping while submerged, intermittently surfacing to breathe without waking. They appear to transition between different phases of sleep more quickly than other mammals.

Because of their size and their habit of taking the same paths to feed, hippos can have a significant impact on the land across which they walk, keeping the land clear of vegetation and depressing the ground. Over prolonged periods, hippos can divert the paths of swamps and channels. By defecating in the water, the animals also appear to pass on microbes from their gut, affecting the biogeochemical cycle. On occasion, hippos have been filmed eating carrion, usually near the water. There are other reports of meat-eating and even cannibalism and predation. Hippos' stomach anatomy lacks adaptions to carnivory and meat-eating is likely caused by lack of nutrients or just an abnormal behaviour.

Social life
It is challenging to study the interaction of bulls and cows because hippos are not sexually dimorphic, so cows and young bulls are almost indistinguishable in the field. Hippo pods fluctuate but can contain over 100 hippos. Although they lie close together, adults develop almost no social bonds. Males establish territories in water but not land, and these may range 250 – in lakes and 50 – in rivers. Territories are abandoned when the water dries up. The bull has breeding access to all the cows in his territory. Younger bachelors are allowed to stay as long as they defer to him. A younger male may challenge the old bull for control of the territory. Within the pods, the hippos tend to segregate by sex and status. Bachelor males lounge near other bachelors, females with other females, and the territorial male is on his own. When hippos emerge from the water to graze, they do so individually.

Hippos engage in "muck-spreading" which involves defecating while spinning their tails to distribute the faeces over a greater area. Muck-spreading occurs both on land and in water and its function is not well understood. It is unlikely to serve a territorial function, as the animals only establish territories in the water. They may be used as trails between the water and grazing areas. "Yawning" serves as a threat display. When fighting, bulls use their incisors to block each other's attacks and their large canines as offensive weapons. When hippos become over-populated or a habitat shrinks, bulls sometimes attempt infanticide, but this behaviour is not common under normal conditions.

The most common hippo vocalisation is the "wheeze honk", which can travel over long distances in air. This call starts as a high-pitched squeal followed by a deeper, resonant call. The animals can recognise the calls of other individuals. Hippos are more likely to react to the wheeze honks of strangers than to those they are more familiar with. When threatened or alarmed, they produce exhalations, and fighting bulls will bellow loudly. Hippos are recorded to produce clicks underwater which may have echolocative properties. They have the unique ability to hold their heads partially above the water and send out a cry that travels through both water and air; individuals respond both above and below water.

Reproduction
Cows reach sexual maturity at five to six years of age and have a gestation period of eight months. A study of endocrine systems revealed cows may begin puberty at as early as three or four years. Bulls reach maturity at around 7.5 years. Both conceptions and births are highest during the wet season. Male hippos always have mobile spermatozoa and can breed year-round. After becoming pregnant, a female hippo will typically not begin ovulation again for 17 months. Hippos mate in the water, with the cow remaining under the surface, her head emerging periodically to draw breath. Cows give birth in seclusion and return within 10 to 14 days. Calves are born on land or shallow water weighing on average 50 kg and at an average length of around 127 cm. The female lies on her side when nursing, which can occur underwater or on land. The young are carried on their mothers' backs in deep water.

Mother hippos are very protective of their young, not allowing others to get too close. One cow was recorded protecting a calf's carcass after it had died. Calves may be temporarily kept in nurseries, guarded by one or more adults, and will play amongst themselves. Like many other large mammals, hippos are described as K-strategists, in this case typically producing just one large, well-developed infant every couple of years (rather than many small, poorly developed young several times per year, as is common among small mammals such as rodents). Calves no longer need to suckle when they are a year old.

Interspecies interactions
Hippos coexist alongside a variety of large predators in their habitats. Nile crocodiles, lions, and spotted hyenas are known to prey on young hippos. Beyond these, adult hippos are not usually preyed upon by other animals due to their aggression and size. Cases where large lion prides have successfully preyed on adult hippos have been reported, but it is generally rare. Lions occasionally prey on adults at Gorongosa National Park and calves are sometimes taken at Virunga. Crocodiles are frequent targets of hippo aggression, probably because they often inhabit the same riparian habitats; crocodiles may be either aggressively displaced or killed by hippos. In turn, very large Nile crocodiles have been observed preying occasionally on calves, "half-grown" hippos, and possibly also adult female hippos. Groups of crocodiles have also been observed finishing off still-living male hippos that were previously injured in mating battles with other males.

Hippos occasionally visit cleaning stations in order to be cleaned of parasites by certain species of fishes. They signal their readiness for this service by opening their mouths wide. This is an example of mutualism, in which the hippo benefits from the cleaning while the fish receive food. Hippo defecation creates allochthonous deposits of organic matter along the river beds. These deposits have an unclear ecological function. A 2015 study concluded hippo dung provides nutrients from terrestrial material for fish and aquatic invertebrates, while a 2018 study found that their dung can be toxic to aquatic life in large quantities, due to absorption of dissolved oxygen in water bodies.

The parasitic monogenean flatworm Oculotrema hippopotami infests hippopotamus eyes, mainly the nictitating membrane. It is the only monogenean species (which normally live on fish) documented to live on a mammal.

Hippos and humans
Cut marks on bones of H. amphibius found at Bolomor Cave, a site in Spain preserving fossils dating from 230,000 to 120,000 years ago, provides evidence for Neanderthal butchery of hippopotamuses. The earliest evidence of modern human interaction with hippos comes from butchery cut marks on hippo bones found at the Bouri Formation and dated to around 160,000 years ago. 4,000–5,000 year art showing hippos being hunted have been found in the Tassili n'Ajjer Mountains of the central Sahara near Djanet. The ancient Egyptians recognised the hippo as ferocious, and representations on the tombs of nobles show humans hunting them.

The hippo was also known to the Greeks and Romans. The Greek historian Herodotus described the hippo in The Histories (written circa 440 BC) and the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote about the hippo in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia (written circa 77 AD). The Yoruba people called the hippo erinmi, which means "elephant of the water". Some individual hippos have achieved international fame. Huberta became a celebrity during the Great Depression for trekking a great distance across South Africa.

Attacks on humans
The hippo is considered to be extremely aggressive and has frequently been reported charging and attacking boats. Small boats can easily be capsized by hippos and passengers can be injured or killed by the animals, or drown in the water. In one 2014 case in Niger, a boat was capsized by a hippo and 13 people were killed. Hippos will often raid farm crops if the opportunity arises, and humans may come into conflict with them on these occasions. These encounters can be fatal to either humans or hippos.

According to the Ptolemaic historian Manetho, the pharaoh Menes was carried off and then killed by a hippopotamus.

In zoos
Hippos have long been popular zoo animals. The first record of hippos taken into captivity for display is dated to 3500 BC in Hierakonpolis, Egypt. The first zoo hippo in modern history was Obaysch, who arrived at the London Zoo on 25 May 1850, where he attracted up to 10,000 visitors a day and inspired a popular song, the "Hippopotamus Polka".

Hippos generally breed well in captivity; birth rates are lower than in the wild, but this can be attributed to zoos' desire to limit births, since hippos are relatively expensive to maintain. Starting in 2015, the Cincinnati Zoo built a US$73 million exhibit to house three adult hippos, featuring a 250,000 L tank. Modern hippo enclosures also have a complex filtration system for the animal's waste, an underwater viewing area for the visitors, and glass that may be up to 9 cm thick and capable of holding water under pressures of 31 kPa.

Cultural significance
In Egyptian mythology, the god Set takes the form of a red hippopotamus and fights Horus for control of the land, but is defeated. The goddess Tawaret is depicted as a pregnant woman with a hippo head, representing fierce maternal love. The Ijaw people of the Niger Delta wore masks of aquatic animals like the hippo when practising their water spirit cults, and hippo ivory was used in the divination rituals of the Yoruba. Hippo masks were also used in Nyau funerary rituals of the Chewa of Southern Africa. According to Robert Baden-Powell, Zulu warriors referred to hippos in war chants. The Behemoth from the Book of Job, 40:15–24 is thought to be based on the hippo.

Hippos have been the subjects of various African folktales. According to a San story, when the Creator assigned each animal its place in nature, the hippos wanted to live in the water, but were refused out of fear they might eat all the fish. After begging and pleading, the hippos were finally allowed to live in the water on the condition they would eat grass instead of fish, and fling their dung so it can be inspected for fish bones. In a Ndebele tale, the hippo originally had long, beautiful hair, but it was set on fire by a jealous hare and the hippo had to jump into a nearby pool. The hippo lost most of his hair and was too embarrassed to leave the water.

Hippopotamuses were rarely depicted in European art during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, due to less access to specimens by Europeans. One notable exception is Peter Paul Rubens' The Hippopotamus and Crocodile Hunt (1615–1616). Ever since Obaysch inspired the "Hippopotamus Polka", hippos have been popular animals in Western culture for their rotund appearance, which many consider comical. The Disney film Fantasia featured a ballerina hippo dancing to the opera La Gioconda. The film Hugo the Hippo is set in Tanzania and involves the title character trying to escape being slaughtered with the help of local children. The Madagascar films feature a hippo named Gloria. Hippos even inspired a popular board game, Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Among the most famous poems about the hippo is "The Hippopotamus" by T. S. Eliot, where he uses the animal to represent the Catholic Church. Hippos are mentioned in the novelty Christmas song "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" that became a hit for child star Gayla Peevey in 1953. They also featured in the popular "The Hippopotamous Song" by Flanders and Swann.

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title: Hippopotamus