Bektash Beg Torkman, also commonly referred to as Bektash of Kakheti (died 1615), was a Safavid military leader, who was the first member of the Qizilbash to govern Kakheti.[1]
Bektash's father was an influential Qizilbash commander named Mohammad Khan Torkman, while his mother was a daughter of king Alexander II of Kakheti.[2] As Alexander II was the father of Constantine, and Constantine himself was married to a sister of Bektash, Bektash and Constantine were brother-in-laws as well as cousins at the same time.[3] According to Professor Hirotake Maeda, this was part of king Abbas I (r. 1588–1629) intentions to make the Bagrationis and Qizilbash leaders related to each other by blood, and to incorporate them into Safavid elite society.[1] A member of the "Torkman tribe", who traditionally held the governorship of Tabriz, Bektash was sent to Kakheti by Abbas I together with Prince Constantine and fellow Torkman tribesmen in 1604-1605.[1]
In the ensuing period in Kakheti, Constatine killed his own father Alexander II and Prince Giorgi and controlled Kakheti for a period, but the Georgians soon revolted and Constantine was killed as a result.[1] Ten years later, when the shah himself led a punitive expedition to Georgia by which Safavid Iranian rule over eastern Georgia (Kartli, Kakheti) would be decisively cemented, Bektash was officially appointed as the first Qizilbash governor of Kakheti.[1]
In 1615, during the revolt in Georgia against the Safavid rule, Bektash was killed.[4]
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