Ashot Kuropalates was a Georgian king of the Bagrationi (Bagratid) dynasty who ruled in the early ninth century and is venerated by the Georgian Orthodox Church as a right-believing ruler and passion-bearer. He governed during the period of Arab domination in the Caucasus and is remembered both for his efforts to restore Georgian self-rule and for his patronage of the Church, before being slain by his enemies at the altar of a church. The synaxarion places his commemoration on January 27.
By tradition Ashot ascended the throne of Kartli in 786 and fought to reunify the Georgian lands and to drive the Arab Muslims from Tbilisi. After military reverses he withdrew to the southern Georgian region of Tao-Klarjeti, establishing there a base from which the Bagrationi house consolidated its power. He bore the Byzantine court title of kuropalates, a mark of the alliance he and his successors maintained with the Byzantine Empire against Arab pressure.
Ashot was a notable builder and benefactor of the Church. He restored the fortress of Artanuji, originally raised by King Vakhtang Gorgasali and destroyed by the Arab commander Marwan, and founded a city beside it as the royal residence of the Bagrationi. He constructed a church dedicated to the Apostles Peter and Paul, and he supported the monastic revival of the Klarjeti wilderness led by Saint Gregory (Grigol) of Khandzta, granting estates—among them Shatberdi—to sustain the monastic communities.
According to the tradition recorded by the chronicler Sumbat, son of Davit, in his Lives of the Bagrationis, Ashot was assassinated by his enemies at the altar of a church, his blood remaining there as a witness. He was buried in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul that he had built, and the Georgian Orthodox Church numbers him among its saints.
