died 744
A king of Georgia of the Chosroid line who, when the Arab commander Murvan invaded the land, gave himself up to spare his people and, refusing every inducement to deny Christ, was put to death about the year 744.
The Holy Martyr Archil II, King of Georgia
Archil II was a king of Georgia of the Chosroid dynasty, remembered as a direct descendant of Saint Mirian, the fourth-century ruler under whom the Georgian people embraced Christianity. He governed during the eighth century, a period in which the Caucasus was repeatedly overrun by Arab armies, and he is venerated in the Orthodox Church as a martyr for his refusal to renounce Christ. The dossier dates his death to about the year 744.
According to the synaxarion, his reign was marked first by a devastating invasion led by a commander the Georgians called Murvana-Kru, 'the Wild,' on account of his cruelty. Together with his brother Myro, Archil resisted the much larger force, and the tradition relates that the Georgians gained a victory at the rivers Abasha and Tskhenis-Tskhali. In the aftermath he turned to rebuilding what the war had destroyed, restoring churches at Mtskheta, refounding the city of Nukhpatis, and spreading the Christian faith among the mountain tribes.
A later Arab incursion, led by a commander whose name is given in the Georgian sources as Dzhidzhum-Asim (identified with Khuzayma ibn Khazim), brought the king to martyrdom. By tradition Archil went to the invaders' camp, where the commander received him hospitably but pressed him to accept Islam. The synaxarion relates that neither tortures nor inducements could move the aged king, who refused to forsake Christ, and that he was beheaded on March 20, 744. Georgian Christians secretly carried his body to Kakheti and buried it in the church of Notkora, which the king had himself built.
The accounts preserved in the synaxarion present Archil not only as a defender of his realm in battle but as a rebuilder of its Christian life. After the defeat of Murvana-Kru, he is credited with restoring the churches of Mtskheta, the ancient ecclesiastical center of Georgia, refounding the city of Nukhpatis, and carrying the Christian faith into the mountain districts. The same sources record that he had two sons and four daughters.
The tradition holds that Archil, by then an old man, went of his own accord to the camp of the Arab commander during the second invasion. Offered favor and authority in exchange for conversion to Islam, he declined, and after a period of imprisonment and torture he was beheaded. The sources place his death on March 20, 744. He is commemorated in the Church on June 21, and the anchor row notes a further joint commemoration on January 28 together with King Luarsab II of Kartli, a Georgian royal martyr of a much later century.
Martyred under the Arab invasion (8th c.). Commemorated jointly with St Luarsab II on Jan 28 and individually on Jun 21. This row formerly joined Archil II with the 17th-c. King Luarsab II, who is now a separate entry.