Kartli occupied an impossible geopolitical position in the early eighteenth century — squeezed between Safavid Persia and the Ottoman Empire, its kings routinely played both powers against each other to survive. This coin was struck under Wakhtang VI, who ruled Kartli as a vassal of the Ottomans, with Ahmed III's name appearing on the coinage as an assertion of suzerainty rather than any genuine administrative control from Constantinople.
Wakhtang would later defect to Peter the Great during the 1722 Persian campaign, ultimately dying in Russian exile in 1737.
Kartli occupied an impossible geopolitical position in the early eighteenth century — squeezed between Safavid Persia and the Ottoman Empire, its kings routinely played both powers against each other to survive. This coin was struck under Wakhtang VI, who ruled Kartli as a vassal of the Ottomans, with Ahmed III's name appearing on the coinage as an assertion of suzerainty rather than any genuine administrative control from Constantinople.
Wakhtang would later defect to Peter the Great during the 1722 Persian campaign, ultimately dying in Russian exile in 1737.