Background
Prince Teimuraz was born in Tbilisi to Heir Apparent George, subsequently the last king of Georgia (Kingdom of Kartli and Kakheti) from 1798 to 1800, and his wife, Ketevan Andronikashvili.
Prince Teimuraz was born in Tbilisi to Heir Apparent George, subsequently the last king of Georgia (Kingdom of Kartli and Kakheti) from 1798 to 1800, and his wife, Ketevan Andronikashvili.
He studied at the Telavi Seminary, and, at the age of 13, took part in the 1795 Battle of Krtsanisi at which his grandfather, King Heraclius II of Georgia, was defeated by a Persian invading army under Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar.
During the Russo-Persian War (1804-1813), Teimuraz was a Persian artillery commander. On October 16, 1810, however, he surrendered to the Russian authorities. On January 12, 1811, he settled in Street St. Petersburg where he was granted a state salary and pension.
In 1813, he acquired a mansion on Vasilievsky Island and concentrated on scholarly work.
He collected and researched old Georgian chronicles and analyzed Greco-Roman and Armenian sources on Georgia. At the same time, Prince Teiumraz befriended and tutored the young Georgian students in Street St. Petersburg – Platon Ioseliani, and David Chubinashvili – both of whom eventually became prolific Georgian historians.
In the 1830s-40s, he composed two major works on the early history of Georgia – "ისტორია დაწყებითგან ივერიისა, ესე იგი გიორგიისა, რომელ არს სრულიად საქართველოჲსა" (1832, History of Iberia or Georgia, that is All of Sakartvelo) and "ისტორია ძველი კოლხიდისა" (1840, History of Ancient Colchis) – and wrote commentaries to the 12th-century Georgian national epic "The Knight in the Panther"s Skin" ("განმარტება პოემა ვეფხისტყაოსანისა", 1843). His articles were published in the Paris-based Journal Asiatique and Memoires inedits.
Prince Teimuraz also authored several poems, and a memoir of his European travels as well as the Georgian translations of Tacitus, Voltaire, and Pushkin.
He died in Saint St. Petersburg and was buried there at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
He was elected an honorary member of the French Societe Asiatique (1831), the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences (1837) and the Danish Royal Antiquarian Society (1838).