Zakaria was excommunicated and banished in 1764, but Besiki was allowed by King Erekle II to stay at the royal court where he received his education and began his career of a minstrel, his early style being influenced by Persian poetry and his older contemporary, the polyglot Tbilisite Armenian poet Sayat-Nova.

As a result of this conflict, Besiki was banned from Tbilisi and had to move to the Kingdom of Imereti (western Georgia), where he was welcomed and appointed a chancellor by Solomon I.

His troubadour affection to Solomon II’s younger wife, Ana, née Orbeliani, might well have been the reason for his being sent by the king on dangerous missions, the last of which to Imperial Russia, was intended to secure Russian protection for Imereti during the Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792).

For three years, he accompanied the Russian Field Marshal Potyomkin in the campaign against the Ottoman Empire, and suddenly died at Iaşi, Moldavia (25 January 1791), where he was buried.

He died unpublished, but hundreds of manuscript copies circulated for decades after his death; the titles and notes to many poems may be inventions of amateur copyists.