When the king of a great unified Iberia, Bakur III, died in 580, the Sassanid government of Persia under Hormizd IV (578–590) seized on the opportunity to abolish the Iberian monarchy.

The Iberian nobles acquiesced to this change without resistance,[1] while the heirs of the royal house withdrew to their highland fortresses – the main Chosroid line in Kakheti, and the younger Guaramid branch in Klarjeti and Javakheti.

[1] Through offering their protection to the Iberian principate, the Byzantine emperors pushed to limit Sassanid and then Islamic influence in the Caucasus, but the princes of Iberia were not always consistent in their pro-Byzantine line, and, as a matter of political expediency, sometimes recognized the suzerainty of the rival regional powers.

[3] Guaram's successor, the second presiding prince Stephen I, reoriented his politics towards Persia in a quest to reunite a divided Iberia, but this cost him his life when the Byzantine emperor Heraclius attacked Tbilisi in 626.

The dynasts of Iberia sat at Uplistsikhe whence they exercised only a limited authority over local Georgian lords who, entrenched in their mountain castles, maintained a degree of freedom from the Arabs.

This year witnessed a bloody crackdown upon the rebellious Georgian nobles organized by Khuzayma ibn Khazim, an Arab viceroy (wali) of the Caucasus.