Bediani (Georgian: ბედიანი) was a medieval title, or a territorial epithet, of the Dadiani, the ruling family of Mingrelia in western Georgia, derived from the canton of Bedia, in Abkhazia, and in use from the end of the 12th century into the 15th.
[1] The extent of the fief of Bedia is difficult to define; by the latter half of the 17th century, the Shervashidze of Abkhazia had supplanted the Dadiani in that area.
Barbaro, further, reported that Bendiani of Mingrelia possessed, inter alia, two fortified cities on the Black Sea, called Vathi and Sauastopoli, the former identified with Batumi, then in Guria, and the latter being Sukhumi, now in Abkhazia.
The suggested boundaries of the principality, at its largest extent, were from the Chorokhi river to the Greater Caucasus crest and from the Tskhenistsqali to the Black Sea.
[7][3] Other historians, such as Cyril Toumanoff[1] and Tamaz Beradze,[2] dismissed the possibility of existence of the Dadiani-ruled unified polity such as Sabediano, with Abkhazia and Guria as its parts.