Safavid rule was mainly exercised through the approval or appointment of Georgian royals of the Bagrationi dynasty, at times converts to Shia Islam, as valis or khans.

Tiflis was garrisoned by an Iranian force as early as Ismail I's reign, but relations between the Georgians and Safavids at the time mostly bore features of traditional vassalage.

David XI (Davud Khan) was the first Safavid-appointed ruler, whose placement on the throne of Kartli in 1562 marked the start of nearly two and a half centuries of Iranian political control of eastern Georgia.

He did raid Georgia a number of times, notably in 1518, which reconfirmed its status as a vassal, and in 1522, which resulted in Tiflis being garrisoned by a large Safavid force, but it was only under his son and successor Tahmasp I (r. 1524–1576) that a genuine province with Safavid-appointed rulers and governors began to take shape.

[9] Beginning with the rule of Tahmasp I, Georgians would contribute greatly to the character of Safavid society and play a major role in its army and civil administration.

[11] To speed up the process of integration into the empire, Tahmasp I imposed numerous Iranian political and social institutions such as bilingual Georgian–Persian farmâns, with the aim of establishing Persian as the official administrative language of Safavid Georgia.

As a result, the Safavids released the Georgian rebel ruler Shahnavaz Khan (Simon I of Kartli) from captivity to enable him to join the fight against the Ottomans.

[15] Unable to resist the Ottoman invasion, Manuchar II Jaqeli of Samtskhe accepted the Iranian overlordship as well and moved to the Safavid court, where he lived until his death in 1614.

[17] By the end of the 16th century, Georgians, forming an increasingly influential military faction, became a major threat to the Qizilbash, the traditional backbone of the Safavid army.

[15] In 1614–1617, as a punishment for disobedience shown by his formerly loyal subjects Lohrasb and Tahmuras Khan, Abbas I launched several major punitive campaigns in his Georgian territories.

[28][e] In 1624–25 Manuchar III Jaqeli, appointed earlier by Abbas I as nominal ruler of Samtskhe, moved to Kartli to join the rebellion of Murav-Beg (Giorgi Saakadze) against Safavid rule.

In return for his loyalty, the then-incumbent king, Safi (r. 1629–1642), had given him the title of Rostam Khan, and had made him governor of Kartli, a post which he held for more than twenty years.

Being the loyal servant he was, after consulting the Safavid king, Rostam was allowed to marry a sister of Levan II Dadiani, ruler of Mingrelia (western Georgia), named Mariam.

[32][33] King Safi paid for the wedding gifts, and sent some 50,000 marchil, roughly half a ton of silver, to the ruler of Mingrelia, and provided him with an annual salary of 1,000 tomans (3-gram gold coins); an alliance was thus founded with the Mingrelians.

George III of Imereti blocked the border with Kartli, compelling Rostom's wedding party to take a circuitous route via Akhaltsikhe, and intercepted Dadiani on his way to the marriage, but he was defeated and taken prisoner by Levan at the Kaka Bridge near Baghdati.

In 1719 the Iranian government decided to send Hosayn-Qoli Khan, who had occupied several other high positions since 1716, back to Georgia with the task of handling the Lezgin rebellion.

[40] Assisted by the ruler of neighboring Kakheti, as well as the governor (beglarbeg) of Shirvan, Hosayn-Qoli made significant progress in putting a halt to the Lezgins.

[40] The order, which came after the fall of grand vizier Fath-Ali Khan Daghestani, was made at the instigation of the eunuch faction within the royal court, who had persuaded the shah that a successful end to the campaign would do the Safavid realm more harm than good.

[44][45] Upon arrival in Iran, the bullion was usually brought to the provincial mints in the border area with the Ottoman Empire such as Tiflis, Erivan (Yerevan), or Tabriz in order to be melted into Iranian coins.

[54] French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort confirms this: according to his texts of 1701, people in large parts of Georgia preferred to be paid in materials such as bracelets, rings, necklaces, and so forth.

[26] The French missionary and traveller Père Sanson, who was in Safavid Iran during the latter part of King Suleiman I's reign (1666–1694), wrote that a "large number" of troops were stationed in Georgia.

[58] Towards the end of Sultan Husayn's reign (1694–1722), the troops at the behest of the then-governor of Kartli, Hosayn-Qoli Khan (Vakhtang VI), numbered some 10,000 Georgians and 3,000–4,000 Iranians.

[59] Furthermore, during Rostom's rule, positions characteristic of the Safavid state, such as vazir (adviser, minister), mostowfi (chief financial clerk), and monshi (scribe), were introduced, serving as supervisory roles for the royal court.

[59] Historical records from the 1570s also document the roles of malek and darugha, officials in the town administration of Georgia, which are associated with the political influence of Iran during that period.

[64] As outlined in the Dastur al-Moluk, the Kartli vali's annual salary was linked to the profits generated from the Poshkuh, Tarom, and Qazvin regions.

[66] According to the Tadhkirat al-Moluk, the vali of Kartli was the third of the top-ranking officials not residing at court, and held a higher status than the second category of great amirs, those attached to the palace.

[32] Chardin assumed that the process had been influenced by those nobles who had converted to Islam (in order to obtain positions as state officials), as well as those who encouraged their female relatives to become ladies at court.

[32] According to a letter sent to the Pope by a Catholic missionary who flourished in the 17th century, Padre Bernardi, it was to his "great regret" that literate Georgians preferred to read works such as the Rostomiani (Shahnameh), Bezhaniani, and Baramguriani and were less interested in religious texts.

[67] Though Vakhtang, individually, was heavily involved in further developing Georgian-Iranian literary ties (in other words, by his own writings), he also founded an entire school dedicated to translators from Persian into Georgian.

Though historian Rudi Matthee reports that the story may be "apocryphal", as alcoholism did kill Safi, but not in relation to a drinking contest, it does show that Georgian habits had spread to Iran.