Martyrs Bidzina Elizbar, and Shalva of Georgia

Bidzina, Elizbar, and Shalva were Georgian noblemen of the seventeenth century who led armed resistance to Persian domination in the eastern Georgian kingdom of Kakheti and were put to death in Persia in 1661 for refusing to renounce the Christian faith. Bidzina Choloqashvili was a prince of Kakheti, while Elizbar and Shalva were lords of the Ksani region. They are venerated together as martyrs, and their commemoration is kept on September 18.

In the mid-seventeenth century Kakheti lay under Persian rule, and the Persian governor Salim Khan encouraged Tatar tribesmen to settle the land and to profane its Christian churches. According to the synaxarion, the three princes united the forces of their regions and, on the moonless night of September 15, 1659, assembled an army drawn from across eastern Georgia and launched a surprise assault on the occupying forces from the area of Bakhtrioni Fortress and Alaverdi Church. The Persian army was routed so completely that Salim Khan barely escaped, abandoning his family and troops.

In reprisal, Shah Abbas II demanded that King Vakhtang V of Kartli deliver up the leaders of the uprising. The shah is said to have received the three princes with apparent respect and offered them gifts, but he required that they abandon Christianity. When they refused, they were subjected to torture. Elizbar and Shalva were beheaded, and Bidzina was killed after prolonged mutilation. Their relics were afterward gathered and, by tradition, brought to the Ikorta Church of the Archangels in Georgia.