The Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti (Georgian: ქართლ-კახეთის სამეფო, romanized: kartl-k'akhetis samepo) was created in 1762 by the unification of the two eastern Georgian kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti. From the early 16th century, according to the 1555 Peace of Amasya, these two kingdoms were under Iranian control. In 1744, Nader Shah granted the kingship of Kartli to Teimuraz II and that of Kakheti to his son Heraclius II, as a reward for their loyalty. When Nader Shah died in 1747, Teimuraz II and Heraclius II capitalized on the instability in Iran proper, and declared de facto independence. After Teimuraz II died in 1762, Heraclius succeeded him as ruler of Kartli, thus unifying the two kingdoms.
Heraclius was able, after centuries of Iranian suzerainty over Georgia, to guarantee the autonomy of his kingdom throughout the chaos that had erupted following Nader Shah's death. He became the new Georgian king of a politically united eastern Georgia for the first time in three centuries. Though Heraclius tendered his de jure submission to the newly established Zand dynasty quickly after the unification in 1762, the kingdom remained de facto autonomous for the next three decades to come. In 1783, Heraclius signed the Treaty of Georgievsk with the Russian Empire, by which he formally laid Kartli-Kakheti's investiture in the hands of the Russian monarch, and made the kingdom a Russian protectorate. Amongst others, this provided the nominal guarantee for protection against new Iranian attempts, or by any others, to (re)conquer or attack eastern Georgia. By the 1790s, a new strong Iranian dynasty, the Qajar dynasty, had emerged under Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, which would prove pivotal in the history of the short-lived kingdom.
