Mariam Dadiani (Georgian: მარიამ დადიანი between 1599 and 1609 – 1682) was the Queen of Kartli, wife of Rostom Bagrationi, daughter of the ruler of Migrelia, Manuchar Dadiani, half-sister of Levan II Dadiani and half-sister of Kaihostro I Gurieli.
In 1621 she married Simon, the son of Mamia II Gurieli. After Simon murdered his father, Mariam’s brother took his sister and took her to Migrelia, in Zugdidi. In 1634, with the permission of the Persian Shah, Mariam married King Rostom of Carthage. The marriage was directed against Teimuraz I and King George III of Imereti. After Rostom’s death in 1658, Mariam married King Vahtang V (Shahnavaz I) of Kartli.
Mariam restored the churches and monasteries destroyed by the conquerors, in particular, she rebuilt the Bolnisi Church, renovated the Ruissa Church, and others. Mariam collected and restored Georgian manuscripts, and used her own money to buy valuable parchments. In 1633-1646, with the help of Mariam, the rewritten collection Kartlis Tskhovreba was restored.
Mariam was the daughter of the powerful prince of Odisha (Migrelia) Manuchar I Dadiani, who ruled in 1590-1611. His first wife was Nestan Darejan Bagrationi, the daughter of King Alexander II of Kakheti. It is known that Shah Abbas I wanted to marry Nestan Darejan, but Alexander was categorically against this marriage and immediately married his daughter to Manuchar, the ruler of Odisha (Migrelia).
According to the Russian ambassadors Kuzma Sovin and Andrei Polukhanov, Manuchar married Nestan Darejan in 1596. Based on this date, as well as on the information of Arcangelo Lamberti, the historian Ilya Antelava accurately calculated the date of birth of Levan, the firstborn son of Manuchar and Nestan Darejan, in 1597, which was also the year of Nestan Darejan’s death (Vakhushti Bagrationi wrote that “Nestan Darejan died in childbirth”).
After mourning for Nestan Darejan, according to Vakhushti, Manuchar married Vakhtang’s widow Gurieli and the daughter of the atabagh. Bari Egnatashvili also writes that Mariam was the daughter of the atabagh’s daughter. According to an anonymous Georgian chronicler, Mariam’s mother’s name was Tamar. Based on this information, it is believed that Mariam’s mother was Tamar Dzhakeli, whose son from her first marriage was Kaihosro I Gurieli, a politician of western Georgia who ruled Guria in 1639-1658. Manuchar and Tamara Dzhakeli had four children: Erekle, Iese, Mariam, and another daughter whose name has not been preserved (the materials of the Russian embassy of 1652 mention Levan’s second sister Dadiani, who was sent to the Shah of Iran). It is not known which of the children-Jese, Erekle, Mariam, or an unnamed sister-was older. If we assume that Mariam was older, then her year of birth could not have been earlier than 1599. It is known that Mariam married Simon Gurieli in 1621, and in Georgia at that time it was forbidden to marry under the age of 12. Taking this law into account, Mariam could not have been born later than 1609, so she was most likely born between 1599 and 1609.