Historical Context
On the Feast of the Annunciation in 1625, the Georgians defeated the army of the Persian Shah Abbas I at the Battle of Martqopi. The enraged shah dispatched a far larger force against Georgia under the Persian commander Isa-Khan Qurchibash. A Georgian army of some twenty thousand men encamped near Kojori-Tabakhmela in preparation for the attack, while the enemy army, numbering in excess of fifty thousand men, encamped at Marabda.
Wikipedia records the engagement as the Battle of Marabda, fought on 1 July 1625 near Marabda in Georgia between Safavid Iran, commanded by Isa Khan Safavi under Shah Abbas I, and the Kingdom of Kartli led by King Teimuraz I and Giorgi Saakadze. The Georgians, numbering about twenty thousand against roughly sixty thousand, inflicted heavy losses, and for a time their victory appeared almost inevitable; the arrival of Safavid reinforcements under Shahbandeh Khan turned the battle into a decisive counter-attack, and the field was ultimately lost.
The Banner of Marabda
The banner of the Georgian army was entrusted to the nine Kherkheulidze brothers, who according to the accounts carried the flag bearing the Cross of St. George. All nine brothers died while carrying and defending the standard. Their sister then took up the flag, and after she too was killed, the mother of the siblings bore it until her own death.
Other commanders fell alongside them at Marabda: the synaxarion names the military leaders Davit Jandieri, Aghatang Kherkheulidze, and Baadur Tsitsishvili, together with the bishops of Rustavi and Kharchasho. By the account preserved in the OCA synaxarion, nine thousand Georgians gave their lives at Marabda.
Veneration
The Kherkheulidze brothers, along with their mother, their sister, and the other nine thousand Georgian martyrs of the Battle of Marabda, were later canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church. Their feast is kept on 3 August (16 August on the New Calendar).
A chapel was built near the battlefield of Marabda, with a cemetery for the fallen Christian soldiers.
