ABSTRACT
In Persia during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, two men were oscillating back and forth between Christianity and Islam more or less in the same years. However, there is reason to believe that Giorgi Saak'adze's demise was actually due to his plan to return to either Persia or Georgia, which of course would have entailed another conversion to either Shiite Islam or Christianity. As for individual Armenians, the main reasons behind conversion seem to have been fiscal pressure and the legal possibility offered to converts to usurp the inheritance of their still-Christian relatives. Thus the dynamics governing the attitude of these members towards conversion to Islam did not necessarily apply to Georgians of non-royal blood. The Bagrat'ionis was in an exceptional position as far as the conversion to Islam of the Georgians in Safavid Persia is concerned.
