Prince Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, known simply as Sulkhan-Saba, was a Georgian writer and diplomat. Orbeliani is noted in part due to his important role as an emissary of Georgia to France and the Vatican, where he vainly sought assistance on behalf of his beleaguered King Vakhtang VI.

Vakhtang VI, also known as Vakhtang the Scholar, Vakhtang the Lawgiver and Ḥosaynqolī Khan, was a Georgian monarch (mepe) of the royal Bagrationi dynasty. He ruled the East Georgian Kingdom of Kartli as a vassal of Safavid Persia from 1716 to 1724. One of the most important and extraordinary statesman of early 18th-century Georgia, he is known as a notable legislator, scholar, critic, translator and poet. His reign was eventually terminated by the Ottoman invasion following the disintegration of Safavid Persia, which forced Vakhtang into exile in the Russian Empire. Vakhtang was unable to get the tsar's support for his kingdom and instead had to permanently stay with his northern neighbors for his own safety. On his way to a diplomatic mission sanctioned by Empress Anna, he fell ill and died in southern Russia in 1737, never reaching Georgia.