The Georgian–Seljuk wars (Georgian: საქართველო-სელჩუკთა ომები, romanized: sakartvelo-selchuk'ta omebi), also known as Georgian Crusade, is a long series of battles and military clashes that took place from 1064 until 1213, between the Kingdom of Georgia and the different Seljukid states that occupied most of South Caucasus. The conflict began with deadly raids in the Caucasus by the Turks in the 11th century, known in Georgian historiography as the Great Turkish Invasion.
Background
In 1048–9, the Seljuk Turks under Ibrahim Yinal made their first incursion in Byzantine frontier region of Iberia. The emperor Constantine IX requested help from the Georgian duke Liparit IV of Kldekari, whom the Byzantines had aided in his struggle against the Georgian king Bagrat IV. Liparit, who had been fighting on the Byzantine side, was captured at the Battle of Kapetron. Bagrat took advantage of this, and acquired his possessions.
Although the Byzantine Empire and Georgia had centuries-long cultural and religious ties, and the Seljuqs posed a substantial threat to the empire itself, Constantinople's aggressiveness on the Caucasian political scene contributed to an atmosphere of distrust and recrimination, and prevented the two Christian nations from effective cooperation against the common threat. With assertion of the Georgian Bagratid hegemony in the Caucasus being the cornerstone of Bagrat's reign, his policy can be understood as the attempt to play the Seljuqs and Byzantines off against one another.
Seljukid invasions
The second half of the 11th century was marked by the strategically significant invasion of the Seljuq Turks, who by the end of the 1040s had succeeded in building a vast empire including most of Central Asia and Persia. These intruders were part of the same wave of the Turkish movement which inflicted a crushing defeat on the Byzantine army at Manzikert in 1071.
The Seljuks first appeared in Georgia in 1064, when Sultan Alp Arslan led an army from Ray to Nakhchivan and captured some castles garrisoned by Byzantine troops. He then handed over the command to his son Malik-Shah and Nizam al-Mulk, they marched westward and captured the Armenian fortified city of Marmashen. Then the Seljuks marched north and captured the Georgian fortified city of Akhalkalaki, which they set on fire. Faced with the growing threat from the east, Georgia and Byzantine overcame their decades-old enmity and entered a matrimonial alliance.
In 1068, Alp Arslan accompanied by his vassals, Aghsartan I of Kakheti and king of Lori as well as the emir of Tbilisi marched against Bagrat again, who had to vacate Kakheti and retreat to Kartli. The provinces of Kartli and Argveti were occupied and pillaged. The retreated king was saved when severe snowfalls set in and Alp Arslan left Kartli. As the Sultan passed Tbilisi, he gave the small emirate to Fadl ibn Shavur. Fadl encamped at Isani and with 33,000 men ravaged the countryside. As soon as Alp Arslan left Georgia, Bagrat quickly recovered Kartli and crushed emir Fadl who managed to flee with a few followers only to fall into the hands of Aghsartan. At the price of conceding several fortresses on the Iori River, Bagrat ransomed Fadl and received from him the surrender of Tbilisi where he reinstated a local emir on the terms of vassalage.
The Seljuk threat prompted the Georgian and Byzantine governments to seek a closer cooperation. To secure the alliance, Bagrat's daughter Maria married, at some point between 1066 and 1071, to the Byzantine co-emperor Michael VII Ducas. The choice of a Georgian princess was unprecedented, and it was seen in Georgia as a diplomatic success on Bagrat's part.
Great Turkish Invasion
Although the Georgians were able to recover from Alp Arslan's invasion, the Byzantine withdrawal from Anatolia brought them in more direct contact with the Seljuqs. In the 1070s, Georgia was twice attacked by the Sultan Malik Shah I, but the Georgian King George II managed to ward them off at the Battle of Partskhisi in 1074. However, in 1076 Malik Shah surged into Georgia and reduced many settlements to ruins, from 1079/80 onward, George was pressured into submitting to Malik-Shah to ensure a precious degree of peace at the price of an annual tribute. George's acceptance of the Seljuq suzerainty did not bring a real peace for Georgia. The Turks continued their seasonal movement into the Georgian territory to make use of the rich herbage of the Kura valley and the Seljuq garrisons occupied the key fortresses in Georgia's south. These inroads and settlements had a ruinous effect on Georgia's economic and political order. Cultivated lands were turned into pastures for the nomads and peasant farmers were compelled to seek safety in the mountains.
George II was able to garner the Seljuk military support in his campaign against the eastern Georgian kingdom of Kakheti, which had long resisted the Bagratid attempts of annexation. However, tired with a protracted siege of the Kakhetian stronghold of Vezhini, George abandoned the campaign when snow fell. The Seljuk auxiliaries also lifted the siege and plundered the fertile Iori Valley in Kakheti. Aghsartan I, king of Kakheti, went to the sultan to declare his submission, and in token of loyalty embraced Islam, thus winning a Seljuk protection against the aspirations of the Georgian crown.
George II's wavering character and incompetent political decisions coupled with the Seljuk yoke brought the Kingdom of Georgia into a profound crisis which climaxed in the aftermath of a disastrous earthquake that struck Georgia in 1088.
Georgian Reconquista
Reign of David IV
In 1110 the Georgians led by George Chqondideli, his nephew Theodore, Abuleti and Ivane Orbelian, retaliated against the Seljuk settlement and recaptured the town of Samshvilde, which was added to the royal domains, without a major battle. Following this capture, the Seljuks left a large part of their captured territories, allowing Georgian troops to capture Dzerna.
Responding to this double defeat, Sultan Muhammad I Tapar in 1110, sent a large army with the aim of invading Georgia. Knowing of the approach of Turkish troops, David IV left his home at Nacharmagevi with a personal guard of only 1,500 men and set out to meet the invaders during the night. The two armies, clearly unequal, clashed the next day at the Battle of Trialeti in a hard fight which ended in a decisive victory for Georgia.
The Battle of Trialeti deprived the Seljuk Empire of the opportunity to conduct a major military campaign against Georgia. In 1110–1114, David IV did not conduct active military operations either. In 1115, Roger of Salerno defeated the Atabag of Mosul at the Battle of Sarmin. After that, David became active again and in 1115-1118 he captured Rustavi, Lori, and Agarani and also defeated the Seljuks at the Battle of Rakhsi.
Problems began to crop up for David now. His population, having been at war for the better part of twenty years, needed to be allowed to become productive again. Also, his nobles were still making problems for him, along with the city of Tbilisi which still could not be liberated from Seljuk grasp. Again David was forced to solve these problems before he could continue the reclamation of his nation and people. For this purpose, David IV radically reformed his military. He resettled a Kipchak tribe of 40,000 families from the Northern Caucasus in Georgia in 1118–1120. Every Georgian and Kipchak family was obliged to provide one soldier with a horse and weapons. Kipchaks were settled in different regions of Georgia. Some were settled in Inner Kartli province, others were given lands along the border. They were Christianized and quickly assimilated into Georgian society.
In February 1116 by the order of David IV, the army of Kartli and Meskhetians were gathered at Klarjeti, David IV suddenly attacked and destroyed the Turks in Tao and captured Tao-Klarjeti and the numerous riches left by the Turks. In February 1120, David IV defeated the Seljuks at the Battle of Botora. In the battle the Georgians captured many opponents and gained a lot of booty.
In November 1120, David's army attacked and defeated the Seljuks in Arsharunik and Sevgelamej, And in 1121 he did the same in Khunan. In June 1121, David with the Kipchaks raided the camped Seljuks in Barda. In all these episodes the camp was destroyed meaning that the Georgian army managed to secretly approach it and perform a surprise attack.
In 1121, Sultan Mahmud b. Muhammad (1118–1131) declared a holy war on Georgia and rallied a large coalition of Muslim states led by the Artuqid Ilghazi and Toğrul b. Muhammad. The size of the Muslim army is still a matter of debate with numbers ranging from a fantastic 600,000 men (Walter the Chancellor's Bella Antiochena, Matthew of Edessa) to 400,000 (Smbat Sparapet's Chronicle) to modern Georgian estimates of 250,000–400,000 men. All sources agree that the Muslim powers gathered an army that was much larger than the Georgian force of 56,000 men. However, on 12 August 1121, King David routed the enemy army on the field of Didgori, achieving what is often considered the greatest military success in Georgian history. The victory at Didgori signaled the emergence of Georgia as a great military power and shifted the regional balance in favor of Georgian cultural and political supremacy. Following his success, David captured Tbilisi, the last Muslim enclave remaining from the Seljuk occupation, in 1122 and moved the Georgian capital there and inaugurated Georgia's Golden Age.
Ani's Armenians appealed to King David IV to capture Ani, taking this opportunity in hand, David IV summoned all his armies and entered Armenia with 60,000 men to take the city. Without a single fight, the Armenian population of Ani opened the gates to the Georgians, who captured emir Abu'l-Aswar Shavur ibn Manuchihr and exiled him and his family to Abkhazia. The region was then left to the governance of the Meskhetian nobility, to General Abuleti and his son Ivane. Northern Armenia was thus annexed and incorporated into the Kingdom of Georgia, increasing the power of David IV in the region.
Georgian conquest of Shirvan
The recapture of Tbilisi in 1122 by David IV thus established the Kingdom of Georgia as the supreme protector of Christianity in the Caucasus, and the Georgians now attempted to assert their domination by trying to reduce the Muslim presence in the region, which was considered an ally of the Seljuk Empire. This was the case in Shirvan, whose sovereign, who had already been defeated several times by Georgian troops, remained too independent of Georgian power and was forcibly replaced by David IV's sons-in-law, Manuchihr III, in 1120. The Seljuks, alarmed by the situation in Caucasus, decided to respond militarily.
Sultan Mahmud II soon resumed the war against Georgia, despite his defeat at the Battle of Didgori a year earlier. In November 1122, he began his invasion of Shirvan and captured Tabriz, before reaching the local capital, Shamakhi, the following spring. Mahmud then captured the Shirvanshah Manuchihr III and sent a letter to David IV saying: "You are the king of the forests, and you never go down to the plains. Now I have captured the Shirvanshah and I demand Kharaj [tribute] from him. If you wish, send me suitable gifts; if not, come and see me in all haste". Following this provocation, David IV called in all his troops and assembled an army of 50,000 men, most of them Kipchaks. The Seljuk sultan locked himself in Shamakhi after learning of the arrival of the Georgian troops, prompting David IV to halt his advance, deeming it disrespectful to pursue a retreating army. Mahmud II then offered David IV the opportunity to regain control of his vassal province if he let him leave in peace, but the Georgian king categorically refused and resumed his march towards the Shirvan capital after defeating an army of 4,000 Turks led by the atabeg of Arran, Aqsunqur Ahmadili, which was on its way to help Mahmud II. Once he had laid siege to Shamakhi, the Seljuk left the city in a hurry via the commune's excrement drainage system. In June 1123, a month after the Seljuk defeat, David IV invaded Shirvan, starting by capturing the town of Gulistan.