Mongol invasions of Georgia and Armenia

The Mongol invasions reached the kingdom of Georgia (which included most of Armenia proper at the time) and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia in 1234, forcing Georgia into submission by 1238.

During the expedition of Chormaqan against Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu, ordered by khan Ögedei in 1231, Azerbaijan and southern Persian dynasties in Fars and Kerman voluntarily submitted to the Mongols and agreed to pay tributes.^[1] To the west, Hamadan and the rest of Persia was secured by Chormaqan. The Mongols turned their attention to Armenia and Georgia in 1234 or 1236. They completed the conquest of the Kingdom of Georgia in 1238 and the Mongol Empire began to attack western parts of Greater Armenia which was under the Seljuks the next year. In 1236 Ogedei commanded to raise up Khorassan and populated Herat. The Mongol military governors mostly made their camp in Mughan plain, Azerbaijan. Realizing the danger of the Mongols, rulers of Mosul and Cilician Armenia submitted to the Great Khan. Chormaqan divided the Transcaucasia region into three districts based on military hierarchy.^[2] In Georgia, the population were temporarily divided into eight tumens.^[3] By 1237 the Mongol Empire had subjugated most of Persia, excluding Abbasid Iraq and Ismaili strongholds, and all of Afghanistan and Kashmir.^[4] After the battle of Köse Dağ in 1243, the Mongols under Baiju occupied Anatolia, and the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm and the Empire of Trebizond became vassals of the Mongols.^[5]

The Mongol rule lasted until the late 1320s, when King George V the Brilliant restored the kingdom of Georgia for a brief period before it finally disintegrated due to Timur's invasions of Georgia.

Initial attacks

The Mongols made their first appearance in the Georgian possessions when this latter kingdom was still in its zenith, dominating most of the Caucasus. First contact occurred early in the fall of 1220, when approximately 20,000 Mongols led by Subutai and Jebe pursued the ousted Shah Muhammad II of Khwarezmia to the Caspian Sea. With the consent of Genghis Khan, the two Mongol generals proceeded west on a reconnaissance mission. They thrust into Armenia, then under the Georgian authority, and defeated some 60,000 Georgians and Armenians commanded by King George IV "Lasha" of Georgia and his atabek (tutor) and spasalar (commander-in-chief) Iwane Mkhargrdzeli at the Battle of Khunan on the Kotman River. George was severely wounded in the chest. The Mongol commanders, however, were not inclined to conquer the Caucasus at that time and turned back south to Hamadan, only to return in force in January 1221. The battle at Bardav (Pardav; modern-day Barda, Azerbaijan) was indecisive and the invaders withdrew to the Caspian Sea. Then the Mongols marched to the north plundering northeastern Armenia and Shirvan en route. This took them through the Caucasus into Alania and the South Russian steppes where the Mongols routed the Rus’-Kipchak armies at the Battle of the Kalka River (1223).

These surprise attacks left the Georgians in confusion as to the identity of their attackers: the record of one contemporary chronicler indicates that he is unaware of the nature of the attackers and does not mention them by name. In 1223, when the Mongols had seemingly deferred their plans regarding Georgia, King George IV's sister and successor Queen Rusudan wrote in a letter to Pope Honorius III, that the Georgians had presumed the Mongols were Christians because they fought Muslims, but they had turned out to be pagans.

Mongol conquest of Georgia

The third and final invasion of the Caucasus by the Mongols took place in 1236. This offensive, which would prove the ruin of Georgia, was preceded by the devastating conflict with Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu, a refugee shah of Khwarezmia, who had demanded in 1225, that the Georgian government support his war against the Mongols. The ensuing Khwarezmian attack, Tblisi was captured in 1226, and much of the former strength and prosperity of the Kingdom of Georgia was destroyed, leaving the country largely defenseless in the face of the forthcoming Mongol conquests.

After the death of Mingburnu in 1231, the Mongols' hands were finally free and the prominent Mongol commander Chormaqan led, in 1236, a large army against Georgia and its vassal Armenian princedoms. Most of the Georgian and Armenian nobles, who held military posts along the frontier regions submitted without any serious opposition or confined their resistance to their castles while others preferred to flee to safer areas. Queen Rusudan had to evacuate Tbilisi for Kutaisi, leaving eastern Georgia in the hands of atabek Avag Mkhargrdzeli and Egarslan Bakurtsikheli, who made peace with the Mongols and agreed to pay them tribute. The only Georgian great noble to have resisted was Iwane Jakeli-Tsikhisjvreli, prince of Samtskhe. His extensive possessions were fearfully devastated, and Iwane had to finally, with the consent of Queen Rusudan, submit to the invaders in 1238. The Mongol armies chose not to cross the Likhi Range in pursuit of the Georgian queen, leaving western Georgia relatively spared of the rampages. Rusudan attempted to gain support from Pope Gregory IX, but without any success. Atabek Avag arranged her submission in 1243, and Georgia officially acknowledged the Great Khan as its overlord. The country was forced to pay an annual tribute of 50,000 gold pieces and support the Mongols with an army.

Mongol rule in Georgia and Armenia

Main article: Armenia under the Ilkhanate

The Mongols created the Vilayet of Gurjistan, which included Georgia and the whole South Caucasus, where they ruled indirectly, through the Georgian monarch, the latter to be confirmed by the Great Khan upon his/her ascension. With the death of Rusudan in 1245, an interregnum began during which the Mongols divided the Caucasus into eight tumens. Exploiting the complicated issue of succession, the Mongols had the Georgian nobles divided into two rival parties, each of which advocated their own candidate to the crown. These were David VII "Ulu", an illegitimate son of George IV, and his cousin David VI "Narin", son of Rusudan. After a failed plot against the Mongol rule in Georgia (1245), Güyük Khan made, in 1247, both pretenders co-kings, in eastern and western parts of the kingdom respectively. The system of dumans was abolished, but the Mongols closely watched the Georgian administration in order to secure a steady flow of taxes and tributes from the subject peoples, who were also pressed into the Mongol armies.

Large Georgian contingents fought under the Mongol banners at Alamut (1256), Baghdad (1258), Ain Jalut (1260) and elsewhere, losing tens of thousands of soldiers while Georgia, and the Caucasus in general, was left without native defenders against the Mongol forces dispatched to suppress spontaneous revolts erupting in protest to heavy taxation and the onerous burden of military service.^[6] Ironically, in the Battle of Köse Dag (1243), where the Mongols crushed the Seljuks of Rüm, at least three thousand Georgian auxiliaries fought in the Mongol ranks, while the Georgian prince Shamadavle of Akhaltsikhe was a commander in the Seljuk army.^[7]

In 1256, Georgia was placed under the Mongol empire of Ilkhanate, centered on Persia (Iran). In 1259–1260, Georgian nobles, led by David Narin, rose against the Mongols, and succeeding in separation of Imereti (western Georgia) from the Mongol-controlled eastern Georgia. David Ulu decided to join his cousin in rebellion, but was defeated near Gori and once again submitted to Mongol rule. Beginning with 1261, the Caucasus became a theater of the series of conflicts fought between Il-Khanids and another Mongol empire of Golden Horde centered in the lower Volga with its capital at Sarai.

Georgia's unity was shattered; the nobles were encouraged to rise against the crown that naturally facilitated the Mongol control of the country. In 1266, Prince Sargis Jakeli of Samtskhe (with Akhaltsikhe as the capital) was granted special protection and patronage by the khan Abaqa, thus winning virtual independence from the Georgian crown. The next (eastern) Georgian king Demetre II, "the Devoted" (1259–1289), through maneuvering in the intrigues that divided the Il-khans, attempted to revive his country, but suspected in an abortive coup against Arghun Khan, he had, to save Georgia from invasion, to agree to surrender and be executed. Then the kingdom fell into near anarchy. While western Georgia maintained a perilous independence from the Ilkhans, eastern Georgia suffered from both heavy tribute and unstable political situation. In religious matters the Mongols were generally tolerant even though many churches and monasteries were taxed. An uprising by David VIII (1292–1310), though long-lasting, did not lead to the liberation of Georgia, but prompted a series of devastating punitive expeditions. The Mongols attempted to retain the control over the country by raising and bringing down the rival monarchs and by inciting the civil strife, but their influence over Georgia gradually weakened with the disintegration of the Il-khan power in Persia.

Revival and collapse of the kingdom of Georgia

There was a brief period of reunion and revival under George V the Brilliant (1299–1302, 1314–1346). George V took the opportunity of a new tide of disorders hitting the Ilkhanate in 1327, and stopped payments of tribute, drove the Mongols out of the country, and reconquered much of what had been lost under his predecessors, marking the end of the Mongol domination of Georgia and the Caucasus.

The eight onslaughts of the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur between 1386 and 1403 dealt a great blow to the Georgian kingdom. Its unity was finally shattered and, by 1491, Georgia was shattered into a number of petty kingdoms and principalities, which throughout the Early Modern period struggled to maintain their autonomy against Safavid and Ottoman domination until Georgia was finally annexed by the Russian Empire in 1801.

References

1. ^ Timothy May-Chormaqan, p.47
2. ^ Grigor of Akanc-The history of the nation of archers, (tr. R.P.Blake) 303
3. ^ Kalistriat Salia-History of the Georguan Nation, p.210
4. ^ Thomas T. Allsen-Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia, p.84
5. ^ George Finlay- The history of Greece from its conquest by the Crusaders to its conquest by the Ottomans, p.384
6. ^ The Turco-Mongol Invasions and the Lords of Armenia in the 13-14th Centuries, R. Bedrosian's Ph.D. Dissertation (Columbia University, 1979)
7. ^ The Caucasian Borderland. (Excerpts from A lecture by WED Allen delivered at the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, London, on May 4, 1942

• Ronald Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation: 2nd edition (December 1994), Indiana University Press, ISBN 0-253-20915-3, pages 39–44
• Georgian Soviet Encyclopedia (k’art’uli sabch’ota entsiklopedia) (1984), Tbilisi: vol. 7, page 112-3
• Lang, D. M. (1955). "Georgia in the Reign of Giorgi the Brilliant (1314-1346)". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 17 (1): 74–91. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00106354. JSTOR 609230. 

External links

• Chormaqan Noyan: The First Mongol Military Governor in the Middle East by Timothy May
• Chormaqan and the Mongol Conquest of the Middle East by Timothy May
• Coinage of Georgia during the Mongol period

See also

• Ilkhanate
• Mongol invasion of Persia