Rusudan of Georgia

King George IV, who has become an invalid as a result of his wounds, dies prematurely at the age of 31.

The surprise attacks by the Mongols have 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 have seemingly deferred their plans regarding Georgia, King George IV's sister and successor Queen Rusudan writes, 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.

George’s untimely death marks the beginning of the end of the Georgian “golden age”.

Rusudan is too weak to preserve the gains of her predecessors.

Georgia is attacked in the autumn of 1225, by the Khwarezmian shah Jalal ad-Din, pursued by the Mongols.

The Georgians suffer bitter defeat at the Battle of Garni, and …

…the royal court with Queen Rusudan moves to Kutaisi when the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, is besieged by the Khwarezmians.

Jalal ad-Din takes Tbilisi on March 9, 1226.

The citizens have fought courageously and over one hundred thousand have their lives to the Khwarezmian invaders.

The defeated Georgians are ordered to change religion and become Muslims but refuse; in consequence, almost the whole population of Tbilisi is massacred.

The Georgians take advantage of Jalal ad-Din’s failures in Armenia and retake Tbilisi In February 1227, but soon are forced to abandon the city—which they themselves had set alight in their battle with the occupation forces.

Mongol raiders assisted by the Georgians had devastated the Anatolian countryside as far as the walls of Sivas and Malatya in 1236-37.

Since the Mongol horsemen disappeared as quickly as they had come, Kayqubad, Seljuq sultan of Rûm, had moved to punish their Georgian allies.

As the Seljuq army approached, Queen Rusudan of Georgia had sued for peace, offering her daughter Tamar in marriage to Kaykhusraw II, the son of Kayqubad and his Armenian wife.

This marriage takes place in 1240.

Kaykhusraw, with the support of the great emirs of Anatolia, had seized the throne of the Sultanate of Rûm upon the death of Kayqubad in 1237.

The architect of his early reign is a certain Sa'd al-Din Köpek, master of the hunt and minister of works under Kayqubad.

Köpek excels at political murder and seeks to protect his newfound influence at the court with a series of executions.

He captures Diyarbakir from the Ayyubids in 1241.

A new danger appears from within the Seljuq state as the Mongols threaten from the outside: a charismatic preacher, Baba Ishak, is fomenting rebellion among the Turkmen of Anatolia.

Nomadic Turkmen had begun moving into Anatolia a few years prior to the Battle of Manzikert.

After 1071, Turkic migration into the region had gone largely unchecked.

Both their number and the persuasive power of their religious leaders, nominally Islamized shamans known as babas or dedes, have played a large part in the conversion of formerly Christian Anatolia.

The Persianized Seljuq military class has expended considerable effort keeping these nomads from invading areas inhabited by farmers and from harassing neighboring Christian states.

The Turkmen have been pushed into marginal lands, mostly mountainous and frontier districts.

Baba Ishak is one such religious leader.

Unlike his predecessors, whose influence had been limited to smaller tribal groups, Baba Ishak’s authority extends over a vast population of Anatolian Turkmen.

It is not known what he preached, but his appropriation of the title rasul, normally applied to Muhammad, suggests something beyond orthodox Islam.

The revolt had begun in about 1240 in the remote borderland of Kafarsud in the eastern Taurus Mountains and quickly spread north to the region of Amasya.

Seljuq armies at Amasya and …

…Malatya are destroyed.

Soon, …

…the very heart of Seljuq Anatolia, the regions around Kayseri, …