Didgori, Battle of
1121 CE
The Battle of Didgori is fought between the armies of the Kingdom of Georgia and the crumbling Great Seljuq Empire at a place called Didgori, 40 km west of Tbilisi, (the present-day capital of Georgia), on August 12, 1121.
The battle results in King David IV of Georgia’s decisive victory over a Seljuk invasion army under Ilghazi and the subsequent reconquest of a Muslim-held Tbilisi, which becomes the royal capital.
The victory at Didgori inaugurates medieval Georgia’s "Golden Age" and is celebrated in the Georgian chronicles as a "miraculous victory", while modern Georgians continue to remember the event as an annual September festival known as Didgoroba ("[the day] of Didgori").
Subject
Related Events
Showing 2 events out of 2 total
The Georgian population, having been at war for the better part of twenty years, needs to become productive again.
The people continue to challenge the authority of the king, David IV, and the city of Tbilisi remains in Seljuq hands.
David IV has radically reformed his military, having resettled a Kipchak tribe of fourteen thousand families from the Northern Caucasus in Georgia in 1118–1120 and obliging every Georgian and Kipchak family to provide one soldier with a horse and weapons.
This army, fifty-six thousand strong, is entirely dependent on the King.
Kipchaks have been settled in different regions of Georgia, some in Inner Kartli province, others given lands along the border.
They are quickly assimilated into Georgian society.
David IV had moved his army to western Georgia In 1120, and suddenly attacked a Seljuq force, of whom only an small portion escaped.
The king had then entered neighboring Shirvan and taken the town of Qabala.
In the winter of 1120–1121, the Georgian troops successfully attack the Seljuq settlements on the eastern and southwestern approaches to the Transcaucasus.
Muslim powers are increasingly concerned about the rapid rise of a Christian state in southern Caucasia.
Grand Seljuq Sultan Mahmud II declares a holy war on Georgia in 1121 and rallies a large coalition of Muslim states led by the Artuqid Najm al-din El-ğazi and Toğrul b. Muhammad.
The size of the Muslim army is still a matter of debate with numbers ranging from fantastic six hundred thousand men (Walter the Chancellor’s Bella Antiochena, Matthew of Edessa) to four hundred thousand (Smbat Sparapet’s Chronicle) to modern Georgian estimates of two hundred and fifty thousand to four hundred thousand men.
All sources agree that the Muslim powers gathered an army that was far much larger than the Georgian force of fifty-six thousand men.
However, on August 12, 1121, David and his army rout the Seljuqs on the fields at the base of Mount Didgori.
The victory signals the emergence of Georgia as a significant military power and shifts the regional balance in favor of Georgian cultural and political supremacy.