David the Builder Wins at Didgori and Frees Tbilisi

On August 12, 1121, King David IV of Georgia faced an invading Seljuk coalition in the rugged valley around Mount Didgori, approximately forty kilometers west of Tbilisi. The campaign arose after Muslim merchants from cities such as Tbilisi and Ganja petitioned Sultan Mahmud II of Baghdad for military intervention against expanding Georgian authority. The sultan dispatched an army commanded by the Artuqid ruler Ilghazi ibn Artuq of Mardin, who had recently defeated Crusader forces in northern Syria. Ilghazi advanced into eastern Georgia hoping to join the garrison at Tbilisi, and the coalition camped in the Manglisi and Didgori area.

The size of the invading coalition remains contested among historians. Medieval chroniclers recorded astronomical figures, ranging from 400,000 to over half a million men, which modern scholars dismiss as impossible exaggerations. Modern Georgian historians generally estimate the coalition between 100,000 and 250,000 soldiers, while estimates put David IV's force at about 55,000 men. This Georgian host reflected major military reforms, centered on a royal household guard known as the mona-spa. It reportedly included thousands of Kipchaks who had resettled in Georgia from the northern steppes, alongside a small contingent of Frankish knights, with the exact numbers uncertain.