Jalal al-Din takes the city of Tiflis from the Georgians

فتح جلال الدين مدينة تفليس من الكرج

c. 11 March 1226 CE · 8 Rabi' I 623 AH

Tiflis

On 8 Rabi' I 623 Jalal al-Din b. Khwarazmshah took the city of Tiflis from the Georgians. He marched against them after they had mustered an uncounted host from neighbouring peoples, the Alans, the Lakz and the Qipchaq; he set ambushes in several places, and when the armies met the Georgians fled. He ordered his troops to spare no one, and they pursued until they nearly annihilated them. Some urged him to march on Tiflis, the seat of their kingdom, but he said: 'We have no need to kill our men beneath the walls; if the Georgians are wiped out, the land will be taken whole.' He set out against it with three thousand horsemen, most of his army hidden in ambush. When the Georgians came out, thinking him few, he drew back until they had passed into the ambushes; they fled into the city, the Muslims followed, its Muslim people called out the cry of Islam and Jalal al-Din's name, the Georgians laid down their arms, and the Muslims took the city by storm. Ibn al-Athir mentions that it was among the strongest cities on both banks of the Kur river, that the Georgians had seized it in 515 when Sultan Mahmud b. Muhammad b. Malikshah reigned, and that neither he nor his brother Mas'ud, nor al-Dukuz and al-Bahlawan after them, could take it, until Jalal al-Din came, when the land had first been weakened by the Georgians and then uprooted by the Tatars; and so he did these deeds to them ¹.