Year 1228 (MCCXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.
Tamar the Great reigned as the Queen of Georgia from 1184 to 1213, presiding over the apex of the Georgian Golden Age. A member of the Bagrationi dynasty, her position as the first woman to rule Georgia in her own right was emphasized by the title mepe ("king"), afforded to Tamar in the medieval Georgian sources.
The Battle of the Indus was fought on the banks of the Indus River, on 24 November 1221, by two armies commanded by Shah Jalal al-Din Mingburnu of the Khwarazmian Empire, and Genghis Khan of the Mongol Empire. The battle, which resulted in an overwhelming Mongol victory, was the concluding engagement in the Mongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire.
Shams ud-Din Iltutmish was the third of the Mamluk kings who ruled the former Ghurid territories in northern India. He was the first Muslim sovereign to rule from Delhi, and is thus considered the effective founder of the Delhi Sultanate.
Rusudan, a member of the Bagrationi dynasty, ruled as queen regnant (mepe) of Georgia in 1223–1245.
The Battle of Didgori was fought between the armies of the Kingdom of Georgia and the Seljuk Empire at the narrow place of Didgori, 40 km west of Tbilisi, on August 12, 1121. The large Muslim army, under the command of Ilghazi, was unable to maneuver and suffered a devastating defeat due to King David IV of Georgia's effective military tactics.
The Battle of Garni was fought in 1225 near Garni, in modern day Armenia, then part of the Kingdom of Georgia. The invading Khwarazmian Empire was led by Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu, its last Sultan, who was driven from his realm by the Mongol Empire and was trying to recapture lost territories. The battle ended with a Khwarezmid victory and is marked as a disastrous event in Georgian history due to betrayal. As a result, the royal court of Georgian Queen Rusudan (1223–1245) moved to Kutaisi and the country was exposed to subsequent looting during the Mongol invasion.
The Cumans-Kipchaks in Georgia are of an ancient nomadic Turkic people who inhabited large territories from Central Asia to Eastern Europe. They played an important role in the history of many nations in the region, Georgia among them. At the height of this Caucasian power from the 12th to the 13th centuries, Georgian monarchs recruited thousands of Kipchak/Cuman mercenaries and successfully exploited their service against the neighboring Muslim states.
The Mongol invasions of Georgia, which at that time consisted of Georgia proper, Armenia, and much of the Caucasus, involved multiple invasions and large-scale raids throughout the 13th century. The Mongol Empire first appeared in the Caucasus in 1220 as generals Subutai and Jebe pursued Muhammad II of Khwarezm during the destruction of the Khwarezmian Empire. After a series of raids in which they defeated the combined Georgian and Armenian armies, Subutai and Jebe continued north to invade Kievan Rus'.
Anatoly Mikhailovich Khazanov is an anthropologist and historian.
Otrok is an early twelfth-century Cuman-Kipchak chieftain (khan) who was involved in the wars with Kievan Rus', and later served under the Kingdom of Georgia. He was a member of the Sharukanids, one the ruling houses of the Kipchak tribal confederation known to the Rus' as "Wild Cumans"(zkurveni kokoti).
Tsotne Dadiani was a Georgian nobleman of the House of Dadiani and one of the leading political figures in the time of Mongol ascendancy in Georgia. Around 1246, he was part of a failed plot aimed at overthrowing the Mongol hegemony, but survived arrest and torture in captivity that befell upon his fellow conspirators when their designs to stage a rebellion was betrayed to the Mongols. A story from the medieval Georgian annals relating Tsotne's insistence on sharing his accomplices' fate that moved the Mongols to mercy made him a popular historical figure and a saint of the Georgian Orthodox Church.
The Khalaj are a Turkic ethnic group who mainly reside in Iran. In Iran they still speak the Khalaj language, although most of them are Persianized.
The 1244 siege of Jerusalem took place after the Sixth Crusade, when a Khwarazmian army conquered the city on July 15, 1244.
Jalal al-Din Mangburni, also known as Jalal al-Din Khwarazmshah, was the last Khwarazmshah of the Anushteginid dynasty. The eldest son and successor of Ala ad-Din Muhammad II of the Khwarazmian Empire, Jalal al-Din was brought up at Gurganj, the wealthy capital of the Khwarazmid homeland. An able general, he served as second-in-command to his father in at least one battle; however, since he was the son of a concubine, he was challenged as successor by a younger brother, whose cause was supported by the powerful Queen Mother, Terken Khatun. Nevertheless, after the Mongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire led to his father's flight and death on an island in the Caspian Sea, Jalal-al Din gained the loyalty of the majority of Khwarazmian loyalists.
The Khwarazmian or Khwarezmian Empire was a culturally Persianate, Sunni Muslim empire of Turkic mamluk origin. Khwarazmians ruled large parts of present-day Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iran in the approximate period of 1077 to 1231, first as vassals of the Seljuk Empire and the Qara Khitai, and from circa 1190 as independent rulers, up until the Mongol conquest in 1219–1221.
The Hundred Thousand Martyrs are saints of the Georgian Orthodox Church, who were put to death, according to the 14th-century anonymous Georgian Chronicle of a Hundred Years, for not renouncing Christianity by the Khwarezmid sultan Jalal ad-Din upon his capture of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in 1226. The source claims the number of those killed were 100,000. The Georgian church commemorates them on 13 November.
Ghias ad-din was a member of the Seljuk dynasty of Rum and husband of Queen Rusudan of Georgia from c. 1223 to 1226. A son of the emir of Erzurum, he converted to Christianity on his father's order so as he could marry the queen of Georgia. Ghias ad-din's position at the Georgian court was weak and the spousal relationship was strained due to Rusudan's unfaithfulness. He shifted back and forth across the religious and political divide during the Khwarezmid invasion of Georgia in 1226. Around the same time, he was repudiated by Rusudan, and thereafter disappears from records, leaving two children behind, a daughter, Tamar, and a son, David.
Apridon or Afridon was the 12th-century Georgian politician, a dependent "aznauri", who had been raised to the rank of msakhurtukhutsesi.
The Otrar Catastrophe was a siege that took place between December 1219 and February 1220 during the Mongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire at Otrar, a large trading city on the Syr Darya river. Inalchuq, the city's governor, had seized the goods of a Mongol trade caravan the previous year; after more provocations from Inalchuq's liege and ruler of the Khwarazmian Empire, Shah Muhammad II, Genghis Khan launched a full-scale invasion of the empire.
Kingdom of Georgia 