[2] The second half of the 11th century was marked by the strategically significant invasion of the Seljuq Turks, who by the end of the 1040s had succeeded in building a vast empire including most of Central Asia and Persia.

[5] The Seljuks first appeared in Georgia in 1064, when Sultan Alp Arslan led an army from Ray to Nakhchivan and captured some castles garrisoned by Byzantine troops.

As soon as Alp Arslan left Georgia, Bagrat quickly recovered Kartli and crushed emir fadl who was managed to flee with a few followers only to fall into the hands of Aghsartan.

At the price of conceding several fortresses on the Iori River, Bagrat ransomed Fadl and received from him the surrender of Tbilisi where he reinstated a local emir on the terms of vassalage.

[10] In 1076 Malik Shah surged into Georgia and reduced many settlements to ruins, from 1079/80 onward, George was pressured into submitting to Malik-Shah to ensure a precious degree of peace at the price of an annual tribute.

The Turks continued their seasonal movement into the Georgian territory to make use of the rich herbage of the Kura valley and the Seljuq garrisons occupied the key fortresses in Georgia's south.

[5] George II was able to garner the Seljuk military support in his campaign aimed at bringing the eastern Georgian kingdom of Kakheti, which had long resisted the Bagratid attempts of annexation.

Aghsartan I, king of Kakheti, went to the sultan to declare his submission, and in token of loyalty embraced Islam, thus winning a Seljuk protection against the aspirations of the Georgian crown.

George II's wavering character and incompetent political decisions coupled with the Seljuk yoke brought the Kingdom of Georgia into a profound crisis which climaxed in the aftermath of a disastrous earthquake that struck Georgia in 1088.In 1110 the Georgians led by George Chqondideli, his nephew Theodore, Abuleti and Ivane Orbelian, retaliated against the Seljuk settlement and recaptured the town of Samshvilde, which was added to the royal domains, without a major battle.

Knowing of the approach of Turkish troops, David IV left his home at Nacharmagevi with a personal guard of only 1,500 men and set out to meet the invaders during the night.

However, on 12 August 1121, King David routed the enemy army on the field of Didgori, achieving what is often considered the greatest military success in Georgian history.

The victory at Didgori signaled the emergence of Georgia as a great military power and shifted the regional balance in favor of Georgian cultural and political supremacy.

Following his success, David captured Tbilisi,[24] the last Muslim enclave remaining from the Seljuk occupation, in 1122 and moved the Georgian capital there and inaugurated Georgia's Golden Age.

Without a single fight, the Armenian population of Ani opened the gates to the Georgians,[28] who captured emir Abu'l-Aswar Shavur ibn Manuchihr and exiled him and his family to Abkhazia.

[30] The recapture of Tbilisi in 1122 by David IV thus established the Kingdom of Georgia as the supreme protector of Christianity in the Caucasus, and the Georgians now attempted to assert their domination by trying to reduce the Muslim presence in the region, which was considered an ally of the Seljuk Empire.

The Seljuk sultan locked himself in Shamakhi after learning of the arrival of the Georgian troops, prompting David IV to halt his advance, deeming it disrespectful to pursue a retreating army.

David IV managed to recover Shamakhi and took the citadel of Bigrit, before strengthening his power in Hereti and Kakheti by leaving strong garrisons of soldiers there.

According to Mkhitar Gosh, Demetrius ultimately gained possession of Ganja, but, when he gave his daughter in marriage to the sultan, he presented the latter with the town as dowry, and the sultain appointed his own emir to rule it.

Appointing his general Ivane Orbeli as its ruler in 1161.In July, 1161 troops of a Muslim coalition consisting, namely those of the Shah-Armens of Ahlat, Saltukids of Erzerum, and the lord of Kars and Surmari was formed.

The following year in August/September 1162, Dvin was temporarily captured and sacked, the non-Christian population was pillaged and the Georgian troops returned home loaded with booty.

However, this time they were forestalled by George III, who marched into Arran at the beginning of 1166, occupied a region extending to Gan ja, devastated the land and turn back with prisoners and booty.

The successes of his predecessors were built upon by Queen Tamar, daughter of George III, who became the first female ruler of Georgia in her own right and under whose leadership the Georgian state reached the zenith of power and prestige in the Middle Ages.

Once Tamar succeeded in consolidating her power and found a reliable support in David Soslan, the Mkhargrdzeli, Toreli, and other noble families, she revived the expansionist foreign policy of her predecessors.

Repeated occasions of dynastic strife in Georgia combined with the efforts of regional successors of the Great Seljuq Empire, such as the Eldiguzids, Shirvanshahs, and the Ahlatshahs, had slowed down the dynamic of the Georgians achieved during the reigns of Tamar's great-grandfather, David IV, and her father, George III.

Early in the 1190s, the Georgian government began to interfere in the affairs of the Eldiguzids and of the Shirvanshahs, aiding rivaling local princes and reducing Shirvan to a tributary state.

Alarmed by the Georgian successes, Süleymanshah II, the resurgent Seljuqid sultan of Rûm, rallied his vassal emirs and marched against Georgia, but his camp was attacked and destroyed by David Soslan at the Battle of Basian in 1203 or 1204.

The chronicler of Tamar describes how the army was assembled at the rock-hewn town of Vardzia before marching on to Basian and how the queen addressed the troops from the balcony of the church.

In 1210–1211, the Zakarids–Mkhargrdzeli brothers Zakare and Ivane waste to Ardabil – according to the Georgian and Armenian annals – as a revenge for the local Muslim ruler's attack on Ani and his massacre of the city's Christian population.

[48] In a great final burst, the brothers led an army marshaled throughout Tamar's possessions and vassal territories in a march, through Nakhchivan and Julfa, to Marand, Tabriz, and Qazvin in northwest Iran, pillaging several settlements on their way.

George IV died fighting them in 1223 and his sister Rusudan made a desperate alliance against Mongols when she and her daughter Tamar married to Seljuk princes of Erzurum and Sultanate of Rum.