First contact occurred early in the fall of 1220,[1] when approximately 20,000 Mongols led by Subutai and Jebe pursued the ousted Shah Muhammad II of the Khwarazmian dynasty to the Caspian Sea.

The Mongol commanders, however, were unable to advance further into the Caucasus at that time due to the demands of the war against the Khwarezmian Empire, and turned back south to Hamadan.

Though King George IV was initially reluctant to give battle after his previous defeat, Jebe and Subutai forced him to take action by ravaging the countryside and killing his people.

The ensuing battle at Bardav (Pardav; modern-day Barda, Azerbaijan) was another decisive Mongol victory, obliterating Georgia's field army.

This offensive, which would prove the ruin of Georgia, was preceded by the devastating conflict with Jalal al-Din Mangburni, a refugee shah of Khwarezmia, who had demanded in 1225, that the Georgian government support his war against the Mongols.

In the ensuing Khwarezmian attack, Tbilisi was captured in 1226, and much of the former strength and prosperity of the Kingdom of Georgia was destroyed, leaving the country largely defenseless in the face of the forthcoming Mongol conquests.

Most of the Georgian and Armenian nobles, who held military posts along the frontier regions, submitted without any serious opposition or confined their resistance to their castles while others preferred to flee to safer areas.

[8] The Mongol armies chose not to cross the Likhi Range in pursuit of the Georgian queen, leaving western Georgia relatively spared of the rampages.

The Mongols created the Vilayet of Gurjistan, which included Georgia and the whole South Caucasus, where they ruled indirectly, through the Georgian monarch, the latter to be confirmed by the Great Khan upon his accession.

After a failed plot against the Mongol rule in Georgia (1245), Güyük Khan made, in 1247, both pretenders co-kings, in eastern and western parts of the kingdom respectively.

Beginning in 1261, the Caucasus became a theater of the series of conflicts fought between the IlKhanids and another Mongol empire of Golden Horde centered in the lower Volga with its capital at Sarai.

In 1266, Prince Sargis Jakeli of Samtskhe (with Akhaltsikhe as the capital) was granted special protection and patronage by Abaqa Khan, thus winning virtual independence from the Georgian crown.

The next (eastern) Georgian king Demetrius II, "the Devoted" (1259–1289), through maneuvering in the intrigues that divided the Ilkhanids, attempted to revive his country, but suspected in an abortive coup against Arghun Khan, he had, to save Georgia from invasion, agreed to surrender and be executed.

The Mongols attempted to retain the control over the country by raising and bringing down the rival monarchs and by inciting the civil strife, but their influence over Georgia gradually weakened with the disintegration of the Ilkhanid power in Persia.

[17] In the year 1327, in Persia, the most dramatic event of the reign of the IlKhan Abu Sa'id Bahadur occurred, namely the disgrace and execution of the once all-powerful minister Chupan.