On this occasion, George II of Georgia was bestowed with the Byzantine title of Caesar, granted the fortress of Kars and put in charge of the Imperial Eastern limits.Īlthough the Georgians were able to recover from Alp Arslan's invasion, the Byzantine withdrawal from Anatolia brought them in more direct contact with the Seljuqs. Georgians were able to recover theme of Iberia, by the help of Byzantine governor, Gregory Pakourianos, who began to evacuate the region shortly after the disaster inflicted by the Seljuks on the Byzantine army at Manzikert. The suzerainty over the troubled kingdom of Georgia passed to his son George II. Bagrat IV died the following year, on 24 November 1072, and was buried at the Chkondidi Monastery. The last years of Bagrat's reign coincided with what Professor David Marshall Lang described as ' the final débacle of eastern Christendom' - the Battle of Manzikert - in which Alp Arslan dealt a crushing defeat to the Byzantine army, capturing the emperor Romanos IV, who soon died in misery. 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. On the road through Kakheti, Fadl was taken prisoner by the local ruler Aghsartan. Bagrat defeated him, however, and forced the Shaddadid troops to flight. Muhammad, of the Shaddadids, encamped at Isani (a suburb of Tbilisi on the left bank of the Kura) and with 33,000 men ravaged the countryside. As soon as Alp Arslan left Georgia, Bagrat recovered Kartli in July 1068. Bagrat's long-time rivals, the Shaddadids of Arran, were given compensation: the fortresses of Tbilisi and Rustavi. The provinces of Kartli and Argveti were occupied and pillaged. On 10 December 1068, Alp Arslan, dissatisfied with the act of the last Caucasian monarch that he had not yet submitted, accompanied by the kings of Lorri and Kakheti as well as the emir of Tbilisi marched against Bagrat again. The choice of a Georgian princess was unprecedented, and it was seen in Georgia as a diplomatic success on Bagrat's side. To secure the alliance, Bagrat's daughter Maria married, at some point between 10, to the Byzantine co-emperor Michael VII Ducas. The Seljuk threat prompted the Georgian and Byzantine governments to seek a closer cooperation. These intruders were part of the same wave of the Turkish movement which inflicted a crushing defeat on the Byzantine army at Manzikert in 1071. The Seljuqs made their first appearances in Georgia in the 1060s, when the Sultan Alp Arslan laid waste to the south-western provinces of the Georgian kingdom and reduced Kakheti. 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. Seljuk Empire at its greatest extent in 1092, upon the death of Malik Shah I

With assertion of the Georgian Bagratid hegemony in the Caucasus being the cornerstone of Bagrat's reign, his policy can be understood as the attempt to play the Seljuqs and Byzantines off against one another. Bagrat took advantage of this, and acquired his possessions.Īlthough the Byzantine Empire and Georgia had centuries-long cultural and religious ties, and the Seljuqs posed a substantial threat to the empire itself, Constantinople's aggressiveness on the Caucasian political scene contributed to an atmosphere of distrust and recrimination, and prevented the two Christian nations from effective cooperation against the common threat. Liparit, who had been fighting on the Byzantine side, was captured at the Battle of Kapetron. The emperor Constantine IX requested help from the Georgian duke Liparit IV of Kldekari, whom the Byzantines had aided in his struggle against the Georgian king Bagrat IV. In 1048–9, the Seljuk Turks under Ibrahim Yinal made their first incursion in Byzantine frontier region of Iberia.

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