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Kipchaks in Georgia

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Peoples

   Kipchaks are an ancient nomadic Turkic people who occupied large
   territories from Central Asia to Eastern Europe. They played an
   important role in the history of many nations of living 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 the
   Kipchak mercenaries and successfully exploited their service against
   the neighboring Muslim states.

History

Early period

   David IV of Georgia
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   David IV of Georgia

   The first contacts between the Georgians and Kipchaks date back to the
   eleventh century when the latter founded a nomadic confederation in the
   southern Russian steppes. Their relations with Georgia seem to have
   been generally peaceful. Moreover, the Georgian politicians of that
   time saw the Kipchaks as their potential allies against the Seljuk
   conquests. According to Georgian chronicles, Georgians knew about the
   "Kipchaks' good fighting skills, their bravery, and the enormous human
   resources that they had."

   The architect of the Georgian-Kipchak alliance was the Georgian king
   David IV “the Builder” ( 1189- 1125), who employed tens (or even
   hundreds) of thousands Kipchak soldiers and settled them, in 1118, in
   his kingdom. This measure, one of the central parts of David’s military
   reforms amid his struggle against the Seljuk invaders, had been
   preceded by the visit of the high-ranking Georgian delegation,
   including the king himself and his chief adviser and tutor George of
   Chkondidi, to the Kipchak headquarters. To secure the alliance with
   these nomads, David married a Kipchak princess Gurandukht, daughter of
   Khan Otrak (Atraka, son of Sharaghan, of the Georgian chronicles), and
   invited his new in-laws to settle in Georgia. David mediated a peace
   between the Kipchaks and Alans, and probably had some consultations
   also with the Velikiy Kniaz of Kievan Rus', Vladimir Monomakh, to
   secure a free passage for the Kipchak tribesmen to the Georgian soil.
   Kingdom of Georgia and her neighbors under David IV. Copyright©2004
   Andrew Andersen
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   Kingdom of Georgia and her neighbors under David IV. Copyright©2004
   Andrew Andersen

   As a result of this diplomacy, 40,000 Kipchak families under Otrak
   moved to settle in Georgia. According to the agreement, each Kipchak
   family was to contribute a full-armed soldier to the Georgian army.
   They were given land, rearmed and became a perfect regular force under
   the immediate control of the king. The selected 5,000 men were enrolled
   in the royal guards. The remaining Kipchak settlers were posted chiefly
   to frontier regions confronting the Seljuk Turks. They practiced a
   semi-nomadic way of life, wintering in the Kartlian lowlands in central
   Georgia, and carrying their summertime duties along the foothills of
   the Caucasus.

   The medieval compendium of the East Slavic chronicles known as Hypatian
   Codex relates that after the death of Vladimir Monomakh in 1125, Khan
   Syrchan of the Don Kipchaks, Otrak’s brother, sent a singer Or’ to
   Otrak and asked him to return home. Legend has it that when Otrak heard
   Or’ singing an old Kipchak song and smelled steppe grass, he fell in
   nostalgia with the steppe life and finally left Georgia. Yet a number
   of the Kipchak mercenaries settled permanently within Georgia,
   converted to Orthodox Christianity, and blended subsequently with the
   local population.

Later period

   Kingdom of Georgia and her neighbors under Queen Tamar. Copyright©2004
   Andrew Andersen
   Enlarge
   Kingdom of Georgia and her neighbors under Queen Tamar. Copyright©2004
   Andrew Andersen

   The Christianized (and already Georgianized) Kipchak officers, known to
   the Georgians as naqivchaqari (i.e., "de-Kipchakized"), played a
   crucial role in suppressing the noble revolts of that time. Through
   their loyal service to the Georgian crown, they grew in influence and
   prestige, and emerged during the reign of George III ( 1156- 1184) as a
   new military aristocracy in sharp contrast to old and frequently
   self-minded Georgian feudal lords. Not surprisingly, this caused a
   great discontent in the aristocratic opposition which would force
   George’s successor Queen Thamar (1184- 1213) to retire virtually all
   high-ranking assimilated Kipchaks, particularly Qubasar, Afridon and
   Qutlu Arslan. The latter is sometimes referred to as the Georgian Simon
   de Montfort for his demand to limit the royal power.

   Yet Thamar and her successor, George IV Lasha (1213- 1223), continued
   to employ new Kipchak mercenaries, perhaps in tens of thousands. They
   were referred by the Georgians as qivchaqni akhalni, i.e., "new
   Kipchaks". One part of them, however, was refused to be enrolled in the
   royal army, and they moved on to Ganja, Arran, in what is now
   Azerbaijan. The Georgians subsequently defeated these marauding bands
   and scattered them. Although the Kipchaks continued to serve in the
   Georgian ranks, a number of the Kipchak units joined the Khwarezmian
   prince Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu in his expedition against Georgia in
   1225, guarantying thereby his victory. The Kipchaks remained on both
   sides of the divide during the Mongol campaigns in Georgia in the late
   1230s, but most of them subsequently intermingled with the Mongol
   hordes.

Legacy

   According to modern Turkish scholars, the traces of the Kipchak
   presence in Georgia can be found in the Turkish-Georgian borderlands,
   particularly in the Rize Province. They relate some of the existing
   local family names to the Kipchak clans who had once served to Georgia.
   The Kumbasars, the purported descendants of the above mentioned Qubasar
   (Kubasar), are an example. The Meskhetian Turks, a large Muslim
   community deported from Georgia under the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin
   in 1944, also claim sometimes that the medieval Kipchaks of Georgia may
   have been one of their possible ancestors

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