ABSTRACT
The most powerful state in the early thirteenth-century South Caucasus was undoubtedly the Kingdom of Georgia. The initial Mongol invasions of the South Caucasus appear to have been proximate and accidental, a result of Subedei and Jebe’s pursuit of the Khwarazmshah Muhammad. Whereas the Mongols had entered the South Caucasus in their first invasion almost by accident, their second invasion was a deliberate conquest. And whereas their first invasion had been met by a concerted and united Georgian resistance, by the late 1230s, the weakened state of the Georgian kingdom rendered such concerted opposition impossible. In contrast to the South Caucasian campaign, the Mongol conquest of the North Caucasus was an offshoot of Mongke and Guyuk’s campaign into Bulghar and Rus’. Due to the almost complete lack of indigenous narrative historical sources, it is also far less well-documented than the campaign in the South Caucasus.
