Tiflis, the great commercial city of Georgia, was besieged twice by the Göktürk army of the north in the Caucasus campaign.[1] The emperor Heraclius joined his ally for the first siege, which was broken off.[2] The defenders mocked the Göktürk ruler with a caricature on the wall. The two kings swore revenge.[3] In the second siege the northern army stormed the city. It killed the city’s rulers.[4] The Georgian chronicle tells a different story. In it, Heraclius took the city and a Göktürk commander took the citadel.[5]

The first siege

After the northern army had forced the Caspian gates and put the people of Partaw to flight, it turned against Georgia. It besieged Tiflis, “the luxurious, prosperous, famous, and great commercial city”.[6] The emperor heard of it. He brought up all his forces and joined his ally.[6] The meeting of the two rulers took place before the town, while the Persians looked on.[7] According to a modern account, the Göktürks were already besieging Tiflis when the Byzantines arrived. The Persian leaders of the city refused to change sides.[8]

Khosrow II heard of the meeting. He sent his general Sahraplakan with a thousand chosen horsemen of his palace guard to defend the city.[6] The reinforcement gave the townspeople heart.[6] The besiegers surrounded the town with four-wheeled ballistae and other engines built by Roman engineers. The engines hurled great boulders against the walls.[6] The besiegers also filled great hides with stones and sand and made the river Kur overflow against the wall.[6] The defenders repaired every breach.[6] The Byzantine siege engines are said to have been joined to the mobility of the Göktürk horse. About forty thousand warriors from Central Asia served under Börü Shad.[8]

The armies wore themselves out. Not a few of their foot soldiers fell.[6] Heraclius told his ally to go home for that year with his army, because a man reared in a cool climate could not bear the summer in Asorestan. He was to come back when the hot months had passed.[3] A modern account has the siege last two months, with Börü Shad beating off a Persian counter-attack. Then the yabgu left his nephew before the city with tens of thousands of men and returned to Suyab.[9]

The caricature of the khan

The townspeople saw that the besiegers were exhausted. They fetched a huge pumpkin and drew on it the image of the king of the Huns, as the Armenian text calls him, a cubit broad and a cubit long.[3] In place of the eyelashes, which no one could see, they drew a thin line. They left the beard ignominiously bare. They made the nostrils a span wide, with a few hairs beneath for a moustache.[3] They set the pumpkin on the wall. They called on the armies to behold their emperor and king and to worship him, for it was Jebu Xak’an.[3] Then they drove a spear into the pumpkin. They called the other king a foul sodomite.[3] The two kings swore that not one soul of that kingdom would be spared. Then they withdrew.[3]

The second siege

A year later the army from the north attacked a second time.[10][11] The ruler came down with his son Šat’. He set his sights on Georgia and Tiflis, where there were no longer brave defenders.[10] For two months the inhabitants fought back.[10] Then the besiegers raised their swords and stormed the walls. They climbed on one another in such numbers that they topped them.[10] The defenders fell back from the ramparts. The killing went on until no one in the city was left alive.[4]

Two princes were brought captive before the king: the Persian governor and a native Georgian.[12] Because they had represented his image as blind, he had their eyes put out.[12] He had them strangled and flayed. Their skins, stuffed with straw, were hung from the top of the wall.[12] The army heaped the treasure before its ruler. He carried it home and left his forces to Šat’.[12] He ordered that the nobles of Albania be spared if they became his vassals and surrendered their towns, fortresses and markets.[12]

A modern account has the yabgu, encouraged by the victory of Heraclius at Nineveh, return to the Caucasus. He took Tiflis with Börü Shad and had the city plundered.[9] The same account has the Göktürks storm the walls on one another’s shoulders. This shows that a nomad army could take a walled city.[9] After the sack the ruler told his generals to spare the nobles and rulers who accepted his son and submitted.[13]

The Georgian account

The Georgian chronicle, the Kartlis Tskhovreba, tells the siege in a version of its own. It says nothing of the siege being broken off.[14] According to the chronicle, Heraclius brought “Turks of the west” and marched with an innumerable army against Persia to recover the wood of the Cross.[15] Stephanos, the prince of Kartli, would not rise against the Persians. He fortified his towns and held Tiflis.[15] He made sorties every day and fell in one of them. The emperor took Tiflis.[16]

The commander of the citadel still held out. He called down from the rampart that the emperor had the beard of a goat.[17] Heraclius found in the book of Daniel that the goat of the west would break the horns of the ram of the east. He was pleased.[17] He gave Tiflis to Adarnase, a descendant of the old kings, and made him prince of Kartli. He left an eristavi named Jibghu to take the citadel.[17] While the emperor marched on, Jibghu took the citadel within a few days.[18] For the words that had pleased the emperor, Jibghu filled the commander’s mouth with gold. Then he had the commander flayed for his insolence and sent the skin to Heraclius.[18] Some scholars identify Jibghu with Ziebel, the prince of the Khazars who met Heraclius under the walls of Tiflis.[19]

Date

If Theophanes is trusted, the meeting before Tiflis, and so the first siege, fell in 626.[20] Others date the invasion through Derbent to 627.[21] The Armenian history puts it in the thirty-eighth year of Khosrow, which is 628.[22] According to some scholars, the second siege followed soon after the accession of Kavadh II in February 628.[23] According to others, it fell probably in the spring of 629, the year after the first.[11]

Consequences

From Tiflis the army of Šat’ went on into Albania. There the catholicos and the nobles came to terms with it.[24] The men of the camp drank from silver cups and beakers chased with gold. These had been taken in the sack of Tiflis.[25] The fall of the city was the high point of Göktürk power in the Caucasus. That power ended soon afterwards with the battle of Lake Sevan and the death of the ruler of the north.

References

  1. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 85, 94
  2. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 85–86
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 86
  4. ^ a b Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 94–95
  5. ^ Kartlis Tskhovreba; Brosset 1849, p. 226–228
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 85
  7. ^ Theophanes the Confessor; Scott 1997, p. 447
  8. ^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 368
  9. ^ a b c Yavuz 2025, p. 370
  10. ^ a b c d Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 94
  11. ^ a b Dowsett 1961, p. 94
  12. ^ a b c d e Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 95
  13. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 370–371
  14. ^ Dowsett 1961, p. 86
  15. ^ a b Kartlis Tskhovreba; Brosset 1849, p. 225
  16. ^ Kartlis Tskhovreba; Brosset 1849, p. 225–226
  17. ^ a b c Kartlis Tskhovreba; Brosset 1849, p. 226
  18. ^ a b Kartlis Tskhovreba; Brosset 1849, p. 228
  19. ^ Brosset 1849, p. 226
  20. ^ Mango 1990, p. 181
  21. ^ Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 187–188
  22. ^ Dowsett 1961, p. 83
  23. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 254
  24. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 95–100
  25. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 99

Sources

Literature

  • Charles J. F. Dowsett (trans.), The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movsēs Dasxuranci (1961)
  • Cyril Mango, Roger Scott (trans.), The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813 (1997)
  • Cyril Mango (ed., trans.), Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople: Short History (1990)
  • Marie-Félicité Brosset (trans.), Histoire de la Géorgie depuis l'antiquité jusqu'au XIXe siècle, vol. I (1849)
  • Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
  • R. W. Thomson (trans.), James Howard-Johnston (commentary), The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos (1999)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)

Related

What links here5

Conflicts
The Caucasus campaign, 627–629
Battles & Events
Battle of Lake Sevan (629–630) · Meeting of Heraclius and Ziebel (627)
Places
Tiflis
Institutions and Titles
Warfare of the Steppe Empires

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Siege of Tiflis (627–629).” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/siege-of-tiflis-627/

Last revised: 8 November 2026