page_title: Dmanisi historic site
section_title: Kingdom of Georgia
hierarchical_section_title: Dmanisi historic site / History / Kingdom of Georgia
caption_attribution_description: English: Dmanisi castle
context_page_description: The Dmanisi historic site is a historic and archaeological site in Georgia, located north of the village of Patara Dmanisi, Dmanisi Municipality, in south-central region of Kvemo Kartli, some 85 km southwest of Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.
  Perched on a promontory at the confluence of the Mashavera and Pinezauri rivers, the site is an open-air museum, containing the early medieval Dmanisi Sioni cathedral and the ruins of one of the most important towns and commercial centres in medieval Georgia, with fortifications, churches, Muslim and Christian cemeteries, bathhouses, and workshops. A palaeoarchaeological site at Dmanisi, unearthed under the medieval layers, has yielded a set of hominin fossils, dated to approximately 1.85 to 1.75 million years ago, one of the earliest unequivocal evidence for presence of the genus Homo outside the African continent.
context_section_description: Threatened by the resurgent Georgian monarchy, the Muslim oligarchy of Dmanisi joined the appeal of Ganja and Tiflis to the Seljuq sultan Mahmud II against the encroachments from David IV of Georgia in 1121. David captured Dmanisi in March 1123, but his son Demetrius I had to reconquer the town in 1125. Under the Kingdom of Georgia, Dmanisi continued to prosper; crafts and trade flourished. According to Yaqut al-Hamawi, the town exported silk. Dmanisi's vibrant economic history is evidenced by more than 800 coins, mostly foreign, found in the area as well as the archaeological artifacts such as imported Iranian faïence and Chinese celadon and locally produced pottery, glassware, and jewelry.
  The population of medieval Dmanisi was heterogeneous. Muslims constituted the single largest group in the town as indicated by a sizable cemetery, with the 13th–14th-century Arabic inscriptions, which numerically surpass the extant Christian—Georgian and Armenian—tombstones. Some Muslims left after the Georgian takeover: a sheikh named Sadr ad-Din Hamid b. Ali ad-Damanisi (died 1245) operated a madrasa in Damascus. The position of emir was now reduced to that of an appointed royal official: an early 13th-century stone inscription in Georgian from a small ruined chapel in Dmanisi mentions George IV's contemporary emir Job, son of Mikhrik, who had erected a cross-stone in the name of St. Demetrius.
  When Georgia became a vassal to the Mongol Empire, Dmanisi was chosen for producing coinage: a copper type was minted in the name of David VI of Georgia in 1245. In the 1270s, Demetrius II of Georgia was constrained to make Dmanisi and the surrounding district over to his powerful minister Sadun, who had the confidence of the Mongols. King David VIII, being on good terms with the Mongol khan Baydu, was able to retrieve Dmanisi in 1293, but subsequently lost it to his rival brother, Vakhtang III, who was buried in the town on his death in 1308. Dmanisi then passed in possession of Vakhtang's elder son, Demetrius.
caption: Ruins of the town walls.
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