Jalal ad-Din's first encounter with the Kingdom of Georgia occurred in 1225, when his army inflicted a crushing defeat on the Georgians at Garni, bringing about the end of Georgia's medieval heyday. Next year, Jalal ad-Din marched on to Tbilisi, forcing Queen Rusudan of Georgia and her court into flight. The Georgian forces, left in defense of the capital, put up a fierce resistance, but Jalal's forces eventually broke into the city with the assistance of local Muslims on 9 March 1226. The victorious Khwarezmid soldiers sacked Tbilisi and massacred its Christian population. The anonymous 14th-century Georgian chronicle, conventionally known as the Chronicle of a Hundred Years, laments: "Words are powerless to convey the destruction that the enemy brought: tearing infants from their mothers' breasts, they beat their heads against the bridge, watching as their eyes dropped from their skulls...". The Muslim historians ibn al-Athir and Nasawi, the latter being Jalal's secretary and biographer, confirm the killings of Christians who did not accept Islam at the sultan's order.Minorsky, Vladimir, "Tiflis", in: M. Th. Houtsma, E. van Donzel (1993), E. J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913-1936, p. 756. Brill, .Boyle, J. A. (1968), The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, p. 328. Cambridge University Press, .
