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CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF GEORGIA 97
ascribes to her all the more impressive castles and other
buildings whose ruins survive, in the same way that she
is made the heroine of all the great legendary exploits of
past days.
In this connection it is a strange feature of the history of
the Georgian people that its two most striking personalities
are women : St. Nino the apostle of Christianity, and the
great queen. The fact testifies to a mentality utterly different
from Islam’s doctrine that women have no souls. Even
among the Persians, by whom the Georgians were influenced
in so many ways, woman was not held in such high esteem
as this.
After the decease of Thamara, the era of Georgia’s greatness
soon came to an end. Eight years later, in 1220 and 1222,
the savage warrior-hosts of the Mongols invaded the country
from Persia. In 1223 they returned again, laying waste the
south. Then the Persians attacked, storming and sacking
Tiflis, and a few years later the Mongolians reappeared and
occupied the whole country. In 1247 it was entirely subject
to them, paying oppressive tribute, and forced to send its
young men to serve in the Mongolian armies.
Civilization, intelJectual life, morality, declined in the
devastated country. Thamara’s own daughter, the beautiful
Queen Russudan, gave by her dissolute life an example very
different from her mother’s. In 13 18 an able king, George V,
"the Illustrious " (13 18-1346), succeeded to the throne, and
the country recovered ; but the betterment was of brief
duration. In the middle of the fourteenth century the Black
Death carried off thousands of the inhabitants, while an even
more sinister guest was the lame Mongolian Timur Lenk
(Tamerlane). Between 1387 and 1403 his savage hordes
overran and sacked the country six times ; and when at
length they drew off into Turkestan they left it in a truly
pitiful condition ; Tiflis and other towns and villages had
been reduced to mere heaps of ruins, churches and castles
had been destroyed, and large numbers of people had perished
or been carried away into captivity.
Followed three dark centuries. When the failing By2antine
power finally collapsed in 1453 and the empire of Trebizond
G
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