Ghias ad-din

Ghias ad-din (fl. 1206–1226) was a member of the Seljuq dynasty of Rum and husband of Queen Rusudan of Georgia from c. 1223 to 1226. A son of the emir of Erzurum, he converted to Christianity on his father's order so as he could marry the queen of Georgia. Ghias ad-din's position at the Georgian court was weak and the spousal relationship was strained due to Rusudan's unfaithfulness. He shifted back and forth across the religious and political divide during the Khwarezmid invasion of Georgia in 1226. Around the same time, he was repudiated by Rusudan, and thereafter disappears from records, leaving two children behind, a daughter, Tamar, and a son, David.

The consort of Queen Rusudan was a younger son of 'Abdu'l Harij Muhammad Mughis ad-din Tughril Shah, the Seljuq emir of Erzurum, and his wife, a daughter of Sayf al-Din Begtimur, the ruler of Ahlat. Tughril Shah had received Elbistan in appanage upon the division of the sultanate of Rum by his father Kilij Arslan II in 1192, but he exchanged it, c. 1201, for Erzurum. He appears to have been a tributary to Georgia for at least parts of his reign.

The original name of Rusudan's consort is not recorded in either Georgian or Muslim sources. "Ghias ad-din" is a laqab reported by the 13th-century Egyptian scholar ibn 'Abd al-Zahir. The Georgian historian Prince Ioann, writing in the early 19th century, posits that Rusudan's husband was named Dimitri (Demetrius) upon his conversion to Christianity in Georgia.

According to the Muslim sources, Rusudan married a son of the emir of Erzurum AH 620 (1223/1224). The anonymous 14th-century Chronicle of a Hundred Years, part of the Georgian Chronicles, reports that the young Seljuq prince had been held at the Georgian court as a hostage in order to ensure the loyalty of Erzurum. Rusudan liked him and took him as a husband. The contemporary Arab scholar Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi also confirms that it was Rusudan who opted for the Seljuq prince, but Ali ibn al-Athir states that the emir of Erzurum himself proposed the marriage in order to defend his country from the Georgian encroachments. After the Georgians rejected the emir's request on account of his being a Muslim, he ordered his son to convert to Christianity, the fact that is described by ibn al-Athir as "a strange turn of events without parallel".

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