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Case file

Battle of Didgori

Wikipedia's first sentence called it “fought between the georgians and seljuk turks at didgori valley sixteen kilometers northwest of tbilisi in east”. Today it says “fought between the armies of the kingdom of georgia and the seljuk empire at the narrow place of didgori”. Sections present on October 6, 2023 no longer exist: “Prelude”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2005 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since. Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now. 1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2005

Battle of Didgori was fought between the Georgians and Seljuk Turks at Didgori Valley sixteen kilometers northwest of Tbilisi in eastern Georgia on August 12 , 1121 . It ended in the greatest military victory in Georgian history. King David the Builder of Georgia had been gradually forcing the Seljuk garrisons out of his kingdom, having recaptured the Seljuk -held fortresses of Zedazeni ( 1103 ), Samshvilde ( 1110 ), Rustavi ( 1115 ), Gishi ( 1117 ) and Lore ( 1118 ). The Kingdom of Georgia had been making intensive preparations for a decisive battle aimed at liberating the Arab -held city of Tbilisi . Muhammed Tapar (reigned in 1117 - 1131 ) called upon all Muslims of the Near East to unite against Georgia in 1121 . The Seljuk coalition army of 300,000-strength under Artuklu Ilgazi invaded the southwestern provinces of the Georgian Kingdom and reached Didgori Valley in mid- August 1121 . The Sultan’s brother Turgul, the Melik of Ganja , Atabeg Gundogdu, and Dubeys b. Sadaka were among the coalition commanders. King David the Builder’s army consisted of 40,000 Georgians , 15,000 Kipchak auxiliaries, 500 Alan mercenaries and 300 French Crusaders . The Georgian generals encamped in the deep forest and blocked the passage of the gorge to prevent their soldiers’ retreat. The two armies clashed on August 12 , 1121 . King David sent 200 cavalrymen to the enemy’s camps. They pretended to be renegades and attacked suddenly as they reached the center of the enemy’s camps. Meanwhile, the Georgians’ main forces under David the Builder and his son Demetre (the future King Demetre I ) attacked the Seljuk flanks despite being vastly outnumbered. The fierce, three-hour battle ended in a crushing victory of the Georgians. Myriads of the Seljuks were annihilated and many of the survivors were enslaved. After the battle, King David expelled the remaining Seljuk garrisons from the country and reconquered Tbilisi after heavy fighting in 1122 . The victory at Didgori marked the beginning of the Georgian golden era. In commemoration of the 1121 victory, an impressive memorial monument was erected at the place of Didgori in the early 1990s . The Georgian national festival "Didgoroba" (“the Day of Didgori”) is celebrated annually on September 2 . King David the Builder ’s appeal to his warriors just before the battle (according to the French knight and historian, Galterius ): "... If we fight with abandon, defending the faith of our Lord, we shall not only overcome countless servants of Satan, but the Devil himself. I will only advise you one thing that will add to our honor and our profit. And raising our hands to Heaven we will all swear to our Lord that in the name of love to Him, we will rather die in the battlefield than run ....”1

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 17272553.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “fought between the georgians and seljuk turks at didgori valley sixteen kilometers northwest of tbilisi in east”. Today it says “fought between the armies of the kingdom of georgia and the seljuk empire at the narrow place of didgori”. Sections present on October 6, 2023 no longer exist: “Prelude”. Read the current article and compare.
2005201020152020Oct '232025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.

What Wikipedia says this is

Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2005, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.

Then

fought between the georgians and seljuk turks at didgori valley sixteen kilometers northwest of tbilisi in east

Now

fought between the armies of the kingdom of georgia and the seljuk empire at the narrow place of didgori

Sections that no longer exist

Present on October 6, 2023, absent today, with no near-matching heading in the current article and the article shorter overall, so this is not a renamed heading or a topic absorbed into a fuller treatment. 1 section of 400 characters or more gone since October 6 2023, with the article 2,005 characters shorter.

  • Prelude
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.

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