Seljuk Empire

Seljuk Empire
سلجوقیان
1037–1194
Seljuk Empire circa 1090, during the reign of Malik Shah I. To the west, Anatolia was under the independent rule of Suleiman ibn Qutalmish as the Sultanate of Rum, and disputed with the Byzantine Empire. To the east, the Kara-Khanid Khanate became a vassal state in 1089, for half a century, before falling to the Qara Khitai.[1][2]
StatusEmpire
Capital
Common languages
Religion
Sunni Islam (Hanafi)
GovernmentVassal under caliphate (de jure)[8]
Independent sultanate (de facto)
Caliph 
• 1031–1075
Al-Qaʽim
• 1180–1225
Al-Nasir
Sultan 
• 1037–1063
Tughril (first)
• 1174–1194
Tughril III (last)[9]
History 
• Formation under Tughril
1037
1040
1071
1095–1099
1141
• Supplantation by the Khwarazmian Empire[10]
1194
Area
1080 est.[11][12]3,900,000 km2 (1,500,000 sq mi)
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Oghuz Yabgu State
Ghaznavids
Buyid dynasty
Byzantine Empire
Kakuyids
Fatimid Caliphate
Kara-Khanid Khanate
Marwanids
Rawadids
Sultanate of Rûm
Anatolian beyliks
Ghurid dynasty
Khwarazmian Empire
Atabegs of Azerbaijan
Salghurids
Bavandids
Ayyubid dynasty
Burid dynasty
Zengid dynasty
Danishmends
Artuqid dynasty
Shah-Armens
Shaddadids
Kerman Seljuk Sultanate
Kingdom of Cyprus

The Seljuk Empire, or the Great Seljuk Empire,[13][a] was a high medieval, culturally Turco-Persian, Sunni Muslim empire, established and ruled by the Qïnïq branch of Oghuz Turks.[16][17] The empire spanned a total area of 3.9 million square kilometres (1.5 million square miles) from Anatolia and the Levant in the west to the Hindu Kush in the east, and from Central Asia in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south, and it spanned the time period 1037–1308, though Seljuk rule beyond the Anatolian peninsula ended in 1194.

The Seljuk Empire was founded in 1037 by Tughril (990–1063) and his brother Chaghri (989–1060), both of whom co-ruled over its territories; there are indications that the Seljuk leadership otherwise functioned as a triumvirate and thus included Musa Yabghu, the uncle of the aforementioned two.[18]

During the formative phase of the empire, the Seljuks first advanced from their original homelands near the Aral Sea into Khorasan and then into the Iranian mainland, where they would become largely based as a Persianate society. They then moved west to conquer Baghdad, filling up the power vacuum that had been caused by struggles between the Arab Abbasid Caliphate and the Iranian Buyid Empire.

The subsequent Seljuk expansion into eastern Anatolia triggered the Byzantine–Seljuk wars, with the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 marking a decisive turning point in the conflict in favour of the Seljuks, undermining the authority of the Byzantine Empire in the remaining parts of Anatolia and gradually enabling the region's Turkification.

The Seljuk Empire united the fractured political landscape in the non-Arab eastern parts of the Muslim world and played a key role in both the First and Second Crusades; it also bore witness to in the creation and expansion of multiple artistic movements during this period[19] By the 1140s, the Seljuk Empire began to decline in power and influence, and was eventually supplanted in the east by the Khwarazmian Empire in 1194 and the Zengids and Ayyubids in the west. The last surviving Seljuk sultanate to fall was the Sultanate of Rum, which fell in 1308.

  1. ^ Stone, Norman (1989). The Times atlas of world history. Maplewood, N.J.: Hammond Incorporated. p. 135. ISBN 0-7230-0304-1.
  2. ^ Peacock 2015, pp. 62–63.
  3. ^ a b Savory, R. M., ed. (1976). Introduction to Islamic Civilisation. Cambridge University Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-521-20777-5.
  4. ^ Black, Edwin (2004). Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-year History of War, Profit and Conflict. John Wiley and Sons. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-471-67186-2.
  5. ^ a b c C.E. Bosworth, "Turkish Expansion towards the west" in UNESCO History of Humanity, Volume IV, titled "From the Seventh to the Sixteenth Century", UNESCO Publishing / Routledge, p. 391: "While the Arabic language retained its primacy in such spheres as law, theology and science, the culture of the Seljuk court and secular literature within the sultanate became largely Persianized; this is seen in the early adoption of Persian epic names by the Seljuk rulers (Qubād, Kay Khusraw and so on) and in the use of Persian as a literary language (Turkish must have been essentially a vehicle for everyday speech at this time)."
  6. ^ Stokes 2008, p. 615.
  7. ^ Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World, Ed. Keith Brown, Sarah Ogilvie, (Elsevier Ltd., 2009), 1110; "Oghuz Turkic is first represented by Old Anatolian Turkish which was a subordinate written medium until the end of the Seljuk rule."
  8. ^ Holt, Peter M. (1984). "Some Observations on the 'Abbāsid Caliphate of Cairo". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 47 (3). University of London: 501–507. doi:10.1017/s0041977x00113710. S2CID 161092185.
  9. ^ Grousset 1988, p. 167.
  10. ^ Grousset 1988, p. 159, 161.
  11. ^ Turchin, Peter; Adams, Jonathan M.; Hall, Thomas D. (December 2006). "East-West Orientation of Historical Empires". Journal of World-Systems Research. 12 (2): 223. ISSN 1076-156X. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
  12. ^ Rein Taagepera (September 1997). "Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities: Context for Russia". International Studies Quarterly. 41 (3): 496. doi:10.1111/0020-8833.00053. JSTOR 2600793.
  13. ^ See:
    • Peacock 2015
    • Christian Lange; Songül Mecit, eds., Seljuqs: Politics, Society and Culture (Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 1–328
    • P.M. Holt; Ann K.S. Lambton, Bernard Lewis, The Cambridge History of Islam (Volume IA): The Central Islamic Lands from Pre-Islamic Times to the First World War, (Cambridge University Press, 1977), 151, 231–234.
  14. ^ Mecit 2014, p. 128.
  15. ^ Peacock & Yıldız 2013, p. 6.
  16. ^  • Jackson, P. (2002). "Review: The History of the Seljuq Turkmens: The History of the Seljuq Turkmens". Journal of Islamic Studies. 13 (1). Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies: 75–76. doi:10.1093/jis/13.1.75.
     • Bosworth, C. E. (2001). Notes on Some Turkish Names in Abu 'l-Fadl Bayhaqi's Tarikh-i Mas'udi". Oriens, Vol. 36, 2001 (2001), pp. 299–313.
     • Dani, A. H., Masson, V. M. (Eds), Asimova, M. S. (Eds), Litvinsky, B. A. (Eds), Boaworth, C. E. (Eds). (1999). History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers (Pvt. Ltd).
     • Hancock, I. (2006). On Romani origins and identity. The Romani Archives and Documentation Center. The University of Texas at Austin.
     • Asimov, M. S., Bosworth, C. E. (eds.). (1998). History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. IV: "The Age of Achievement: AD 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century", Part One: "The Historical, Social and Economic Setting". Multiple History Series. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
     • Dani, A. H., Masson, V. M. (Eds), Asimova, M. S. (Eds), Litvinsky, B. A. (Eds), Boaworth, C. E. (Eds). (1999). History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers (Pvt. Ltd).
     • Lars Johanson; Éva Ágnes Csató Johanson (2015). The Turkic Languages. p. 25. The name 'Seljuk is a political rather than ethnic name. It derives from Selčiik, born Toqaq Temir Yally, a war-lord (sil-baši), from the Qiniq tribal grouping of the Oghuz. Seljuk, in the rough and tumble of internal Oghuz politics, fled to Jand, c. 985, after falling out with his overlord.
  17. ^ * "Aḥmad of Niǧde's al-Walad al-Shafīq and the Seljuk Past", A. C. S. Peacock, Anatolian Studies, Vol. 54, (2004), 97; "With the growth of Seljuk power in Rum, a more highly developed Muslim cultural life, based on the Persianate culture of the Seljuk court, was able to take root in Anatolia."
    • Meisami, Julie Scott, Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 143; "Nizam al-Mulk also attempted to organise the Saljuq administration according to the Persianate Ghaznavid model k..."
    • Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Šahrbānu", Online Edition: "here one might bear in mind that non-Persian dynasties such as the Ghaznavids, Saljuqs and Ilkhanids were rapidly to adopt the Persian language and have their origins traced back to the ancient kings of Persia rather than to Turkish heroes or Muslim saints ..."
    • Meri, Josef W. (2006). Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia. Psychology Press. p. 399. ISBN 978-0-415-96690-0. (Isfahan) has served as the political and cultural center of the Persianate world: during the reign of the Seljuks (1038–1194) and that of the Safavids (1501–1722).
    • Mandelbaum, Michael (1994). Central Asia and the World: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. Council on Foreign Relations. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-87609-167-8. Persianate zone (...) The rise of Persianized Turks to administrative control (...) The Turko-Persian tradition developed during the Seljuk period (1040–1118) (...) In the Persianate zone, Turkophones ruled and Iranians administered
    • Jonathan Dewald, Europe 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004, p. 24: "Turcoman armies coming from the East had driven the Byzantines out of much of Asia Minor and established the Persianized sultanate of the Seljuks."
    • Shaw, Wendy (2003). Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire. University of California Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-520-92856-5. In the tenth century, these and other nomadic tribes, often collectively referred to as Turkomans, migrated out of Central Asia and into Iran. Turkish tribes initially served as mercenary soldiers for local rulers but soon set up their own kingdoms in Iran, some of which grew into Empires – most notably the Great Seljuk Empire. In the meantime, many Turkic rulers and tribespeople eventually converted to Islam.
    • Gencer, A. Yunus (2017). Thomas, David; Chesworth, John A. (eds.). Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 10 Ottoman and Safavid Empires (1600–1700). Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-34565-2. Turkish music completed its transformation into completely makam-based music in the early 11th-century, in the period of the Turko-Persian Seljuk Empire.
    • Calmard, Jean (2003). Newman, Andrew J. (ed.). Society and Culture in the Early Modern Middle East: Studies on Iran in the Safavid Period. Brill. p. 318. ISBN 978-90-47-40171-1. A particularly interesting text, which reveals the socio-religious mood of the Turco-Persian world from Seljuk times, is the Abù Muslim romance.
    • Pfeifer, Helen (2022). Empire of Salons: Conquest and Community in Early Modern Ottoman Lands. Princeton University Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-0-691-22495-4. The cultural influence of the Turco-Persian Seljuks long outlasted their political control of Anatolia, and the Turkish principalities that succeeded them starting in the late thirteenth century continued to look to that tradition for models of refinement and sociability.
    • Khazonov, Anatoly M. (2015). "Pastoral nomadic migrations and conquests". In Kedar, Benjamin Z.; Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. (eds.). The Cambridge World History, Volume 5. Cambridge University Press. p. 373. ISBN 978-0-521-19074-9. The Seljuk Empire was another Turco-Iranian state, and its creation was unexpected even by the Seljuks themselves.
    • Partridge, Christopher (2018). High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World. Oxford University Press. p. 96. ISBN 978-0-19-045911-6. Under his leadership, the Nezāris mounted a decentralized revolutionary effort against the militarily superior Turko-Persian Saljuq empire.
    • Neumann, Iver B.; Wigen, Einar (2018). The Steppe Tradition in International Relations. Cambridge University Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-1-108-35530-8. The Seljuq Empire is nevertheless the foremost example of a Turko-Persian Islamic empire.
    • Hathaway, Jane (2003). A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen. State University of New York Press. p. 98. ISBN 978-0-7914-5884-6. Farther east, medieval Turco-Iranian military patronage states, such as those of the Ghaznavids, Seljuks, Timurids, and early Ottomans, appear to have been more directly affected by the banner traditions of the nomadic Turkic and Mongol populations of the Central Asian steppes, who in turn were influenced by the traditions of the various empires and kingdoms that ruled China, Japan, and Korea.
    • Cupane, Carolina; Krönung, Bettina (2016). Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond. Brill. p. 532. ISBN 978-90-04-30772-8. Seljuk(s) medieval Turko-Persian dynasty
  18. ^ Peacock 2015, p. 32: "Later sources also play down the role of a third Seljuk, Musa Yabghu, who certainly occupied an equal position to Tughril and Chaghri, and possibly even a senior one."
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference :9 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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