Seljuk Culture and Arts

From the eleventh through thirteenth centuries, Seljuk patrons supported cultural work across Iran and Iraq and, under the separate Sultanate of Rum, Anatolia. Great Seljuk rulers built their power from Iranian and Iraqi cities, while Rum sultans governed much of central Anatolia from Konya. Brick domes in Iran, stone portals in Anatolia, Persian poetry, Arabic scholarship and court science belonged to related but regionally distinct settings.

A ruler’s commission was only one part of this activity. Builders, potters, metalworkers, poets, copyists, teachers and astronomers needed materials, working relationships, audiences and resources. Religious foundations could direct rent toward teaching and maintenance; a court could gather specialists for a particular project; a manuscript or technique could then travel beyond the patron’s lifetime or territory.

On this page5 sections

Architecture and the work of building

In Iran, baked brick served both structure and surface. Builders laid it in walls and arches, then turned or recessed courses to make geometric bands. To roof a square chamber with a dome, masons had to bridge its corners so the dome’s rounded base could rest on square walls. At Isfahan’s congregational mosque, two late-eleventh-century dome chambers show different solutions: the south chamber was sponsored by Nizam al-Mulk and the north by Taj al-Mulk. Later, builders reorganized the mosque around a courtyard with four iwans, vaulted halls open on one side. The court distributed movement, while each iwan offered a sheltered space opening toward it. This developing arrangement became influential in Iranian mosque design; the four-iwan arrangement at Isfahan grew through successive alterations to an older building.

In Anatolia, Rum Seljuk patrons supported mosques, colleges and roadside inns, with masons often concentrating carved stone at portals and combining it with brick or timber elsewhere. A madrasa courtyard connected teaching rooms, prayer spaces and student accommodation. A caravanserai used a gateway and courtyard for unloading, with a covered hall sheltering travelers and animals in poor weather. At Sırçalı Madrasah in Konya, a carved entrance and glazed interior decoration accompanied a college founded in 1242 for scholars of the Hanafi school of Islamic law. Such buildings needed continuing resources as well as skilled construction: endowed income could pay staff and repairs, and later users adapted structures to new needs.

Objects, materials and courtly imagery

Potters made pale stonepaste from finely ground quartz mixed with small amounts of clay and glassy material, then shaped and glazed it. Some painted wares required more than one firing. Pigments beneath the glaze could be fixed in an initial firing; enamel colors and gilding were added above it and set at a lower temperature in a later firing. Kashan in central Iran became known for lustre and mina’i ceramics, whose reflective surfaces and layered decoration carried courtly figures, stories and celestial imagery. In Anatolia, star-shaped and cross-shaped tiles fitted together across palace interiors. At Kubadabad beside Lake Beyşehir, tiles from Kayqubad I’s thirteenth-century palace depict rulers, attendants, animals and fantastic creatures. Ceramic production joined a practical material with decoration for prestigious settings. The making and decoration of Seljuk ceramics and other crafts explains the workshop processes in greater detail.

Metalworkers poured molten copper alloys into molds or hammered metal into sheets and vessel shapes. They then chased or engraved details and cut shallow recesses for silver or gold inlay. In twelfth-century Khurasan, inlaid brass and bronze vessels combined inscriptions, human or animal forms and good wishes for an owner. A bronze feline incense burner made by Jaʿfar ibn Muhammad in 1181–82 illustrates the relation between form and function: incense was placed inside its body, and pierced openings let the smoke escape. The named maker and patron link a useful luxury object to a particular commission. Woodworkers in Anatolia likewise joined small, carefully cut pieces into geometric frames for doors, pulpits and furnishings; those fitted parts could move as wood dried without opening the whole pattern.

Literature, books and audiences

Persian poetry reached listeners as well as manuscript readers. A qasida was an extended ode often used to praise a ruler, and court poets could turn generosity, victory or justice into memorable images. A ghazal used shorter lyric couplets, while a masnavi linked rhyming couplets into a longer narrative or teaching poem. These forms served different purposes: lyric poems could concentrate on love or spiritual longing, while narrative couplets could carry a story across many episodes. Persian poets such as Nizami of Ganja wrote for patrons beyond the Great Seljuk court, including Bahramshah of Erzincan in the late twelfth century.

Prose also addressed rulers and later readers. Nizam al-Mulk’s Siyasatnama (“Book of Statecraft”), prepared at Malik Shah’s request, used stories and examples to advise on petitions, taxation, army pay and official conduct. Such a book offered guidance and an ideal of rule. Historians writing after the end of Persian Seljuk rule could also adapt the earlier dynasty’s story for a new audience in Konya. Under Rum, Persian writing flourished alongside Arabic works in law, theology and science; Greek, Armenian and Syriac traditions also continued in Anatolia.

A book needed materials and labor before it could circulate. Scribes copied texts onto paper, and libraries or private collections made books available for study. Rumi’s thirteenth-century Masnavi was not simply composed in isolation: his companion Husam al-Din encouraged him to dictate it, wrote down the verses, and reviewed them with him. The six-book work moves between stories, scriptural references and moral teaching. Rumi’s shorter lyric poems, gathered in the Divan, offered another form for recitation and later copying. These relationships between poet, scribe, audience and manuscript help explain how literary works could travel between cities and survive their authors. For forms and works in more detail, see Persian and Arabic literature and book culture in the Seljuk world.

Colleges and the organisation of learning

A madrasa was a college for advanced religious study, especially Islamic law. Nizam al-Mulk, chief minister to Alp Arslan and Malik Shah, endowed schools in several cities. Baghdad’s Nizamiyya opened in 1067 with rooms for teachers and students, lesson halls, a mosque, library, sleeping quarters, dining hall and bath. Its waqf, or endowment, assigned income from land, shops and a nearby market to the foundation. The deed specified posts such as a teacher in the Shafi‘i school of Islamic law, a preacher, librarian, Qur’an reciter and Arabic instructor, so the institution’s rents helped support teaching, books, staff and daily needs.

A school’s reputation also rested on the scholars who taught there. Students listened to readings and explanations, memorized material, asked questions and practiced legal reasoning. They traveled to study with recognized teachers, and an ijaza was an individual teacher’s authorization for a student to transmit a text or teach a subject. Colleges were one setting among several: instruction also took place in mosques and homes, and students might study subjects such as medicine or philosophy with individual scholars. Anatolian foundations could serve different local communities and legal schools. The Hanafi Sırçalı Madrasah in Konya, for example, contrasts with the Shafi‘i teaching specified by the Baghdad Nizamiyya. A guide to Seljuk colleges and their learning practices describes how endowments, teachers and students worked together.

Astronomy and mathematics

Court support could gather specialists for a focused task. Malik Shah and Nizam al-Mulk summoned astronomers to align the Persian new year with the spring equinox, the point when the sun’s apparent path crosses the celestial equator. A calendar year fixed at 365 days drifts against the seasons because the solar year is slightly longer. The Jalali reform, introduced in 1079, tied the year’s beginning to the observed equinox, which mattered for seasonal obligations as well as timekeeping. The court-sponsored observations continued until Malik Shah’s death in 1092, after which the project was abandoned.

Omar Khayyam also wrote on algebra and geometry. A cubic equation contains an unknown raised to the third power. For some such equations, he represented unknown quantities as lengths and used conic sections, curves formed by slicing a cone, such as a circle and parabola, to construct a solution. Where the curves intersected, their shared point supplied the length that satisfied the conditions of the equation. This geometric method linked algebraic questions to a construction a mathematician could reason through and demonstrate. Astronomy and astrology were distinct pursuits: the former measured and modeled celestial motion, while the latter interpreted configurations as signs about events. The calendar, astronomy and mathematical work associated with the Seljuks develops the observations and constructions in detail.