Seljuk History

From the eleventh to the early fourteenth century, rulers of the Seljuk family governed several connected but distinct states. Their rise began as Oghuz groups, Turkic-speaking communities that had migrated with their herds, entered Khorasan and fought the Ghaznavid rulers. The Seljuk family had embraced Islam by 992, while conversion among Oghuz more broadly was gradual. The Great Seljuk sultans built an empire across Iran and Iraq and at times held sway over parts of Central Asia and Syria. A related family branch established the Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia, the peninsula between the Black Sea and Mediterranean. The Great Seljuk court and the Anatolian branch developed as separate dynasties, while regional commanders and rival powers repeatedly reshaped their territories.

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From Khorasan to Baghdad

In the early eleventh century, Oghuz groups crossed the Oxus River, now called the Amu Darya, from Central Asia into Khorasan, a broad region that included northeastern Iran and adjacent lands. The Ghaznavid ruler Masud struggled to control them. The Seljuk brothers Tughril and Chaghri led forces that defeated his army at Dandanakan in 1040, near Merv, in present-day Turkmenistan. The victory gave them control of Khorasan and created the core of the Great Seljuk Empire.

Tughril then moved west through Iranian cities, including Ray and Isfahan, and entered Baghdad in 1055. The Abbasid caliph remained in the city as a religious and ceremonial authority. He recognized Tughril as sultan, while the sultan took responsibility for military protection and political order. This division let the caliphate continue under Abbasid leadership even as the Seljuk ruler held practical military power in much of the region.

Tughril’s successor Alp Arslan expanded the empire east and west. At Manzikert in 1071, near Lake Van in eastern Anatolia, he defeated and captured the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV. Turkish groups had already been moving through parts of Anatolia for decades; the battle weakened Byzantine control but did not instantly transfer the entire peninsula to Seljuk rule. Malik Shah, Alp Arslan’s son, succeeded him in the early 1070s and ruled until 1092. His vizier, or chief minister, Nizam al-Mulk helped administer a wide realm whose army relied on Turkish commanders while Persian officials managed many urban and fiscal affairs. The sultan’s court often travelled with a military camp, and family members or commanders governed important territories at a distance from it.

Succession and regional Seljuk lines

Malik Shah’s death in 1092 left young sons and no settled succession arrangement. Brothers, sons, commanders and court factions competed for the title of Great Sultan. These struggles weakened the central court, but did not bring every Seljuk line to an end at once. Sanjar, Malik Shah’s son, had governed Khorasan from 1097. In 1118 he became Great Sultan and made Merv the imperial centre, giving the eastern province a leading role again. His armies were defeated at Qatwan in 1141 by the Qara Khitai, a Central Asian empire founded by Khitan rulers displaced from northern China, but Sanjar recovered enough influence to rule for another twelve years.

The decisive shock came when Oghuz forces rebelled and captured Sanjar in 1153. He escaped in 1156 and died at Merv the following year. His death ended effective Great Seljuk authority in Khorasan. The western Iraqi branch continued to use the sultan’s title, but its rulers depended increasingly on commanders and regional rivals. In 1194, Tekiš, the Khwarazmshah, or ruler of Khwarazm in the lower reaches of the Oxus, defeated and killed Tughril III near Ray, ending that line’s claim to the Great Seljuk sultanate.

Other family branches had already developed separate power bases. Kerman, in southeastern Iran, passed to Qavurt, Chaghri’s son and Alp Arslan’s brother, around 1048. It functioned as a nearly independent principality within the wider Seljuk sphere. Qavurt later challenged Malik Shah’s succession and was defeated; his descendants nevertheless ruled Kerman until Oghuz pressure drove the last Seljuk ruler from the province around 1188. In Syria, Malik Shah assigned territory to his brother Tutush. After Tutush died in 1095, his sons governed rival centres at Aleppo and Damascus, while the senior Seljuk court in Iran was caught in its own succession conflict.

The title atabeg helps explain why military households gained power in these transitions. A ruler appointed an atabeg as tutor and guardian to a young prince; the guardian was often also a senior military commander. When the prince was a child, the atabeg could control his household, forces and territory. Some guardians became independent rulers. Zangi, first a Seljuk governor of Mosul in northern Iraq, established himself in Aleppo in northern Syria and founded the Zangid dynasty. His descendants belonged to the wider Seljuk political world, but not to the Seljuk ruling family.

The Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia

The name Rum referred to the former Roman, or Byzantine, lands of Anatolia. The Anatolian branch descended from Qutalmish, a cousin of Tughril and Chaghri. His son Suleiman established a base at Nicaea, in northwestern Anatolia, by the late 1070s; the city is often dated as the sultanate’s capital from 1081. Their relationship with the Great Seljuk court was often distant or hostile. Turkish groups had entered Anatolia before Manzikert, and Byzantine civil wars afterward created openings for local commanders and rulers to secure towns and land. Suleiman’s dynasty was only one among several Turkic-led powers in Anatolia.

The First Crusade captured Nicaea in 1097, and the Rum sultans shifted their political centre to Konya, in central Anatolia. Over the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, they strengthened a sultanate with its own succession disputes and changing relations with Byzantine rulers and neighbouring Muslim dynasties. In the early thirteenth century, the sultanate gained access to the Mediterranean at Antalya and the Black Sea at Sinop. These port cities linked the inland court and towns with sea routes. The Great Seljuk Empire explains the eastern branch’s major rulers and succession conflicts, while the Sultanate of Rum follows the Anatolian court and its own regional rivals.

Mongol overlordship and different endings

In 1243, Mongol forces defeated the Sultanate of Rum at Köse Dağ. The sultans remained on the throne, but had to pay tribute and accept Mongol overlordship. In the following decades, rival Mongol authorities intervened in Anatolian politics, while the Ilkhanids, the Mongol dynasty ruling from Iran, increasingly determined who governed. By 1262 the Rum sultanate no longer acted as an independent power; its rulers remained as figureheads until the dynasty ended in the early fourteenth century.