Sultanates: Seljuk

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SELJUK

The Seljuk Sultanate was the first empire built by a Turkish nomadic tribe from Central Asia. In 1040, the Seljuks, who belonged to the Oghuz Turks, decisively defeated the Ghaznavid Sultan Mas˓ud under the leadership of two brothers, Tughril Beg and Chagri Beg. They went on to establish an empire in Iran that soon extended to Mesopotamia, where Tughril captured Baghdad in 1055 and assumed the titles of sultan and shahanshah (shah of shahs). His nephew and successor, Alp Arslan (1063–1072), defeated and captured the Byzantine emperor in the battle of Manzikert (Malazgird) and opened Anatolia to Turkish migration. His son, Malekshah (1072–1092), completed the conquest of Syria in 1084. The empire thus extended from the Oxus to the Mediterranean. It is known as the empire of the Great Seljuks, and remained unified for some half a century.

The architect of this unity was Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092), the great wazir of Alp Arslan and Malekshah. Nizam al-Mulk unified the centralized administrative systems of the Ghaznavids in eastern Iran and the Buyids in western Iran and Iraq. In the western regions, he took over the system of land assignments in exchange for military and administrative service known as iqta˓. In the east, where the conquering armies had been recruited among the Turks, large land-grants were made to the members of the Seljuk family as appanages, which, before long, were also referred to as iqta˓.

Nizam al-Mulk also built an extensive network of colleges (madrasas) throughout the empire. These became known as the Nizamiyyas after him, and were devoted to the teaching of orthodox traditions, law, and theology. He appointed many of the professors himself, including the great Muslim thinker, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111), who taught at the Nizamiyya college of Baghdad for a number of years. The Seljuk sultans and the women of the ruling household endowed similar colleges throughout the empire. The aim of Nizam al-Mulk's educational reform, which was somewhat controversially referred to as "the Sunni restoration," was to curb the influence of revolutionary Isma˓ili Shi˓ism, which emanated from the Fatimid Empire in Egypt, the fortresses in northern Iranian mountains and the Isma˓ili clandestine cells in the cities.

There can, however, be no doubt about the long-term impact of the colleges on the pattern of learning and subsequent development of Sunni Islam. Isma˓ili militants assassinated both Nizam al-Mulk and Malekshah in the same year, 1092, which marked the end the unified empire. The Seljuks remained in power, and the sons and grandsons of Nizam al-Mulk remained prominent among their wazirs.

The disintegration of the Seljuk Empire did not result from revolutionary Isma˓ili Shi˓ism, but rather from the Turkish tribal practice of dividing the kingdom as the patrimony of the ruler among his male heirs. In other words, the Seljuks, like the Timurids and a number of other Turko-Mongolian dynasties, failed to solve the problem of succession without the division of the empire, and in the twelfth century the territory had become fragmented into a large number of principalities. Malekshah's sons fought among themselves. One of them, Sultan Sanjar (1097–1157), became a powerful ruler in the East, but the disintegration of the empire elsewhere set in irreversibly. This fragmentation was facilitated by the practice of granting large iqta˓s, which alienated provinces from central control, and even more by another Turkish institution: rule by the atabeg, who was the tutor of a minor prince, but who would often marry his ward's mother.

Important Atabeg dynasties came into being in Azerbaijan, Syria, northern Mesopotamia, and Fars, while different branches of the Seljuks ruled in Kerman and in Anatolia. Many of the Atabeg dynasties survived the death of the last mainline Seljuk sultan, Tughril III, in 1194. The courts of these local dynasties became centers of culture, and continued to support new institutions of Islamic learning, the madrasas, through endowments. The kingdom of the Seljuk of Rum (Anatolia) flourished in the thirteenth century, after the Mongol invasion, when their court received a large number of learned refugees, such as the great poet and mystic, Jalaludin Rumi (d. 1273), and his father, who fled from Iran to escape the advance of the Mongols.

The women of the Seljuk ruling house were very powerful, owing to the continuation of the Turkish nomadic custom. They were active in courtly politics, and acted as patrons of religion and learning. Many of them had their own wazirs even under the Great Seljuk sultans. Their power increased further as queen mothers under the atabeg system after the fragmentation of the Seljuk territories, and a few of them ruled in their own right after the death of their husbands, as did Zahida Khatun, who ruled Fars in southern Iran for over twenty years in the mid-twelfth century.