The Seljuks of Anatolia

      

A dynasty named after an ancestor called Seljuk, perhaps a converted Muslim, who, according to Mahmud al-Kashgari (fl. ca.1075), was a subaşi (chief of the army) belonging to the Turkic nomadic people of the Oghuz. When the great Oghuz migration began in the 11th C. from the region of the Aral Sea toward the West, Seljuk's successors, profiting from the situation, established their rule in Khurāsān and soon conquered Persia. Seljuk's grandson, Tughrul Beg, at the invitation of the ʿAbbāsid caliph put an end to the Buyid dynasty and began to rule as sultan in Baghdad, which became the capital of the Great Seljuk state. His successor Alp Arslan defeated the Byz. army at Mantzikert in 1071 and captured Emp. Romanos IV Diogenes. After this victory and profiting from the dynastic strife in the Byz. empire, the Seljuks established the sultanate of Rūm with Nicaea as its capital; Süleyman ibn Kutlumuş was sent by the government of Baghdad to organize the newly conquered territories but perished in internal strife ca.1085. Expelled from Nicaea and the coastlands of Asia Minor by the Crusaders (1097), the Seljuks moved their capital to Ikonion. In the 12th C. they had to confront the rival Turkish state of the Danişmendids. In 1176 the Seljuks defeated the Byz. at Myriokephalon; by the end of the century they had succeeded in uniting the whole of Islamic Asia Minor under their rule and, during the first decades of the 13th C., in reaching a remarkable prosperity. Upheaval began in their territories, however, as a result of a new Turkoman migration because of the Mongol advance toward the West. In 1243 the Mongols defeated the Seljuks near Köse-Dağ (a region of Sebasteia) and invaded their territories, which remained in continuous turmoil until the first decade of the 14th C., when the sultanate of Rūm disappeared under unclear circumstances. A number of Turkish emirates were subsequently established in the former Seljuk domain, that is, Karaman, Germiyan, Menteshe, Aydin, Saruhan, Karasi, and the emirate of Osman.