From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Seljuq Turks" redirects here. For the
territory over which they ruled, see
Great Seljuq Empire.
The Seljuq (also Seljuq
Turks[2],
Seldjuks, Seldjuqs,
Seljuks; in Turkish Selçuklular; in Persian:
سلجوقيان Ṣaljūqīyān;
in Arabic
سلجوق Saljūq, or السلاجقة al-Salājiqa) were a Turco-Persian[3] [4][5][6] Sunni Muslim dynasty that ruled parts
of Central Asia
and the Middle East
from the 11th to 14th centuries. They set up an empire, the Great
Seljuq Empire, which at its height stretched from Anatolia through Persia and
which was the target of the First Crusade. The dynasty had its
origins in the Turcoman tribal confederations of Central
Asia and marked the beginning of Turkic power in the Middle East. After
arriving in Persia, the Seljuqs adopted the Persian
culture[7][8][9][10][11][12] and
language[13][14][15],
and played an important role in the development of the Turko-Persian tradition which
features "Persian culture patronized by Turkic
rulers."[16]
Today, they are remembered as great patrons of Persian culture, art, literature, and language[14][15][17]
and are regarded by some as the cultural ancestors of the Western Turks – the
present-day inhabitants of Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan.
Early
history
Origins
Prior to the ninth century, hordes of Turks had crossed the Volga River into the Black Sea steppes.[18]
Originally, the House of Seljuq was a branch of the Qinik
Oghuz Turks[19][20][21][22] who
in the 9th century lived on the periphery of the Muslim world,
north of the Caspian
and Aral seas in their Yabghu Khaganate of the Oghuz confederacy,[23] in
the Kazakh
Steppe of Turkestan.[24] In
the 10th century the Seljuqs migrated from their ancestral
homelands into mainland Persia, in the province of Khurasan, where they mixed
with the local population and adopted the Persian culture and language in
the following decades.[14][15][17][25][26]
Seljuq
leaders
Rulers of
the Seljuq Dynasty (1037–1157)
The "Great Seljuqs" were heads of the family; in theory their
authority extended over all the other Seljuq lines, although in
practice this often was not the case. Turkish custom called for the
senior member of the family to be the Great Seljuq, although
usually the position was associated with the ruler of western
Persia.
Muhammad's son Mahmud II succeeded him in
western Persia, but Sanjar, the governor of Khurasan from
1097 and the senior member of the family, became the Great Seljuq
sultan
From 1157, the Oghuz took control of much of Khurasan, with the
remainder in the hands of former Seljuq emirs.
Seljuq
sultans of Hamadan (1118–1194)
The rulers of western Persia, who maintained a very loose grip
on the Abbasids of Baghdad. Several Turkish emirs gained a strong
level of influence in the region, such as the Eldiduzids.
- Mahmud II 1118–1131
- Da'ud (in Jibal and Iranian Azerbaijan) 1131
- Tuğrul II 1131–1134
- Mas'ud 1134–1152
- Malik Shah III 1152–1153
- Muhammad II 1153–1160
- Suleiman Shah 1160–1161
- Arslan Shah 1161–1174
- Tugrul III 1174–1194
In 1194, Tugrul III was killed in battle with the Khwarezm Shah, who annexed
Hamadan.
Seljuq rulers
of Kerman (1041–1187)
Kerman was a province in southern Persia.
Between 1053 and 1154, the territory also included Umman.
- Qawurd 1041–1073
- Kerman Shah 1073–1074
- Sultan Shah 1074–1075
- Hussain Omar 1075–1084
- Turan Shah I 1084–1096
- Iran Shah 1096–1101
- Arslan Shah
I 1101–1142
- Mehmed I (Muhammad) 1142–1156
- Toğrül Shah 1156–1169
- Bahram Shah 1169–1174
- Arslan Shah II 1174–1176
- Turan Shah II 1176–1183
- Muhammad Shah
1183–1187
Muhammad abandoned Kerman, which fell into the hands of the
Oghuz chief Malik Dinar. Kerman was
eventually annexed by the Khwarezmid Empire in 1196.
Seljuq rulers in
Syria 1076–1117
To the Artuqids
Sultans/Emirs of Damascus:
- Aziz ibn Abaaq al-Khwarazmi 1076–1079
- Abu Sa'id Taj ad-Dawla Tutush I 1079–1095
- Abu Nasr Shams al-Muluk Duqaq 1095–1104
- Tutush II 1104
- Muhi ad-Din Baqtash 1104
Damascus seized by the Burid Toghtekin
Seljuq
sultans of Rûm (Anatolia) 1077–1307
See Sultanate of Rûm
The Seljuq line, already having been deprived of any
significant power, effectively ends in the early fourteenth
century
Gallery
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Seljuq era art: Ewer from Iran, dated 1180–1210. Brass worked in repousse
and inlaid with silver and bitumen. NY Metropolitan Museum.
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See also
Notes
- ^
Black, Jeremy (2005). The Atlas of
World History. Covent Garden Books. pp. 65, 228. ISBN
9780756618612.
This map varies
from other maps which are slightly different in scope, especially
along the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
- ^
"Seljuq Turks" in various
scholastic sources
- ^
Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes, (New Brunswick:Rutgers
University Press, 1988), 147.
- ^
Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes, (Rutgers
University Press, 1991), 161,164; "..renewed the Seljuk attempt
to found a great Turko-Persian empire in eastern Iran..",
"It is to be noted that the Seljuks, those Turkomans who became
sultans of Persia, did not Turkify Persia-no doubt because they did
not wish to do so. On the contrary, it was they who voluntarily
became Persians and who, in the manner of the great old Sassanid
kings, strove to protect the Iranian populations from the
plundering of Ghuzz bands and save Iranian culture from the
Turkoman menace."
- ^
- Jackson, P. (2002). Review: The History of the Seljuq Turks:
The History of the Seljuq Turks.Journal of Islamic Studies 2002
13(1):75–76; doi:10.1093/jis/13.1.75.Oxford Centre for Islamic
Studies.
- 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.
- ^
- Josef W. Meri, "Medieval Islamic Civilization: An
Encyclopedia", Routledge, 2005, p. 399
- Michael Mandelbaum, "Central Asia and the World", Council on
Foreign Relations (May 1994), p. 79
- 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."
- Ram Rahul. "March of Central Asia", Indus Publishing, page
124.
- C.E. Bosworth, "Turkish expansion towards the west", in UNESCO
HISTORY OF HUMANITY, Volume IV, 2000.
- Mehmed Fuad Koprulu, "Early Mystics in Turkish Literature",
Translated by Gary Leiser and Robert Dankoff, Routledge, 2006, pg
149.
- O.Özgündenli, "Persian Manuscripts in Ottoman and Modern
Turkish Libraries", Encyclopaedia
Iranica, Online Edition, (LINK)
- Encyclopaedia
Britannica, "Seljuq", Online Edition, (LINK)
- ^
John Perry, THE HISTORICAL ROLE OF TURKISH IN RELATION TO PERSIAN
OF IRAN in Iran & the Caucasus, Vol. 5, (2001), pp. 193-200.
excerpt: " First, since the Turkish-speaking rulers of most Iranian
polities from the Ghaznavids and Seljuks onward were already
iranized and patronized Persian literature in their domains, the
expansion of Turk-ruled empires served to expand the territorial
domain of written Persian into the conquered areas, notably
Anatolia and Central and South Asia."
- ^
Ram Rahul. "March of Central Asia", Indus Publishing, pg 124:"The
Seljuk conquest of Persia marked the triumph of the Sunni over Shii
but without a decline in Persian culture. The Seljuks eventually
adopted the Persian culture.
- ^
Ehsan Yarshater, “Iran” in Encyclopedia Iranica:"The ascent of the
Saljuqids also put an end to a period which Minorsky has called
“the Persian intermezzo”(see Minorsky, 1932, p. 21), when Iranian
dynasties, consisting mainly of the Saffarids, the Samanids, the
Ziyarids, the Buyids, the Kakuyids, and the Bavandids of Tabarestan
and Gilan, ruled most of Iran. By all accounts, weary of the
miseries and devastations of never-ending conflicts and wars,
Persians seemed to have sighed with relief and to have welcomed the
stability of the Saljuqid rule, all the more so since the Saljuqids
mitigated the effect of their foreignness, quickly adopting the
Persian culture and court customs and procedures and leaving the
civil administration in the hand of Persian personnel, headed by
such capable and learned viziers as ‘Amid-al-Molk Kondori and
Nezam-al-Molk."
- ^
C.E. Bosworth, "Turkish
expansion towards the west", in UNESCO HISTORY OF HUMANITY, Volume IV: From the
Seventh to the Sixteenth Century, UNESCO Publishing /
Routledge,2000. 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).
The process of Persianization accelerated in the thirteenth century
with the presence in Konya of two of the most distinguished
refugees fleeing before the Mongols, Bahā' al-Dīn Walad and his son
Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, whose Mathnawī, composed in
Konya, constitutes one of the crowning glories of classical Persian
literature."
- ^
Stephen P. Blake, "Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal
India, 1639-1739". Cambridge University Press, 1991. pg 123: "For
the Seljuks and Il-Khanids in Iran it was the rulers rather than
the conquered who were "Persianized and Islamicized".
- ^
Mehmed Fuad Koprulu, "Early Mystics in Turkish Literature",
Translated by Gary Leiser and Robert Dankoff, Routledge, 2006, pg
149: "If we wish to sketch, in broad outline, the civilization
created by the Seljuks of Anatolia, we must recognize that the
local, i.e. non-Muslim, element was fairly insignificant compared
to the Turkish and Arab-Persian elements, and that the Persian
element was paramount/The Seljuk rulers, to be sure, who were in
contact with not only Muslim Persian civilization, but also with
the Arab civilizations in al-jazīra and Syria – indeed, with all
Muslim peoples as far as India – also had connections with
{various} Byzantine courts. Some of these rulers, like the great
'Ala' al-Dīn Kai-Qubād I himself, who married Byzantine princesses
and thus strengthened relations with their neighbors to the west,
lived for many years in Byzantium and became very familiar with the
customs and ceremonial at the Byzantine court. Still, this close
contact with the ancient Greco-Roman and Christian traditions only
resulted in their adoption of a policy of tolerance toward art,
aesthetic life, painting, music, independent thought – in short,
toward those things that were frowned upon by the narrow and
piously ascetic views {of their subjects}. The contact of the
common people with the Greeks and Armenians had basically the same
result. {Before coming to Anatolia}, the Turks had been in contact
with many nations and had long shown their ability to synthesize
the artistic elements that they had adopted from these nations.
When they settled in Anatolia, they encountered peoples with whom
they had not yet been in contact and immediately established
relations with them as well. 'Ala' al-Dīn Kai-Qubād I established
ties with the Genoese and, especially, the Venetians at the ports
of Sinop and Antalya, which belonged to him, and granted them
commercial and legal concessions. Meanwhile, the Mongol invasion,
which caused a great number of scholars and artisans to flee from
Turkistan, Iran, and Khwārazm and settle within the Empire of the
Seljuks of Anatolia, resulted in a reinforcing of Persian influence
on the Anatolian Turks. Indeed, despite all claims to the contrary,
there is no question that Persian influence was paramount among the
Seljuks of Anatolia. This is clearly revealed by the fact that the
sultans who ascended the throne after Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kai-Khusraw I
assumed titles taken from ancient Persian mythology, like
Kai-Khusraw, Kai-Kā'ūs, and Kai-Qubād; and that 'Ala' al-Dīn
Kai-Qubād I had some passages from the Shāhnāme inscribed
on the walls of Konya and Sivas. When we take into consideration
domestic life in the Konya courts and the sincerity of the favor
and attachment of the rulers to Persian poets and Persian
literature, then this fact {i.e. the importance of Persian
influence} is undeniable. With regard to the private lives of the
rulers, their amusements, and palace ceremonial, the most definite
influence was also that of Iran, mixed with the early Turkish
traditions, and not that of Byzantium."
- ^
Bosworth, C.E.; Hillenbrand, R.; Rogers, J.M.; Blois, F.C. de;
Bosworth, C.E.; Darley-Doran, R.E., Saldjukids, Encyclopaedia of
Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman , Th. Bianquis , C.E. Bosworth , E.
van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2009. Brill Online:
“Culturally, the constituting of the Seljuq Empire marked a further
step in the dethronement of Arabic from being the sole lingua
franca of educated and polite society in the Middle East. Coming as
they did through a Transoxania which was still substantially
Iranian and into Persia proper, the Seljuqs with no high-level
Turkish cultural or literary heritage of their own – took over that
of Persia, so that the Persian language became the administration
and culture in their land of Persia and Anatolia. The Persian
culture of the Rum Seljuqs was particularly splendid, and it was
only gradually that Turkish emerged there as a parallel language in
the field of government and adab; the Persian imprint in Ottoman
civilization was to remain strong until the 19th century.
- ^ a
b
c
O.Özgündenli, "Persian Manuscripts in Ottoman and Modern
Turkish Libraries", Encyclopaedia
Iranica, Online Edition, (LINK)
- ^ a
b
c
Encyclopaedia
Britannica, "Seljuq", Online Edition, (LINK): "... Because
the Turkish Seljuqs had no Islamic tradition or strong literary
heritage of their own, they adopted the cultural language of their
Persian instructors in Islam. Literary Persian thus spread to the
whole of Iran, and the Arabic language disappeared in that country
except in works of religious scholarship ..."
- ^
Daniel Pipes: "The Event of Our Era: Former Soviet Muslim Republics
Change the Middle East" in Michael Mandelbaum,"Central Asia and the
World: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Turkemenistan and the World", Council on Foreign Relations, pg 79.
Exact statement: "In Short, the Turko-Persian tradition featured
Persian culture patronized by Turcophone rulers."
- ^ a
b
M. Ravandi, "The Seljuq court at Konya and the Persianisation
of Anatolian Cities", in Mesogeios (Mediterranean Studies),
vol. 25–6 (2005), pp. 157–69
- ^
Previte-Orton (1971), vol. 1, pg.278
- ^
Concise Britannica Online Seljuq Dynasty
article
- ^
Merriam-Webster Online – Definition of Seljuk
- ^
The History of the Seljuq Turks: From the Jami Al-Tawarikh (LINK)
- ^
History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey – Stanford Shaw (LINK)
- ^
Wink, Andre, Al Hind the Making of the Indo Islamic World,
Brill Academic Publishers, Jan 1, 1996, ISBN 90-04-09249-8
pg.9
- ^
Islam: An Illustrated History, p. 51
- ^
M.A. Amir-Moezzi, "Shahrbanu", Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, (LINK): "... here one
might bear in mind that turco-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
..."
- ^
F. Daftary, Sectarian and National Movements in Iran, Khorasan,
and Trasoxania during Umayyad and Early Abbasid Times, in
History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol 4, pt. 1;
edited by M.S. Asimov and C.E. Bosworth; UNESCO Publishing, Institute of Ismaili
Studies: "... Not only did the inhabitants of Khurasan not
succumb to the language of the nomadic invaders, but they imposed
their own tongue on them. The region could even assimilate the
Turkic Ghaznavids and Seljuks (eleventh and twelfth centuries), the
Timurids (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries), and the Qajars
(nineteenth–twentieth centuries) ..."
21 Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes, (New
Brunswick:Rutgers University Press, 1988),147.
References
- Previte-Orton, C. W (1971). The Shorter Cambridge Medieval
History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- http://www.selcuklular.com/?
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