The Seljuqs were the ruling family of a band of Turkish tribal nomads that seized power in the Islamic heartlands after defeating the Ghaznavid ruler and his forces in battle (1040). During its zenith in the 11th century, Seljuq rule was acknowledged in most of the Islamic world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian borderlands, and from Anatolia to the Persian Gulf.
The Seljuq dynasty reached its height during the reigns of Sultan Alp Arslan (r. 1063–72) and his son Malikshah (r. 1072–92), largely due to the skill and extraordinary abilities of their vizier, Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092). During Alp Arslan’s reign, the Seljuqs inflicted a crushing defeat on the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert (1071). As a result of this victory, Anatolia was flooded with waves of Turkish nomads, beginning the process of the Turkification of Anatolia, which eventually led to the downfall of the Byzantine Empire and its replacement by the Muslim Ottomans. Among the most important of the Muslim polities established in Anatolia as a result of Manzikert was the Seljuq sultanate of Rum (1081–1307), which formed a separate polity from that of the eastern or Great Seljuq sultanate and was ruled by a rival branch of the Seljuq family.
After the death of Malikshah in 1092, the Seljuq empire began unraveling due to infighting among the various Seljuq princes, although in the early 12th century the empire experienced a revival in the East under the strong rule of Sultan Sanjar b. Malikshah (r. 1097–1157), who emerged as supreme sultan in 1118; he was widely recognized as the most powerful Muslim ruler of his time. Sanjar met his downfall in 1153, when he was defeated and subsequently taken prisoner by the unruly Turkish nomads who had originally elevated the Seljuqs. After this event the Great Seljuq realms disintegrated, breaking into a number of petty states ruled by atabegs, Seljuq military commanders who had been given charge of a young Seljuq prince, until the final extinction of the Seljuq sultanate in 1194.
The Seljuq period wrought profound political changes and, in consequence, significant developments in Islamic political thought. As the rulers of the first massive Turkish tribal migration, the Seljuqs faced the difficult task of balancing the role of tribal chieftain with that of a settled ruler in the Perso-Islamic tradition, a problem they never satisfactorily resolved and one that was to confront all subsequent Turkic rulers up to and including the Ottomans.
The Seljuqs were long portrayed as champions of Sunni Islam for several reasons. They constituted a bulwark against the rival Isma‘ili Shi‘i Fatimid caliphate, the predominant power in the Muslim lands from Syria westward. Further, they put an end to over a century of Shi‘i Buyid control of the Abbasid caliphate. Finally, they subsidized Sunni madrasas (religious seminaries) while also engaging in brutal military campaigns to combat both covert Isma‘ili proselytizing and the open revolt of the Isma‘ili Assassins, which threatened to destabilize the Seljuq lands.
At the same time, the experience of conquest by nomads was a bitter one for all Muslims, and, instead of restoring political power to the Abbasid caliphate, the Seljuqs continued to hold the reins of power. This caused great tension between the Abbasid caliphs and the Seljuq sultans throughout the 11th and 12th centuries, resulting in political murder on several occasions. Power in the hands of the Seljuqs also posed an unprecedented difficulty for political theorists, among religious jurisprudents and Seljuq administrators alike, who were forced to elaborate new theories regarding the theoretical bases of the sultan’s authority and to redefine the proper relations between caliph and sultan. Thus, the Seljuq era produced some of the classic manuals of medieval Islamic political thought, in both the Mirrors for Princes (statecraft advice manuals) and religious genres, written by figures such as Ghazali (ca. 1058–1111), Juwayni (d. 1085), and Nizam al-Mulk.
Perhaps the most important development in both political theory and practice that occurred under the Seljuqs was the sea change in relations between the government and the Sunni religious scholars. Whereas the original Sunni ideal was the complete independence, even aloofness, of the ‘ulama’, or religious clerics, from the government, the Sunni ‘ulama’ of Seljuq times, panicked by the Isma‘ili threat, were glad to accept Seljuq patronage. This growing dependence of the ‘ulama’ on the government led to the gradual subservience of the ‘ulama’ and their subsumption under state control. Over the centuries, this state of affairs was sometimes seen as discrediting the ‘ulama’ and played a role in modern times in the birth of the Salafi movement, which, among other tenets, disavows any religious scholar who maintains ties with the government.
See also Abbasids (750–1258); Fatimids (909–1171); Isma‘ilis; madrasa; Sunnism
Further Reading
C. E. Bosworth, “The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000–1217),” in The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 5: The Seljūq and Mongol Periods, edited by J. A. Boyle, 1968; Claude Cahen, The Formation of Turkey: The Seljukid Sultanate of Rūm: Eleventh to Fourteenth Century, translated by P. M. Holt, 2001; Carole Hillenbrand, “The Power Struggle Between the Seljūqs and the Isma‘ilis of Alamūt, 487–518/1094–1124: The Seljūq Perspective,” in Medieval Isma‘ili History and Thought, edited by Farhad Daftary, 1996; George Makdisi, “The Sunni Revival,” in Islamic Civilisation 950–1150, edited by D. S. Richards, 1973.
D. G. TOR