Seljuk Empire

Politics and institutions

The Seljuk Empire was founded in 1037 by Tughril and Chaghri, two brothers of the Qiniq branch of the Oghuz Turks, who converted to Sunni Islam and built a state on the ruins of Ghaznavid and Buyid power. Tughril entered Baghdad in 1055, ended Buyid control of the Abbasid caliph and took the title sultan, becoming the caliph's temporal protector. The empire was a family federation: the great sultan ruled from Merv or Isfahan, while relatives governed appanages and atabegs controlled provinces. Persian viziers, above all Nizam al-Mulk, ran the bureaucracy and madrasa system. After Malik-Shah's death in 1092, succession wars, the Crusades and the Qara Khitai defeat at Qatwan in 1141 broke the empire apart; the last Great Seljuk sultan fell to Khwarezm in 1194.

Economy and finance

The Seljuk economy combined pastoralism, agriculture and the caravan trade. The Oghuz brought herds and horses into Iran and Anatolia, while Persian landowners and peasants kept the irrigated fields and villages producing grain, cotton and fruit. The state relied on the iqta, assigning tax revenues from districts to officers and officials in return for service, and on tolls from the Silk Road. Persian bureaucrats standardized taxes and coinage, and Seljuk silver dirhams circulated from Central Asia to Anatolia. The settlement of Turkmen tribes in Anatolia extended pastoralism and trade routes, but it also weakened central control over the countryside.

Society and culture

Seljuk society was Turco-Persian. A Turkic military elite ruled a Persian-speaking bureaucracy and a mostly Iranian and Arab urban population, while nomadic Turkmen tribes remained outside the settled order. Persian was the language of administration and high literature; Arabic remained the language of religion and law, and Turkic was spoken at court and in the army. The Seljuks patronized Persian poetry, historiography and the mirrors-for-princes genre, above all Nizam al-Mulk's Siyasatnama. Their court ceremonies and titles drew on Persian and Islamic models, while the settlement of Turks in Anatolia began the long process of Turkification and Islamization that produced later Turkish society.

Military and frontiers

Seljuk military power rested on Turkmen horse archers, a standing army of mamluks and the sultan's guard. Their tactics of mobility, feigned retreat and mounted archery defeated the Ghaznavids and, at Manzikert in 1071, the Byzantine emperor Romanus IV. The victory opened Anatolia to Turkmen settlement and to the Sultanate of Rum. Nizam al-Mulk organized the army and the iqta system that paid it, but the empire's forces were always fractious: Turkmen leaders resisted discipline, and after Malik-Shah's death the army fragmented among rival princes. The First Crusade exploited that division, and the Qara Khitai and Khwarezmians destroyed the eastern army in the twelfth century.

Technology and infrastructure

Seljuk builders and artists gave the Islamic world some of its most influential forms. The four-iwan plan, monumental domes in front of the mihrab and the muqarnas vault became standard in mosques and madrasas from Iran to Anatolia. Nizam al-Mulk's Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad set the model for state-sponsored religious education. Caravanserais, bridges and bazaars served the trade routes, while Seljuk craftsmen produced glazed tiles, mina'i ceramics, inlaid metalwork, illustrated manuscripts and textiles. Their architecture and decorative arts carried Persian and Central Asian traditions into Anatolia, where they shaped the later Ottoman visual world.

Legacy and influence

The Seljuk Empire revived Sunni Islam as the dominant faith of the eastern Islamic world, defended the Abbasid caliphate and created the madrasa system that educated generations of jurists and officials. Its victory at Manzikert opened Anatolia to Turkish settlement, and the Sultanate of Rum became the bridge to the Ottoman Empire. Seljuk art and architecture, Persian literature and the Turco-Persian administrative tradition shaped the states that followed, from the Khwarezmians and Ayyubids to the Mongols and Ottomans. Its memory also lives in the great Seljuk monuments of Iran and Turkey and in the Turkish and Persian literary canons.