Seljuq, ruling military family of the Oğuz (Ghuzz) Turkic tribes that invaded southwestern Asia in the 11th century and eventually founded an empire that included Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and most of Iran. Their advance marked the beginning of Turkic power in the Middle East.

A brief treatment of the Seljuqs follows. For full treatment, see Anatolia: The Seljuqs of Anatolia.

During the 10th-century migrations of the Turkic peoples from Central Asia and southeastern Russia, one group of nomadic tribes, led by a chief named Seljuq, settled in the lower reaches of the Syr Darya (ancient Jaxartes River) and later converted to the Sunni form of Islam. They played a part in the frontier defense forces of the Samanids and later of Maḥmūd of Ghazna. Seljuq’s two grandsons, Chaghri (Chagri) Beg and Toghrïl (Ṭugril) Beg, enlisted Persian support to win realms of their own, Chaghri controlling the greater part of Khorāsān and Toghrïl, at his death in 1063, heading an empire that included western Iran and Mesopotamia.

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Islamic world: Seljuq Turks

Under the sultans Alp-Arslan and Malik-Shah, the Seljuq empire was extended to include all of Iran and Mesopotamia and Syria, including Palestine. In 1071 Alp-Arslan defeated an immense Byzantine army at Manzikert and captured the Byzantine emperor Romanus IV Diogenes. The way was open for Turkmen Seljuqs to settle in Asia Minor.

Because of Toghrïl Beg’s victory over the Buyids in Baghdad in 1055, the Seljuqs came to be seen as the restorers of Muslim unity under the Sunni caliphate. While Alp-Arslan and Malik-Shah expanded the empire to the frontier of Egypt, the Seljuq vizier Niẓām al-Mulk oversaw the empire’s organization during both their reigns. The Seljuq empire, political as well as religious in character, left a strong legacy to Islam. During the Seljuq period a network of madrasahs (Islamic colleges) was founded, capable of giving uniform training to the state’s administrators and religious scholars. Among the many mosques built by the sultans was the Great Mosque of Eṣfahān (the Masjed-e Jāmeʿ). Persian cultural autonomy flourished in the Seljuq empire. Because the Turkmen 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.

The Seljuq empire was unable to prevent the rise of the Nizārī Ismaʿīlīs, a Shiʿi sect thought to be responsible for the killing of vizier Niẓām al-Mulk in 1092. More importantly, the empire was undermined by the Seljuqs’ practice of dividing provinces among a deceased ruler’s sons, thus creating numerous independent and unstable principalities. Internecine struggles for power followed.

The last of the Iranian Seljuqs died on the battlefield in 1194, and by 1200 Seljuq power was at an end everywhere except in Anatolia.

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Alp-Arslan’s victory at Manzikert in 1071 had opened the Byzantine frontier to Oğuz tribesmen, and they soon established themselves as mercenaries in the Byzantines’ local struggles. Their employment by rival Byzantine generals vying for the throne of Constantinople (now Istanbul) gained them increasing influence, and gradually they assumed control of Anatolia as allies of the Byzantine emperor. They were driven to the interior of Anatolia by Crusaders in 1097. Hemmed in between the Byzantine Greeks on the west and by the Crusader states in Syria on the east, the Seljuq Turks organized their Anatolian domain as the sultanate of Rūm. Though its population included Christians, Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, and Iranian Muslims, Rūm was considered to be “Turkey” by its contemporaries. Commerce, agriculture, and art thrived in the kingdom, where a tolerance of races and religions contributed to order and stability.

A war against the Khwārezm-Shah dynasty of Iran instigated in 1230 by the Rūm sultan ʿAlaʾ al-Dīn Kay-Qubādh (Kaikobad) I led ultimately to the disintegration of Rūm and of Seljuq power. The loss of the Khorezmian buffer state meant that when the invading Mongols reached Turkey’s eastern frontiers, the Seljuqs could not fend them off. At the Battle of Köse Dagh in 1243, Seljuq autonomy was lost forever. For a time the Seljuq sultanate continued as a Mongol province, although some Turkmen emirs maintained small principalities of their own in distant mountainous districts. The Seljuq dynasty died out at last early in the 14th century.