TWELVE

The Turks in Anatolia

107

The Seljuqs of Rūm

473–707/1081–1307

Originally in west-central Anatolia, with their capital at Konya; later, in most of Anatolia except the western fringes

Soon after the Great Seljuq sultan Alp Arslan’s victory over the Byzantine emperor at Mantzikert, we hear of the activities in Anatolia of the four sons of another member of the Seljuq family, Qutalmïsh or Qutlumush, and it was the descendants of one of these sons, Sulaymān, who were to establish a local Seljuq sultanate in Anatolia based on Iconium or Konya. Sulaymān reached Nicaea or Iznik in the far north-west of Asia Minor, but the emergent Byzantine dynasty of the Comneni, aided by the First Crusaders, began to re-establish the Greek position in the west, and the seat of the Seljuq sultanate was eventually fixed at Konya in west-central Anatolia as the capital of what was for long to remain a landlocked principality. Sulaymān’s son Qïlïch Arslan I had ambitions in Diyār Bakr and Jazīra, but after his death his successors were left alone in Anatolia by the Great Seljuqs further to the east. The Little Armenian kingdom of Cilicia and the Franks in the county of Edessa were now attacked, and, from their base at Konya, Mas‘ūd I and Qïlïch Arslan II gained the preponderance over the rival amirate of the Dānishmendids (see below, no. 108). A Byzantine attack on Konya was avenged by Qïlïch Arslan II’s victory over the Greeks in 572/1176 at Myriocephalon near Lake Eğridir, after which the latter’s hopes of reconquering Anatolia faded; but in his old age, the sultan lost control over his sons, his territories became fragmented and in 586/1190 the emperor Frederick Barbarossa and the Third Crusaders temporarily occupied Konya.

The Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 afforded the Seljuqs an opportunity to re-establish their power. From being essentially a power of the Anatolian interior, they extended to the Mediterranean, and the port of Alanya or ‘Alā’iyya (thus named after ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Kay Qubādh I) was constructed. With this and the northern coastlands in Turkish hands, a flourishing transit trade between Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, across Anatolia to the Black Sea, the Crimea and the lands of the Mongol Golden Horde (see below, no. 129), grew up after c. 1225, and commercial relations were begun with the Italian trading cities. The internal prosperity of the Rūm sultanate in these decades is shown by the architectural and cultural glories of Konya and other parts of Anatolia at this time. Thereafter, decline set in, with internal discontent marked by the rebellion of a charismatic dervish leader, Baba Isḥāq, in 638/1240; and, when the Mongols invaded eastern Anatolia, the Seljuqs were defeated at Köse Dagh to the east of Sivas in 641/1243. Thereafter, the Rūm sultanate became a client, tribute-paying state of the Mongol Il Khāns (see below, no. 128). After 676/1277, Mongol governors took direct control. The names of the Seljuqs continued to appear on coins up to 702/1303, but they had no real authority; the last ones may have reigned in Alanya, where Ottoman chronicles mention a Seljuq descendant in the fifteenth century. A new period in the history of Anatolia begins after 707/1307, one of fragmentation into a series of petty principalities or beyliks (see below, nos 106–24).

Lane-Poole, 155; Sachau, 16 no. 30; Khalīl Ed’hem, 216–17, 219; Zambaur, 143–4; Album, 29.

EI²‘Saldjūḳids. III. 5, IV. 2, V. 2, VII. 2’ (C. E. Bosworth).

Cl. Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey. A General Survey of the Material and Spiritual Culture and History c. 1071–1330, London 1968, 73–138, 269–301.

O. Turan, Selçuklular zamanında Türkiye. Siyasi tarih Alp Arslan’dan Osman Gazi’ye (1071–1318), Istanbul 1971, 45ff., with a genealogical table at the end.