The Seljuks originated from theKinik branch of theOghuz Turks,[9][10][11][12] who in the 8th century lived on the periphery of the Muslim world; north of theCaspian Sea andAral Sea in theirOghuz Yabgu State[13] in theKazakh Steppe ofTurkestan.[14] During the 10th century, Oghuz had come into close contact with Muslim cities.[15] WhenSeljuk, the leader of the Seljuk clan, had a falling out withYabghu, the supreme chieftain of the Oghuz, he split his clan from the bulk of theOghuz Turks and set up camp on the west bank of the lowerSyr Darya. Around 985, Seljuk converted to Islam.[15]
The "Great Seljuks" were heads of the family; in theory their authority extended over all the other Seljuk lines, although in practice this often was not the case. Turkic custom called for the senior member of the family to be the Great Seljuk, although usually the position was associated with the ruler of western Persia.
Khwarazmian dynasty replaces the Seljuk dynasty. From 1157, theOghuz took control of much of Khurasan, with the remainder in the hands of former Seljuk emirs.
Muhammad's sonMahmud II succeeded him in western Persia, butAhmad Sanjar, who was the governor ofKhurasan at the time being the senior member of the family, became the Great Seljuk Sultan.
The rulers of western Persia, who maintained a very loose grip on theAbbasids ofBaghdad. Several Turkicemirs gained a strong level of influence in the region, such as theEldiguzids.
^Harris, Jonathan (2014).Byzantium and the Crusades. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 39–45.ISBN978-1-78093-736-6.
^Rāvandī, Muḥammad (1385).Rāḥat al-ṣudūr va āyat al-surūr dar tārīkh-i āl-i saljūq. Tihrān: Intishārāt-i Asāṭīr.ISBN978-964-331-366-1.
^Tetley, G.E (2009). Hillenbrand, Carole (ed.).The Ghaznavid and Seljuk Turks: Poetry as a Source for Iranian History. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 1–16.ISBN978-0-415-43119-4.
^Fleet, Kate (2009).The Cambridge History of Turkey: Byzantium to Turkey, 1071–1453: Volume 1(PDF). Cambridge University Press. p. 1. "The defeat in August 1071 of the Byzantine emperor Romanos Diogenes by the Turkomans at the battle of Malazgirt (Manzikert) is taken as a turning point in the history of Anatolia and the Byzantine Empire."
^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."
^Nishapuri, Zahir al-Din Nishapuri (2001), "The History of the Seljuq Turks from the Jami’ al-Tawarikh: An Ilkhanid Adaptation of theSaljuq-nama of Zahir al-Din Nishapuri," Partial tr. K.A. Luther, ed. C.E. Bosworth, Richmond, UK. K.A. Luther, p. 9: "[T]he Turks were illiterate and uncultivated when they arrived in Khurasan and had to depend on Iranian scribes, poets, jurists and theologians to man the institution of the Empire")
^abEncyclopædia Britannica, "Seljuq", Online Edition, (LINKArchived 2007-12-19 at theWayback Machine): "... 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 ..."
^abM. Ravandi, "The Seljuq court at Konya and the Persianisation of Anatolian Cities", inMesogeios (Mediterranean Studies), vol. 25–26 (2005), pp. 157–169
^M.A. Amir-Moezzi, "Shahrbanu",Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, (LINK[usurped]): "... here one might bear in mind that Turco-Persian dynasties such as the Ghaznavids, Seljuqs 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", inHistory of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol 4, pt. 1; edited by M.S. Asimov andC.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) ..."
^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: "Culturally, the consisting 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 inOttoman civilization was to remain strong until the 19th century.
^Ehsan Yarshater, "Iran" inEncyclopedia 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", inUNESCO 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, whoseMathnawī, composed in Konya, constitutes one of the crowning glories of classical Persian literature."
^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, p. 79. Exact statement: "In Short, the Turko-Persian tradition featured Persian culture patronized by Turcophone rulers."
^Black, Jeremy (2005).The Atlas of World History. American Edition, New York: Covent Garden Books. pp. 65, 228.ISBN978-0-7566-1861-2. This map varies from other maps which are slightly different in scope, especially along the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
Dietrich, Richard (2018). "The Names of Seljuk's Sons as Evidence for the Pre-Islamic Religion of the Seljuks".Turkish Historical Review.9 (1):54–70.doi:10.1163/18775462-00901002.
Grousset, Rene (1988).The Empire of the Steppes: a History of Central Asia. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 147.ISBN978-0-8135-0627-2.
Peacock, A.C.S. (2010).Early Seljuq History: A New Interpretation. New York: Routledge.[ISBN missing]
Previté-Orton, C. W. (1971).The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
