The Great Seljuqs

A History

Osman Aziz Basan

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415555395
• eBook ISBN: 9781136953927
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

This book provides a broad history of the Seljuq Turks from their origins and early conquests in the 10th century, through the rise of empire, until its dissolution at the end of the 12th. Where the history of the Seljuqs is usually studied in the context of medieval Persian, Arabic or Islamic history, this book considers the topic from the perspective of Turkish history.

Examining the corpus of academic work on the period and how Turkish historiography has interpreted and understood the Seljuqs, the author demonstrates how the Great Seljuq Empire can be considered not only in a historical context, but as the instigator of Turko-Islamic civilization. Rejecting traditional Turkish scholarship, which places Iranian culture and Islam as the civilising elements in the Great Seljuq Empire, the author shows how the nature of nomadic pastoral empires have come under fresh scrutiny, reassessing Seljuq history and the framework within which it has been treated.

This book provides a unique insight into the adoption to an urban environment of Turkic expectations that were forged on the Eurasian steppes, showing how the outcome put its stamp on the second millennium throughout the Middle East and Balkans. It will be an important addition to the literature on Medieval Islamic, Turkish and Middle Eastern history.

1
Introduction

The purpose of this work is to provide a history of the Great Seljuq Empire in a Western language. Although it is a translation, Gary Leiser’s A History of the Seljuqs:

brahim Kafeso

lu’s Interpretation and the Resulting Controversy (1988) is the only full length narrative of Seljuqid war and politics in a Western language (see Humphreys 1991: 156).

Another aim of this work is to reassess the framework within which the history of the Great Seljuqs has been treated. In the West, the Seljuqs are studied in the context of medieval Persian, Arabic or Islamic history (see Hodgson 1974; Lambton 1987; Frye 1993; Lewis 1993; Kennedy 1994; Morgan 1994a). In Turkey they are considered not only part of Turkish history but also the instigators of Turko-Islamic civilization. Kafeso

lu’s article in the

slâm Ansiklopedisi (IA) (IA/10: 353–416) is one of many such works on the Seljuqs by Turkish historians that hold this view.

Martin Strohmeier’s Seldschukische Geschichte und türkische Geschicht-swissen schaft – Die Seldschuken im Urteil moderner türkischer Historiker (History of the Seljuqs and Turkish Historiography–Modern Turkish Historians’ Judgement) (1984) has attempted to evaluate the politics and ideologies of Turkish historians on the Seljuqs. Despite first apprising a number of nineteenth-century Ottoman historians, arguably Strohmeier fails in this task. Rather than individual politics, Turkish interpretations of Seljuq history are directly traceable to late Ottoman scholarship. It is the main reason why so many historians in the republican era concentrated initially on the Seljuqs rather than the Ottomans or earlier Turkic empires.

As a result, the following sections first discuss developments in nineteenth-century Ottoman scholarship and the republican concerns that arose from it. Next, the Turkish historians on the Seljuqs are introduced, followed by a discussion of the problems their interpretations pose. An outline of ensuing chapters completes the introduction.

Ottoman influences

Re

it Pasha (1800–58) is best remembered for drafting the imperial edict of 3 November 1839, the Tanzimat-ı Hayriye Fermanı, which proclaimed that persons of all religions would be treated equally and that the inviolability of their life, property and honour would be recognized. However, he also founded the Encümen-i dâni

or Ottoman Academy (18 July 1851), whose forty members were charged with the tasks of emphasizing Turkish history rather than that of the Ottomans in an Islamic context, simplifying the Turkish language, and translating western European works on art and science as textbooks (Berkes 1998: 144–7; Eren IA/11: 709ff;

apolyo 1945: 161; Irmak and Ça

lar 1994: 11).

The most illustrious member of the academy was Cevdet Pasha (1822–95). Credited with drafting the opening address, he undertook to write a history of Ottoman attempts at reform between the years 1767–8 and 1825–6. Although he included the most important events of each year in chronological order, unlike previous Ottoman chroniclers Cevdet Pasha based his twelve-volume Tarih-i Cevdet (1854) on a wide variety of archival materials. He analysed, compared and criticized in a clear language official and private chronicles, memoirs, diaries, memorandums and reports produced by government officials, as well as legal and treasury documents. Cevdet Pasha is also credited with writing the first Turkish grammar (Berkes 1998: 178; Ölmezo

lu IA/3: 114ff; Irmak and Ça

lar 1994: 12–14).

Nonetheless, Ottoman historiography did not gain a Turkish emphasis until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the innermost reaches of Asia were penetrated by Colonel Prezhevalski, Hedin, Sir Stein, Radlov (Radloff) and Vambéry, to mention but a few. As a result, the eighth-century Kök Türk Orkhun stone inscriptions were discovered in present-day Mongolia and translated, as was Yusuf Has Hajib’s Kutadgu Bilig (1069–70), a ‘mirror for princes’ modelled on Firdausi’s Shah-Nama (1007). Since Guignes’ work in the eighteenth century, knowledge had been building up in western Europe that showed the Turks to have had an extensive and deeply rooted culture in Asia prior to the advent of Islam – one that was closely related to people who had remained outside Islamdom, such as the Finns, Hungarians, Mongolians and Tungus (Minorsky IA/12/2: 107ff; also Avcıo

lu 1979/1: 16).

In this intellectual atmosphere, Pan-Turanism, which became synonymous with Pan-Turkism, first emerged as a political concept in Hungary (1839). In reaction to Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism, initially the term appears to have been a romantic expression of the Hungarian intellectuals’ interest in their ancestral lands and related people. According to them, the Finno-Ugric and Altaic peoples had originated on the steppe between the Caspian Sea and Altay Mountains, the area named as Turan (Ibid.). When Ottoman intellectuals such as Âsım appropriated this concept they differentiated a Lesser Turan for the Turks and a Grand Turan inclusive of the Finns and Hungarians. In particular, Ziya Gökalp avowed that the Turks’ native country was neither Turkey nor Turkistan, but Turan: that grand and eternal place.

There were others besides Âsım at the Dar ül-Fünun-u Osman-i (Ottoman Imperial University), which was first established in 1846, then in 1869, 1870–1, 1874–81 and finally once again in 1900, until replaced by the Istanbul University in 1933. For instance, according to Ahmet Vefik Pasha (1823–91), there was a difference between Turkish and Ottoman in terms of language and history (Tanpınar IA/1: 207ff; also Berkes 1998: 314). Elsewhere, concerned that translations from European works showed Turks in a false light, Süleyman Pasha excluded these from the curriculum in military schools under his jurisdiction and published instead the first and only volume of his Tarih-i Âlem (History of the World) (1876). More importantly, Mustafa Celâlettin Pasha, a Polish immigrant, argued in his Les Turcs: Anciens et Modernes (1869) that linguistically and racially the Europeans were related to the Turks. This is noteworthy not so much from the point of view of Pan-Turkism, but because it foreshadowed the ideas that went into the Turkish Historical Thesis more than half a century later (Berktay 1983: 29; Timur 1994: 138–43; Berkes 1998: 316–17). Presented at the First Turkish Historical Congress held in Ankara in 1932, this proclaimed the Turks were not of a yellow but a brachycephalic white race; Turkish history did not consist merely of the Ottoman; the Turks were the nation that had dispersed culture to all other nations from Central Asia (Birinci Türk Tarih Kongresi, 1932).

On the whole, however, during this period Ottoman intellectuals were concerned with the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, not Pan-Turkism. Swayed in particular by Montesquieu’s ideas, the Young Ottomans (Yeni Osmanlılar), thought to have been founded in 1865, advocated the separation of powers through the constitution of an elected parliament to which the administration, namely the Servants of the Porte, would be held answerable (Berkes 1998: 208–14, 304–13; Mardin 1992a: 31–45; Kuran 1945). Without a doubt, the most influential Young Ottoman was Nâmık Kemâl (1840–88), who voiced his wide ranging ideas through various publications, both at home and abroad (Tasvir-i Efkâr, Tercümân-ı Ahvâl, Hürriyet, I

bret). Kemâl’s ideas on constitutional monarchy, which he tried later to reconcile with Shari law (Berkes 1998: 218–22; Çavdar 1995: 30), were less than welcome. Posted to Erzurum and forbidden from publishing, he went into self-exile in Paris (1867). Although continuing to publish while abroad, on his return at first he desisted (1870). This did not last; public excitement over his fervently nationalistic play Vatan yahut Silistre (My Country or Silistria) caused him to be arrested and e...

Table of contents

• Routledge studies in the history of Iran and Turkey
• Contents
• Maps
• Acknowledgements
• Spelling and abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Overview
• 3 Origins
• 4 Conquest (985/993–1063)
• 5 Empire (1063–92)
• 6 Interregnum (1092–1105)
• 7 Dissolution (1105–94)
• 8 Evaluation
• 9 Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Maps
• Appendix 2 The Oguz
• Appendix 3 Seljuq rulers
• Bibliography
• Index