ABSTRACT
The events in this chapter cover the reigns of Sultan Alp-Arslan and his son Malik-Shah. During his short reign Sultan Alp-Arslan first secured the Caucasus and north-eastern Anatolia for the Türkmen raiding Anatolia from the Mukan steppe in Azarbayjan. Soon after the Türkmen appear to have established a base in Ahlat, near Lake Van in eastern Anatolia, precipitating the Byzantine response that led to Emperor Romanos Diogenes’ defeat and capture by Sultan Alp-Arslan at nearby Malazgirt (1071). At the beginning of Sultan Malik-Shah’s reign (1072), Kutalmış’ sons Mansur, Süleyman-Shah, Devlet, Alp-Ilek and another appear in Anatolia, where they take up leadership of the Türkmen. Using the divisions that followed the crushing defeat at Malazgirt, Mansur and Süleyman-Shah appear to have quickly wrested Anatolia from the Byzantines. However, in the process only Süleyman-Shah was left alive. Having made peace with the resurgent Byzantines (1081), SüleymanShah was killed in battle with Sultan Malik-Shah’s son Tutuş while trying to expand from Antakya into north Syria (1084). By the end of Sultan Malik-Shah’s reign, south-eastern Anatolia, Syria, Bahrain, Mecca and Medina had all been incorporated into the Great Seljuq Empire, marking its highpoint. Both Sultan Alp-Arslan and Malik-Shah were challenged by Çağrı Beg’s eldest Kara-Arslan Kavurt. Although he appears to have had the support of the Great Seljuqs’ mamluk commanders, Sultan Malik-Shah finally defeated Kavurt with the help of his vizier Nizam al-Mulk. Having been captured, Kavurt was strangled with his own bowstring on Nizam al-Mulk’s orders (1092). The last years of Sultan Malik-Shah’s reign were dominated by his struggle with Nizam al-Mulk, which was acted out between his wife Terken Khatun and his commanders on the one side and the vizier and his sons on the other. Matters came to a head when Sultan Malik-Shah died soon after Nizam al-Mulk was assassinated by an adherent of Hasan al-Sabbah’s Ismacili Nizari sect. Turkish historians in particular have blamed the interregnum that followed the sultan’s death on his wife Terken Khatun, going so far as to accuse her of having the sultan poisoned. In support of their view they point to her negotiations with the caliph, as a result of which in return for his son Jacfar from Sultan Malik-Shah’s daughter Mah Melek Khatun, the caliph agreed to proclaim Terken Khatun’s infant son Mahmud sultan despite the existence of an heir apparent, Berk-Yaruk, Nizam al-Mulk’s original
choice. Since Nizam al-Mulk had been replaced by her former vizier Taj al-Mulk and the royal corps assigned to Üner, likewise her commander-in-chief, Terken Khatun is depicted as a meddlesome woman of unbridled ambition. What is more likely, however, is that the caliph had Sultan Malik-Shah poisoned after having refused to name Jacfar his heir apparent. Angered by the refusal, the sultan had given him a fortnight to vacate Baghdad. The chapter follows Köymen’s Alp-Arslan ve Zamanı (1972) for Sultan Alp-Arslan’s reign and Kafesoğlu’s Sultan Melikşah Devrinde Büyük Selçuklu I˙mparatorluğu (1953) for Sultan Malik-Shah’s reign. Although Köymen mentions that Kafesoğlu’s work needed to be updated in light of new material that had emerged since its publication (Köymen 1979: 12*), this has not happened. Kafesoğlu’s work is augmented with Merçil’s Kirman Selçukluları (1980), Turan’s Selçuklular Zamanında Türkiye (1993c) and Sevim’s Suriye Selçukluları I – Fetihten Tutuş’un Ölümüne Kadar (1965) for Kirman, Anatolia, and Syria and Palestine respectively. As in the previous chapter, references to other works are for supplementary material pertinent to the events being reviewed.
