ABSTRACT

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: I˙brahim Kafesoğlu’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. Kafesoğlu’s article in the I˙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 Geschichtswissen 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 nineteenthcentury 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 nineteenthcentury 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.