Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 Bangla Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 Bangla Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk Episode 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk Episode 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
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Muhammad Tapar 1105–18
Certainly, some sources lambast Mas‘ud for a dissolute lifestyle (see p. 176 below), but this may be an attempt by the chroniclers to represent impiety as leading to failure. Mas‘ud’s contemporary al- Fariqi judged that he was ‘a just sultan, of mild disposition and so generous that he divided out all his territory amongst his associates, leaving himself only the name of the sultan’.127 Qummi also attributes the problems to Mas‘ud’s favoritism, claiming that he bestowed the iq†ā‘s of recently deceased amirs on Khassbeg. Watch All Episode
This may well have been true, but the crisis was more deep-rooted than one personal favorite. Mas‘ud did strive to curb amiral power, as his appointment of Kamal al-Din Muhammad and the murders of Toghanyürek and ‘Abbas of Rayy suggest. On both occasions, other amirs had thwarted the sultan’s moves to assert himself and frustrated his attempts to build up an independent revenue stream. Mas‘ud’s failure may not have been a result of ineptitude, but rather the straitjacket of circumstances, or a combination of such factors.
Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series The mere act of staying on the throne for two decades despite the constant revolts suggests considerable tenacity; and in terms of keeping caliphal ambitions in check and preserving at least a rump Seljuk Sultanate of Iraq based in the Jibal, Mas‘ud had some successes. He benefited too from Sanjar’s humiliation at the battle of Qatwan in 536/1141 (see below).
To shore up his own position Sanjar had to write formally to Mas‘ud ‘permitting him to occupy Rayy in his own right according to the custom of Sultan Muhammad [Tapar], to gather armies and to reside in Rayy where he could be called on if necessary.’129 On Mas‘ud’s death, Ibn al-Athir was able to write that ‘the good fortune of the Seljuk dynasty died with him.130 However, the ultimate destruction of the empire was to come not from the west but from the east, where Sanjar had ruled supreme since the death of Muhammad Tapar.
Crisis in the East, 1138–52
At first glance, Sanjar’s rule in the east as senior sultan seems to divide neatly into two phases.131 In the first (c. 1118–38), an impression of invincibility was given by military feats such as the subjugation of Ghazna, whose ruler, Bahramshah, abandoned a rebellion after Sanjar marched his troops through the frozen mountains of an Afghan winter to confront him in his capital in 530/1135–6.132 In the second phase, from c. 1138, the great sultan seemed increasingly beleaguered, Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
beset by the constant rebellions of his vassal Atsız, governor of Khwarazm; a cataclysmic defeat by the invading Qarakhitay in 536/1141; the rebellion of the vassal ruler of remote Ghur, ‘Ala’ al-Din, which although defeated, did not prevent the emergence of the Ghurids as a major power in the Islamic east;133 and, finally, the great Türkmen rebellion of 547/1152 in which the sultan was himself captured, dying in 552/1157 shortly after his release from three years imprisonment by the Ghuzz.
Despite his immense resources,134 deriving from his control of some of the most prosperous areas of the Islamic world and their connecting trade routes, Sanjar’s power was even in the early phase more limited than it first appears. We have noted above his inability to impose his will on the Sultanate of Iraq, obliging him to recognize Mahmud and accept Sultan Mas‘ud in place of his favored candidate, Tughrıl. Amirs in the east frequently rebelled against Sanjar, Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
while the eastern sultanate experienced exactly the same rapid turnover in the bureaucracy as the west in the late 1120s before the descendants of Nizam al- Mulk managed to gain more or less permanent control over the vizierate of Khurasan.135 These factors suggest that the factionalism that plagued the bureaucracy in the Sultanate of Iraq was present in the east too, along with weak sultanic power. Isfahani – our most detailed source – portrays Sanjar as a capricious character unable to control his passions for drink and youth.
He bestowed his affections on a series of slaves to whom he gave virtually unlimited power and wealth, although his love invariably turned to hatred, resulting in the death of the current favorite.136 Isfahani even accuses the sultan of plotting with the Ismailis to dispose of one unwanted favorite, Jawhar.137 As ever, it is hard to discern how much of this is simply literary fiction to explain Sanjar’s ultimate humiliation and demise by portraying him as an unworthy ruler.
Problems first reared their head in Khwarazm, which was ruled by Atsız, a member of a mamlūk dynasty that had controlled this distant and historically always independent-minded province as Seljuk vassals from 491/1097– 8.138 Although the Khwarazmian court poet and bureaucrat Rashid al-Din Watwat wrote a triumphant qasida proclaiming, King Atsız ascended the throne of his kingdom: the Luck of Seljuk and his family came to an end,139 in fact, Atsız was an obedient vassal for most his first decade as ruler of Khwarazm.
In 553/1138, however, Sanjar was obliged to march on Khwarazm in response to Atsız’s usurpation of the sultan’s privileges, in particular, it seems, his assertion of suzerain rights over the nomads of Jand and Manqishlaq.140 Atsız was duly deposed and his son killed in battle with Sanjar’s forces. Although Khwarazm was allotted in iq†ā‘ to Sanjar’s nephew Sulaymanshah, as soon as Sanjar returned to Merv, Atsız returned to power, supported by the people of Khwarazm who had learned to hate Sanjar’s soldiery.141 As events in both halves of the empire so often underlined,
without being physically present it was extremely hard for the sultan to exert his will, and gains would often be reversed as soon as his back was turned. Broader political and demographic changes turned Sanjar’s Khwarazmian problem into a full-scale disaster for the Seljuks. The twelfth century witnessed an increase in nomadism in Central Asia.142 Turkish groups like the Ghuzz and the Qarluqs, who were at least nominally Muslim, seem to have been growing in strength but were rapidly becoming difficult for established powers such as the Qarakhanids and the Seljuks to manage.
At the same time, the Qarakhitay were starting to encroach on Islamic Central Asia,143 their prestige undiminished by the initial defeat of their leader (the Gurkhan), Yelü Dashi, at Kashghar by the Seljuks’ Qarakhanid vassals in 1131.144 Indeed, they were soon enmeshed in Qarakhanid politics, while Atsız sought to profit from the presence of this new power to strengthen his own hand.
Both the growing nomad problem in the region and Atsız’s personal ambitions have been cited as reasons for the Qarakhitay intervention.
As early as 1130 the western Qarakhanid ruler Arslan Khan was finding it impossible to control the Qarluq nomads, who also comprised a good part of his army, and was obliged to call on Sanjar for help. A few years later, around 1134, the Qarakhanid ruler of Balasaghun asked Yelü Dashi for help against his own Qarluq and Qangli nomads. He got rather more than he bargained for: the Qarakhitay occupied Balasaghun itself, where they pitched their tents and henceforth made their capital.
A further confrontation with the Qarakhanids in 531/1137 gave them control of the Farghana valley and the road into Transoxiana, the heart of Islamic Central Asia.145 Sanjar, for all his bellicosity against less powerful neighbors such as the Ghurids and Ghaznavids, does not seem to have been anxious to move to protect his Qarakhanid vassals and initially underestimated the Qarakhitay threat. Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
A letter was written from Sanjar’s chancery dated 527/1133 refers to the Qarakhitay defeat at Kashghar,146 while the Delhi historian Juzjani tells us that Sanjar even granted the Qarakhitay permission to move into pastures in Balasaghun, Qayalıq, and Almalıq147 – all Qarakhanid territories. Khwarazm remained Sanjar’s main concern, starting with his punitive campaign of 553/1138, the year after the Qarakhitay advance into Farghana. In 534/1139–40, Atsız sacked Bukhara; a show of force by Sanjar the following year bought him to submission again.
A mere four months later, Sanjar was obliged to march to Samarqand to confront the Qarakhitay in Safar 536/ October 1141. Battle was met at Qatwan on the steppe outside the city: the Muslim and Chinese sources differ as to the details, the former claiming Sanjar was massively outnumbered. The result, however, is not in dis- put: the Seljuk army suffered appalling losses, Sanjar’s wife was captured, and Sanjar himself barely escaped with his life, fleeing ignominiously to Tirmidhi and then Balkh.
The Qarakhitay were able to establish themselves permanently in Transoxiana,148 while to the west Atsız plundered his way through Khurasan.149 In Merv he sat on the Seljuk throne before making off with the Sanjar’s treasure chests; for several weeks in 536–7/spring 1142 Sanjar’s name was dropped from the khu†ba in Nishapur and replaced with the Khwarazmshah’s. Out of fear of the Qarakhitay Sanjar was unable to intervene. Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
150 The Qarakhitay invasion thus worked out very nicely for Atsız, and several medieval sources suggest he incited Yelü Dashi’s attack on Sanjar, both in order to free himself from his Seljuk overlord and to gain revenge for the death of his son during one of Sanjar’s campaigns against Khwarazm; certainly, he does seem to have had a formal alliance with Yelü Dashi which was sealed with a dynastic marriage.151 However, the Qarluqs seems to have been an equally important factor in prompting Qarakhitay intervention.
In response to Qarakhanid requests, Sanjar expelled the Qarluqs from his domains. The nomads took refuge with the Qarakhitay ruler – himself a tent-dwelling nomad – and encouraged his attack. Yelü Dashi had written to Sanjar asking him to forgive the Qarluqs, to which Sanjar responded by arrogantly demanding the Gurkhan’s conversion to Islam and threatening him with his military might.152 The greatest consequence of Qatwan was less the vast number of dead than the damage to Sanjar’s reputation.
He lost the confidence of his amirs,153 and with the conquest of Nishapur, Atsız seems to have openly proclaimed his intention to supplant the Seljuk state,154 the first time a vassal had seriously challenged the legitimacy of Seljuk rule. Indeed, the news even spread to Europe, for the Crusades chronicler Otto of Freising (d. 1158) recorded a confused account of Qatwan which identified the Buddhist Yelü Dashi with the legendary Christian king of the East, Prester John, who would save Christianity from the Muslim menace.
None of these factors constituted a fatal blow to Sanjar. Yelü Dashi never followed up his conquests with an invasion further west,156 and the establishment of a nominal Qarakhitay suzerainty over Transoxiana and Khwarazm did not affect the core lands of Seljuk Khurasan. The decade after Qatwan actually witnessed a distinct revival in Sanjar’s fortunes, and Atsız proved unable to hold his gains in Khurasan. In 1143, Yelü Dashi died and Sanjar recovered sufficiently to besiege Atsız in his capital of Khwarazm in 438/1144.157 The success of this expedition is unclear,
while some sources indicate that he extracted oaths of allegiance from the Khwarazmshah, this may just have been a face-saving device. Atsız seems to have been caught in the rather awkward position of being both a Seljuk and a Qarakhitay vassal; however, a series of coins he struck between 538 and 540/1143–4 and 1145–6 mentioned not Sanjar, but the western sultan Mas‘ud as his suzerain,158 suggesting the limitations of Sanjar’s authority.
Yet Sanjar appears on later coins, possibly as a result of a third expedition the sultan may have sent against Khwarazm in 542–3/1147–8.159 Even Transoxiana may have reverted to Seljuk sovereignty in some form, albeit briefly, for a coin struck in Bukhara in 541/1146–7, shows the Qarakhanid Ibrahim as the vassal of both Sanjar and the Qarakhitay.160 To the south, Sanjar launched a successful campaign against Ghur in 547/1152.161 Thus, despite Qatwan,
Sanjar retained the capability to assert a degree of suzerainty, at least at times, in this fractious region. While the collapse of the Seljuk Empire in the east was not a direct result of Qatwan, the Qarakhitay infiltration had profound consequences in displacing the nomads from their traditional pasturelands. As a result, large numbers started to settle around Balkh, to the consternation of Qumaj, the local governor (and Sanjar’s former atabeg).
An offer by the Ghuzz to pay 200 silver dirhams per household to be allowed to stay on their pastures was rejected for reasons that are not entirely clear.163 Other causes of tension that the sources point to are personal animosity between the Ghuzz and Qumaj,164 and resentment at excessive demands for taxes from the nomads (in the form of livestock) by Sanjar’s court.165 In addition, the Ghuzz leaders seem to have been in cahoots with Atsız.
The cause was certainly not, as later traditions alleged, that the sedentarised Seljuks had become inimical to Türkmen per se.167 On the contrary, Sanjar’s dīwān issued instructions to the official in charge of the Türkmen of Dihistan, for instance, to establish good relations with the Türkmen, to assist in securing them necessities like pasture. Chancery documents referred specifically to the kinship (‚ilat al- arªām) of the sultans and the nomads.
It was thus not any broader anti- nomad policy, but rather local conditions in Balkh, resentment at taxation, the disruption on the steppe caused by the Qarakhitay, and the unwillingness or inability of Seljuk authorities to accommodate the displaced nomads, which combined to foment the great Ghuzz revolt broke out in Balkh in 547/1152, bringing down the Great Seljuk Empire.169 Five Disastrous Years: The Disintegration of the Seljuk Empire, 1152–7 Over the years 547–52/1152–7, the Seljuk state in both the east and the west unraveled.
The west, as we have seen, had been beset by political problems at least since the death of Muhammad Tapar. Yet it was the Sultanate of Iraq that was to prove more resilient than Khurasan, where the Ghuzz uprising permanently destroyed Seljuk rule.
Seljuk armies sent against Balkh were rebuffed, and in the course of fighting Sanjar himself was captured along with his wife Terken Khatun. In 548/1153, the Ghuzz advanced on Merv. The city seems to have been barely defended; its walls (Figure. 2.1), perhaps, were built for show rather than protection,170 and little effort was made to oppose the Ghuzz bands that seemingly came from nowhere in scenes reminiscent of the Seljuks’ own emergence just over a century previously.
Sanjar’s captors made every protestation of loyalty, but these could not mask the brutal reality. Merv with its palaces, mosques, libraries, and pleasure gardens was sacked and its inhabitants were taken captive. The Ghuzz leader Bakhtiyar demanded to be granted Merv itself as iq†ā‘, and when Sanjar protested that ‘this is the abode of kingship (dār al- mulk) and should not be given as iq†ā‘ to anyone’, he was greeted with derisive laughter.
Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk 21 Bangla Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
Alparslan Buyuk Seljuk Episode 21 English Subtitle It’s Free | Turkey TV Series
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