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Turkish
Origins and Seljuks
The first historical references to the Turks appear in Chinese records
dating around 200 B.C. These records refer to tribes called the Hsiung-nu
(an early form of the Western term Hun ), who lived in an area bounded by
the Altai Mountains, Lake Baykal, and the northern edge of the Gobi Desert,
and who are believed to have been the ancestors of the Turks.
Specific references in Chinese sources in the sixth century A.D. identify
the tribal kingdom called Tu-Küe located on the Orkhon River south of Lake
Baykal. The khans (chiefs) of this tribe accepted the nominal suzerainty of
the Tang Dynasty. The earliest known example of writing in a Turkic language
was found in that area and has been dated around A.D. 730.
Other Turkish nomads from the Altai region founded the Görtürk Empire, a
confederation of tribes under a dynasty of khans whose influence extended
during the sixth through eighth centuries from the Aral Sea to the Hindu
Kush in the land bridge known as Transoxania (i.e., across the Oxus River).
The Görtürks are known to have been enlisted by a Byzantine emperor in the
seventh century as allies against the Sassanians. In the eighth century,
separate Turkish tribes, among them the Oguz, moved south of the Oxus River,
while others migrated west to the northern shore of the Black Sea.
Great Seljuks
The Turkish migrations after the sixth century were part of a general
movement of peoples out of central Asia during the first millennium A.D.
that was influenced by a number of interrelated factors--climatic changes,
the strain of growing populations on a fragile pastoral economy, and
pressure from stronger neighbors also on the move. Among those who migrated
were the Oguz Turks, who had embraced Islam in the tenth century. They
established themselves around Bukhara in Transoxania under their khan,
Seljuk. Split by dissension among the tribes, one branch of the Oguz, led by
descendants of Seljuk, moved west and entered service with the Abbasid
caliphs of Baghdad.
The Turkish horsemen, known as gazis , were organized into tribal bands to
defend the frontiers of the caliphate, often against their own kinsmen.
However, in 1055 a Seljuk khan, Tugrul Bey, occupied Baghdad at the head of
an army composed of gazis and mamluks (slave-soldiers, a number of whom
became military leaders and rulers). Tugrul forced the caliph (the spiritual
leader of Islam) to recognize him as sultan, or temporal leader, in Persia
and Mesopotamia. While they engaged in state building, the Seljuks also
emerged as the champions of Sunni (see Glossary) Islam against the
religion's Shia (see Glossary) sect. Tugrul's successor, Mehmet ibn Daud (r.
1063-72)--better known as Alp Arslan, the "Lion Hero"--prepared for a
campaign against the Shia Fatimid caliphate in Egypt but was forced to
divert his attention to Anatolia by the gazis , on whose endurance and
mobility the Seljuks depended. The Seljuk elite could not persuade these
gazis to live within the framework of a bureaucratic Persian state, content
with collecting taxes and patrolling trade routes. Each year the gazis cut
deeper into Byzantine territory, raiding and taking booty according to their
tradition. Some served as mercenaries in the private wars of Byzantine
nobles and occasionally settled on land they had taken. The Seljuks followed
the gazis into Anatolia in order to retain control over them. In 1071 Alp
Arslan routed the Byzantine army at Manzikert near Lake Van, opening all of
Anatolia to conquest by the Turks.
Armenia had been annexed by the Byzantine Empire in 1045, but religious
animosity between the Armenians and the Greeks prevented these two Christian
peoples from cooperating against the Turks on the frontier. Although
Christianity had been adopted as the official religion of the state by King
Titidates III around A.D. 300, nearly 100 years before similar action was
taken in the Roman Empire, Armenians were converted to a form of
Christianity at variance with the Orthodox tradition of the Greek church,
and they had their own patriarchate independent of Constantinople. After
their conquest by the Sassanians around 400, their religion bound them
together as a nation and provided the inspiration for a flowering of
Armenian culture in the fifth century. When their homeland fell to the
Seljuks in the late eleventh century, large numbers of Armenians were
dispersed throughout the Byzantine Empire, many of them settling in
Constantinople, where in its centuries of decline they became generals and
statesmen as well as craftsmen, builders, and traders.
Sultanate of Rum
Within ten years of the Battle of Manzikert, the Seljuks had won control of
most of Anatolia. Although successful in the west, the Seljuk sultanate in
Baghdad reeled under attacks from the Mongols in the east and was
unable--indeed unwilling--to exert its authority directly in Anatolia. The
gazis carved out a number of states there, under the nominal suzerainty of
Baghdad, states that were continually reinforced by further Turkish
immigration. The strongest of these states to emerge was the Seljuk
sultanate of Rum ("Rome," i.e., Byzantine Empire), which had its capital at
Konya (Iconium). During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Rum became
dominant over the other Turkish states (see fig. 4).
The society and economy of the Anatolian countryside were unchanged by the
Seljuks, who had simply replaced Byzantine officials with a new elite that
was Turkish and Muslim. Conversion to Islam and the imposition of the
language, mores, and customs of the Turks progressed steadily in the
countryside, facilitated by intermarriage. The cleavage widened, however,
between the unruly gazi warriors and the state-building bureaucracy in
Konya.
The Crusades
The success of the Seljuk Turks stimulated a response from Latin Europe in
the form of the First Crusade. A counteroffensive launched in 1097 by the
Byzantine emperor with the aid of the crusaders dealt the Seljuks a decisive
defeat. Konya fell to the crusaders, and after a few years of campaigning
Byzantine rule was restored in the western third of Anatolia.
Although a Turkish revival in the 1140s nullified many of the Christian
gains, greater damage was done to Byzantine security by dynastic strife in
Constantinople in which the largely French contingents of the Fourth Crusade
and their Venetian allies intervened. In 1204 these crusaders installed
Count Baldwin of Flanders in the Byzantine capital as emperor of the
so-called Latin Empire of Constantinople, dismembering the old realm into
tributary states where West European feudal institutions were transplanted
intact. Independent Greek kingdoms were established at Nicaea and Trebizond
(present-day Trabzon) and in Epirus from remnant Byzantine provinces. Turks
allied with Greeks in Anatolia against the Latins, and Greeks with Turks
against the Mongols. In 1261 Michael Palaeologus of Nicaea drove the Latins
from Constantinople and restored the Byzantine Empire, but as an essentially
Balkan state reduced in size to Thrace and northwestern Anatolia.
Seljuk Rum survived in the late thirteenth century as a vassal state of the
Mongols, who had already subjugated the Great Seljuk sultanate at Baghdad.
Mongol influence in the region had disappeared by the 1330s, leaving behind
gazi amirates competing for supremacy. From the chaotic conditions that
prevailed throughout the Middle East, however, a new power emerged in
Anatolia--the Ottoman Turks.
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