House of Seljuq

Country	Great Seljuq Empire, Rum and Khazar
Titles	Sultan of Seljuq Empire Sultan of Rum Emir of Damascus Emir of Aleppo
Founding	10th century - Seljuq
Dissolution	Damascus: 1104 - Baqtash was dethroned by Toghtekin Great Seljuq: 1194 - Toghrul III was killed in battle with the Tekish Rum: 1307 - Mesud II died

The House of Seljuq (Persian: سلجوقيان‎ Saljūqīyān; Turkish Selçuklular) also Seljuq Turks^[1], were a Turco-Persian^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Sunni Muslim dynasty of Turkic origin^[7] that ruled parts of Central Asia and the Middle East from the 11th to 14th centuries. They established an empire, the Great Seljuq Empire, which at its height stretched from Anatolia through Persia and which was the target of the First Crusade. The dynasty had its origins in the Turcoman tribal confederations of Central Asia.

Early history[link]

Origins[link]

Prior to the ninth century, hordes of Turks had crossed the Volga River into the Black Sea steppes.^[8] Originally, the House of Seljuq was a branch of the Qinik (Kınık) Oghuz Turks^{[9][10][11][12]} who in the 9th century lived on the periphery of the Muslim world, north of the Caspian and Aral seas in their Yabghu Khaganate of the Oghuz confederacy,^[13] in the Kazakh Steppe of Turkestan.^[14] In the 10th century the Seljuqs migrated from their ancestral homelands into mainland Persia, in the province of Khurasan, where they mixed with the local population and adopted the Persian culture and language in the following decades.^{[15][16][17][18][19]}

Later Period[link]

After arriving in Persia, the Seljuqs adopted the Persian culture and used the Persian language as the official language of the government,^{[20][15][16][21][22][23][24][25][26]} and played an important role in the development of the Turko-Persian tradition which features "Persian culture patronized by Turkic rulers."^[27] Today, they are remembered as great patrons of Persian culture, art, literature, and language^[15][16][17] and are regarded as the ancestors of the Western Turks – the present-day inhabitants of Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan.

Seljuq leaders[link]

Rulers of the Seljuq Dynasty[link]

The "Great Seljuqs" were heads of the family; in theory their authority extended over all the other Seljuq lines, although in practice this often was not the case. Turkish custom called for the senior member of the family to be the Great Seljuq, although usually the position was associated with the ruler of western Persia.

• Muhammad's son Mahmud II succeeded him in western Persia, but Ahmad Sanjar, who was the governor of Khurasan at the time being the senior member of the family, became the Great Seljuq Sultan.

Seljuq sultans of Hamadan[link]

The Great Seljuq Empire in 1092, upon the death of Malik Shah I^[28]

The rulers of western Persia, who maintained a very loose grip on the Abbasids of Baghdad. Several Turkic emirs gained a strong level of influence in the region, such as the Eldiduzids.

• Mahmud II 1118–1131
• 1131-1134 - Disputed
  • Dawud
  • Mas'ud (in Jibal and Iranian Azerbaijan) 1131
  • Toghrul II 1132–1134
• Mas'ud 1133–1152
• Malik Shah III 1152–1153
• Muhammad II
• Suleiman Shah 1160–1161
• Arslan Shah 1161–1174
• Toghrul III 1174–1194

In 1194, Tugrul III was killed in battle with the Khwarezm Shah, who annexed Hamadan.

Seljuq rulers of Kerman[link]

Kerman was a province in southern Persia. Between 1053 and 1154, the territory also included Umman.

• Qawurd 1041–1073
• Kerman Shah 1073–1074
• Sultan Shah 1074–1075
• Hussain Omar 1075–1084
• Turan Shah I 1084–1096
• Iran Shah 1096–1101
• Arslan Shah I 1101–1142
• Mehmed I (Muhammad) 1142–1156
• Toğrül Shah 1156–1169
• Bahram Shah 1169–1174
• Arslan Shah II 1174–1176
• Turan Shah II 1176–1183
• Muhammad Shah 1183–1187

Muhammad abandoned Kerman, which fell into the hands of the Oghuz chief Malik Dinar. Kerman was eventually annexed by the Khwarezmid Empire in 1196.

Seljuq rulers in Syria[link]

• Abu Sa'id Taj ad-Dawla Tutush I 1085–1086
• Jalal ad-Dawlah Malik Shah I of Great Seljuq 1086–1087
• Qasim ad-Dawla Abu Said Aq Sunqur al-Hajib 1087–1094
• Abu Sa'id Taj ad-Dawla Tutush I (second time) 1094–1095
• Fakhr al-Mulk Radwan 1095–1113
• Tadj ad-Dawla Alp Arslan al-Akhras 1113–1114
• Sultan Shah 1114–1123

To the Artuqids

Sultans/Emirs of Damascus:

• Aziz ibn Abaaq al-Khwarazmi 1076–1079
• Abu Sa'id Taj ad-Dawla Tutush I 1079–1095
• Abu Nasr Shams al-Muluk Duqaq 1095–1104
• Tutush II 1104
• Muhi ad-Din Baqtash 1104

Damascus seized by the Burid Toghtekin

Seljuq sultans of Rum (Anatolia)[link]

The Seljuq line, already having been deprived of any significant power, effectively ends in the early 14th century

The Kharāghān twin towers, built in 1053 in Iran, is the burial of Seljuq princes.

The Seljuq Sultanate of Rûm in 1190, before the Third Crusade.

• Kutalmish 1060–1077
• Suleyman I (Suleiman) 1077–1086
• Dawud Kilij Arslan I 1092–1107
• Malik Shah 1107–1116
• Rukn ad-Din Mesud I 1116–1156
• Izz ad-Din Kilij Arslan II 1156–1192
• Ghiyath ad-Din Kaykhusraw I 1192–1196
• Suleyman II (Suleiman) 1196–1204
• Kilij Arslan III 1204–1205
• Ghiyath ad-Din Kaykhusraw I (second time) 1205–1211
• Izz ad-Din Kaykaus I 1211–1220
• Ala ad-Din Kayqubad I 1220–1237
• Ghiyath ad-Din Kaykhusraw II 1237–1246
• Izz ad-Din Kaykaus II 1246–1260
• Rukn ad-Din Kilij Arslan IV 1248–1265
• Ala ad-Din Kayqubad II 1249–1257
• Ghiyath ad-Din Kaykhusraw III 1265–1282
• Ghiyath ad-Din Mesud II 1282–1284
• Ala ad-Din Kayqubad III 1284
• Ghiyath ad-Din Mesud II (second time) 1284–1293
• Ala ad-Din Kayqubad III (second time) 1293–1294
• Ghiyath ad-Din Mesud II (third time) 1294–1301
• Ala ad-Din Kayqubad III (third time) 1301–1303
• Ghiyath ad-Din Mesud II (fourth time) 1303–1307

Gallery[link]

See also[link]

• Great Seljuq Empire
• Sultanate of Rûm
• Ottoman dynasty
• List of Sunni Muslim dynasties

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Grousset, Rene (1988). The Empire of the Steppes: a History of Central Asia. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 147. ISBN 0813506271. 
• Peacock, A.C.S, Early Seljuq History : A New Interpretation; New York, NY ; Routledge; 2010
• Previte-Orton, C. W. (1971). The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

v t e History of Turkey Pre-14th century Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm 1060–1327 (Seljuk Turks) Anatolian Beyliks Ottoman Empire-related topics Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) periods Rise (1299–1453) Osman's Dream Interregnum Growth (1453–1606) Fall of Constantinople Stagnation (1606–1699) Sultanate of Women Köprülü era Decline (1699–1792) Tulip period Dissolution (1792–1922) Tanzimat era 1st Constitutional Era Second Constitutional Era Partitioning wars European Russian Serbian Byzantine Croatian Austrian Persian Greek Hungarian Polish Venetian Near Eastern Republic of Turkey (since 1923) periods War of Independence 1919–1922 (chronology) Single-party period (1923–1945) Multi-party period (since 1945) topics Constitution Economy Military See also Ancient kingdoms of Anatolia Medieval states in Anatolia Timeline of the Turks (500-1300)

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Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin, translated literally as The Heavens Over Berlin) is a 1987 Franco-German romantic fantasy film directed by Wim Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of the human inhabitants and comfort those who are in distress. Even though the city is densely populated, many of the people are isolated and estranged from their loved ones. One of the angels, played by Bruno Ganz, falls in love with a beautiful, lonely trapeze artist. The angel chooses to become human so that he can experience the human sensory pleasures, ranging from enjoying food to touching a loved one, and so that he can experience human love with the trapeze artist. The film is shot in both a rich, sepia-toned black-and-white and color, with the former being used to represent the world as experienced by the angels.

The film was followed by a sequel, Faraway, So Close!, in 1993. City of Angels, an American remake^[3], was released in 1998.

Plot[link]

Set in contemporary West Berlin (at the time still enclosed by the Berlin Wall), Wings of Desire follows two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, as they roam the city, unseen and unheard by its human inhabitants, observing and listening to the diverse thoughts of Berliners: a pregnant woman in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, a painter struggling to find inspiration, a broken man who thinks his girlfriend no longer loves him. Their raison d'être is, as Cassiel says, to "assemble, testify, preserve" reality. In addition to the story of two angels, the film is also a meditation on Berlin's past, present, and future. Damiel and Cassiel have always existed as angels; they existed in Berlin before it was a city, and before there were even any humans.

Among the Berliners they encounter in their wanderings is an old man named Homer, who, unlike the Greek poet of war Homer, dreams of an "epic of peace." Cassiel follows the old man as he looks for the then-demolished Potsdamer Platz in an open field, and finds only the graffiti-covered Berlin Wall. Although Damiel and Cassiel are pure observers, visible only to children, and incapable of any physical interaction with our world, Damiel begins to fall in love with a profoundly lonely circus trapeze artist named Marion. She lives by herself in a caravan, dances alone to the music of Crime and the City Solution, and drifts through the city.

A subplot follows Peter Falk, who has arrived in Berlin to make a film about Berlin's Nazi past. As the film progresses, it emerges that Peter Falk was once an angel, who, having grown tired of always observing and never experiencing, renounced his immortality to become a participant in the world.

Eventually, Damiel too longs for physicality and to become human. When he sheds his immortal existence, he experiences life for the first time: he bleeds, sees colors for the first time (the movie up to this point is filmed in a sepia-toned monochrome, except for brief moments when the angels are not present or looking), tastes food and drinks coffee. Meanwhile, Cassiel inadvertently taps into the mind of a young man just about to commit suicide by jumping off a building. Cassiel tries to save the young man but is unable to do so, and is left haunted and tormented by the experience. Eventually, Damiel meets the trapeze artist Marion at a bar (during a concert by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), and they greet each other with familiarity as if they had long known each other. In the end, Damiel is united with the woman he has desired for so long. The film ends with the message: "To be continued."

The story is concluded in Wenders' 1993 sequel, In weiter Ferne, so nah! (Faraway, So Close!).

Cast[link]

• Bruno Ganz as Damiel
• Solveig Dommartin as Marion
• Otto Sander as Cassiel
• Curt Bois as Homer, the aged poet
• Peter Falk as himself (credited as "Der Filmstar")
• Nick Cave as himself
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds as Themselves

Production[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2011)

Screenplay and improvisation[link]

Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry partially inspired the movie; Wenders claimed angels seemed to dwell in Rilke's poetry. The director also employed Peter Handke, who wrote much of the dialogue, the poetic narrations, and the film's recurring poem "Song of Childhood."

The movie was made with a minimalist script; it is a mood piece exploring people, the city, and a concept: a longing for and love of life, existence, reality. Peter Falk wasn't meant to be a sketch artist until Wenders discovered Falk's talent. Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander were cast because they were old friends, who had known each other for decades. Solveig Dommartin was Wenders' actress girlfriend; although the circus part required extensive and risky acrobatics, she was able to learn the trapeze and rope moves in only eight weeks, and did all the work herself, without a net.

Cinematography[link]

The film was shot by the 77 year-old cinematographer Henri Alekan, who had worked on Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête). It represents the angels' point of view in monochrome and switches to color to show the human point of view. During filming, Alekan used a very old and fragile silk stocking that had belonged to his grandmother as a filter for the monochromatic sequences.

The shift from monochrome to color, to distinguish the angels' reality from the mortals', was first used in A Matter of Life and Death by Powell and Pressburger in 1946.

Deleted scenes[link]

As revealed in the DVD, Wings of Desire could have turned out to be a far less serious film. Cut scenes from the beginning of the film had Cassiel humorously mimicking the humans' actions. Other cut scenes were experiments of how to show the angel's invisibility/lack of physical form using double exposure. There was also a female angel who was cut from the movie, appearing only during a pan-shot in the library scene. The end was much different from the final cut—it was originally to have Cassiel turn human as well, and finding Damiel and Marion at the bar where they engage in a pie fight.

Dedication[link]

In the closing titles it says: "Dedicated to all the former angels, but especially to Yasujiro, François and Andrej." This is a reference to fellow filmmakers Yasujiro Ozu, François Truffaut, and Andrei Tarkovsky.

Reception[link]

Angel is a building in Prague designed by Jean Nouvel; it features an angel from the film observing the people of the Smíchov district.

Wings of Desire received "Two Thumbs Up" from Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on Siskel & Ebert & The Movies.^[4] Leslie James of 680 News Toronto claims it is one of the best movies of all time.^{[citation needed]} It was ranked #64 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.^[5] The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes records that 98% of its cited critics gave the film a positive review.^[6]

Awards[link]

The film won the award for Best Director at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.^[7]

Remake[link]

In 1998, an American remake called City of Angels was released. The setting was Los Angeles and starred Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage. Aside from the basic premise of angels watching humans, with the opening scene also taking place in a landmark library, and a love story, the 1998 film bears little relation to the original.

Theatrical adaptation[link]

The first theatrical adaptation of Wings of Desire was created by the Northern Stage theatre company in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK in 2003. This particular adaptation, which used film footage of the city and stories from the community, was adapted and directed by Alan Lyddiard who then re-created it at Betty Nansen Theatre in Copenhagen in 2005.

In 2006, the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Toneelgroep Amsterdam presented another stage adaptation of the movie, created by Gideon Lester and Dirkje Houtman and directed by Ola Mafaalani.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Der Himmel über Berlin

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Wings of Desire

• Official website
• Wings of Desire at the Internet Movie Database
• Wings of Desire at AllRovi
• Wings of Desire at Box Office Mojo
• Wings of Desire at Rotten Tomatoes
• Page by the film's art designer
• "Great Movies" review by Roger Ebert
• Voted #12 on The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films (2010)
• PoMo Desire?: Authorship and Agency in Wim Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) by Nathan Wolfson
• POV Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire (interviews and articles)
• POV n°8 pdf version
• American Repertory Theater
• Angels and the Modern City: Essay on Wenders' film Wings of Desire

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