The Seljuk Sultanate Of Rum - Seeds Of The Ottoman Empire

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• published: 22 Dec 2013
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The Sultanate of Rum or Seljuk Sultanate of Rum (Persian: سلجوقیان روم‎, Saljūqiyān-i Rūm, Modern Turkish: Anadolu Selçuklu Devleti or Rum Sultanlığı) was a medieval Turko-Persian, Sunni Muslim state in Anatolia. It existed from 1077 to 1307, with capitals first at İznik and then at Konya. Since the court of the sultanate was highly mobile, cities like Kayseri and Sivas also functioned at times as capitals. At its height, the sultanate stretched across central Anatolia, from the shoreline of Antalya and Alanya on the Mediterranean coast to the territory of Sinop on the Black Sea. In the east, the sultanate absorbed other Turkish states and reached Lake Van. Its westernmost limit was near Denizli and the gates of the Aegean basin. The term "Rûm" comes from the Arabic word for the Roman Empire. The Seljuqs called the lands of their sultanate Rum because it had been established on territory long considered "Roman", i.e. Byzantine, by Muslim armies. The state is occasionally called the Sultanate of Konya (or Sultanate of Iconium) in older western sources and was known as Turkey by its contemporaries. The sultanate prospered, particularly during the late 12th and early 13th centuries when it took from the Byzantines key ports on the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. Within Anatolia the Seljuqs fostered trade through a program of caravanserai-building, which facilitated the flow of goods from Iran and Central Asia to the ports. Especially strong trade ties with the Genoese formed during this period. The increased wealth allowed the sultanate to absorb other Turkish states that had been established in eastern Anatolia after the Battle of Manzikert: the Danishmends, the Mengücek, the Saltukids, and the Artuqids. Seljuq sultans successfully bore the brunt of the Crusades but in 1243 succumbed to the advancing Mongols. The Seljuqs became vassals of the Mongols, following the battle of Kose Dag, and despite the efforts of shrewd administrators to preserve the state's integrity, the power of the sultanate disintegrated during the second half of the 13th century and had disappeared completely by the first decade of the 14th. In its final decades, the territory of the Sultanate of Rûm saw the emergence of a number of small principalities or beyliks, among which that of the Osmanoğlu, known later as the Ottomans, rose to dominance. In the 1070s, after the battle of Manzikert, the Seljuq commander Suleyman bin Kutalmish, a distant cousin of Malik Shah and a former contender for the throne of the Great Seljuq Empire, came to power in western Anatolia. In 1075, he captured the Byzantine cities of Nicaea (İznik) and Nicomedia (İzmit). Two years later he declared himself sultan of an independent Seljuq state and established his capital at İznik. Suleyman was killed in Antioch in 1086 by Tutush I, the Seljuq ruler of Syria, and Suleyman's son Kilij Arslan I was imprisoned. When Malik Shah died in 1092, Kilij Arslan was released and immediately established himself in his father's territories. He was eventually defeated by soldiers of the First Crusade and driven back into south-central Anatolia, where he set up his state with capital in Konya. In 1107, he ventured east and captured Mosul but died the same year fighting Malik Shah's son Mehmed Tapar. Meanwhile, another Rûm Seljuq, Melikshah (not to be confused with the Great Seljuq sultan of the same name), captured Konya. In 1116 Kilij Arslan's son, Mesud I, took the city with the help of the Danishmends. Upon Mesud's death in 1156, the sultanate controlled nearly all of central Anatolia. Mesud's son, Kilij Arslan II, captured the remaining territories around Sivas and Malatya from the last of the Danishmends. At the Battle of Myriokephalon in 1176, Kilij Arslan also defeated a Byzantine army led by Manuel I Comnenus, dealing a major blow to Byzantine power in the region. Despite a temporary occupation of Konya in 1190 by German forces of the Third Crusade, the sultanate was quick to recover and consolidate its power. After the death of the last sultan of Great Seljuq, Tuğrul III, in 1194, the Seljuqs of Rum became the sole ruling representatives of the dynasty. Kaykhusraw I seized Konya from the Crusaders in 1205. Under his rule and those of his two successors, Kaykaus I and Kayqubad I, Seljuq power in Anatolia reached its apogee. Kaykhusraw's most important achievement was the capture of the harbour of Attalia (Antalya) on the Mediterranean coast in 1207. His son Kaykaus captured Sinop and made the Empire of Trebizond his vassal in 1214. He also subjugated Cilician Armenia but in 1218 was forced to surrender the city of Aleppo acquired from al-Kamil. Kayqubad continued to acquire lands along the Mediterranean coast from 1221 to 1225. In the 1220s, he sent an expeditionary force across the Black Sea to Crimea. In the east he defeated the Mengüceks and began to pressure on the Artuqids.