Alp Arslan

Seljuk sultan (r. 1063-1072 or 1073)

• Born: c. 1030
• Birthplace: Khorāsān, Persia (now in Iran)
• Died: November, 1072, or January, 1073
• Place of death: Near Tirmidh, Transoxiana (now Termez, Uzbekistan)

The second sultan of the Seljuk Dynasty, Alp Arslan consolidated and extended the conquests of his predecessor, Toghrïl Beg. His reign, together with that of his son Malik-Shāh, constituted the zenith of the empire of the Great Seljuks.

Early Life

Alp Arslan (AHL-pahr-SLAHN), the second and most famous of the sultans of the Seljuk Dynasty, was born to Chaghrï Beg, brother of the Turkish warlord Toghrïl Beg . During the 1040', Toghrïl invaded Iran with his Turkmen followers, became the protector of the ՙAbbāsid caliph in Baghdad and thereby the champion of Sunni (orthodox) Islam , and founded an empire that extended over much of the Middle East. Alp Arslan's Turkish name (his Arabic names and titles were ՙAṣud al-Dawla Abū Shujaՙ Muḥammad ibn Dād Cḥāghrï Beg) was a combination of the words alp, meaning warrior or hero, and arslan, meaning lion, apt sobriquets for so renowned a military leader.

His great-grandfather, Seljuk, the eponymous ancestor of the Seljuk Dynasty, had been a clan leader among the tribes that composed the confederacy of the Oğhuz Turks, who in the tenth century occupied the steppes between the Aral Sea and the Volga River. Seljuk himself had thrown off his allegiance to the yabghu, as the supreme ruler of the Oğhuz was known, and led his clansmen and a growing body of Turkmen followers as soldiers of fortune in the service of the rulers of Khwārizm and Transoxiana. His base of operations was in the neighborhood of Jand, on the north bank of the Syr Darya River, where eventually he was buried. One source states that he went to the aid of one of the last rulers of the Sāmānid Dynasty of Bukhara, under attack from the Qarakhanid Turks, advancing from what is now Chinese Central Asia. By then, he had become a Muslim. His sons, Arslan Isrāl, Mikhail, and Musa, followed their father's example in taking advantage of the anarchy in Central Asia that accompanied the fall of the Sāmānids and the rise of the Qarakhanids. The unusual personal names of these three have led scholars to wonder whether they are indicative of Nestorian Christian or Jewish Khazar influence.

Mikhail's sons, Toghrïl Beg and Chaghrï Beg, were the founders of Seljuk rule in the Middle East. Even before their defeat of the Ghaznavid sultan (until then, ruler of much of the Iranian Plateau as well as Afghanistan) at Dendenkan, between Merv and Sarakhs, in 1040, Toghrïl Beg had entered Neyshabur, the principal city of Khorāsān, and proclaimed himself sultan. After Dendenkan, Chaghrï Beg turned east to occupy Balkh and Tukharistan in northern Afghanistan. Toghrïl Beg then proceeded with the systematic conquest of central and western Iran and of Iraq. He occupied Baghdad in 1055 and again in 1058, where he assumed the role of protector of the caliph. In 1062, in a reluctant break with past precedent, the latter agreed to Toghrïl Beg's marriage to his daughter.

While Toghrïl Beg was pursuing his triumphant course in the west, Chaghrï Beg was acting as the quasi-independent ruler of Khorāsān and part of the Amu Dar՚ya (Oxus) River valley, with his headquarters at Merv. His eldest son, Qavurt, had embarked on the conquest of Kerman and southeastern Iran (where his descendants were to rule until 1186), while his other sons (among them Alp Arslan) accompanied Toghrïl Beg on his campaigns in Iraq and western Iran. During his last years, Chaghrï Beg chose, perhaps as a result of poor health, to make use of Alp Arslan in the government of Khorāsān, thereby providing him with administrative experience that would stand him in good stead for the future. It was during this period, under his father's tutelage, that he came into contact with the man who would eventually become his chief minister and adviser, NizŃām al-Mulk, whom Chaghrï Beg on his deathbed urged Alp Arslan to appoint as his vizier. Undoubtedly, a significant factor in the success of Alp Arslan's reign was his appreciation of the talents of NizŃām al-Mulk as an administrator and the consequent partnership of sultan and vizier in the government of the empire. At Chaghrï Beg's death (c. 1060), Toghrïl Beg confirmed Alp Arslan as the new ruler of his father's vast appanage in the northeast.

No likeness of Alp Arslan survives, but he was said to have been a tall and imposing figure of exceptional strength, his great height enhanced by his preference for an unusually high headdress. A quaint tradition records that before he drew his bow, a servant had to tie back his immense mustache, which would otherwise have become entangled in his bowstring.

Life's Work

Like other ruling groups from Central Asia, the early Seljuks viewed sovereignty as being invested in the family as a whole, rather than in a single individual, an attitude that Toghrïl Beg had done little to discourage. At his death in 1063, therefore, there was a predictable familial struggle over the succession. Childless himself, Toghrïl Beg had designated as his successor another of Chaghrï Beg's sons, Sulaimān, the favorite candidate of the late sultan's powerful vizier, al-Kunduri. Perhaps because Sulaimān's accession would have confirmed the already dominant position enjoyed by al-Kunduri, some of Toghrïl Beg's former mamlūk (slave) commanders favored Alp Arslan, who had already established a formidable reputation as ruler of Khorāsān. In the contest that followed, Sulaimān was easily outmaneuvered, and al-Kunduri was executed at the instigation of NizŃām al-Mulk.

A more formidable threat was posed by Alp Arslan's kinsman Qutlumush ibn Arslan Isrāl, the able and energetic son of Alp Arslan's granduncle. Qutlumush's power base lay in the northwest, in the direction of the Caucasus, and he commanded the loyalty of formidable numbers of Turkmen warriors who were dismayed at the centralizing processes that marked the transformation of Seljuk rule from predatory raiding to empire building. Qutlumush pressed his own claim to the throne with an appeal to the traditions of the steppes: “By right, the sultanate should come to me, because my father was the senior and leading member of the tribe.” His forces advanced to the vicinity of Rayy (near what is now Tehran) but were defeated by troops loyal to Alp Arslan. Qutlumush himself died shortly afterward, apparently killed by a fall from his horse. His followers were not so easily dealt with, and it was largely on their account that Alp Arslan was eventually drawn into direct confrontation with the Byzantines.

There were other challenges to Alp Arslan's authority. Toghrïl Beg had married a daughter of the ruler of Khwārizm who had a son by a previous marriage, and although this son was not a Seljuk, he attracted some support among the disaffected. More serious was the revolt in Kerman of Alp Arslan's older brother, Qavurt, whose delayed resentment at the elevation of his younger sibling surfaced in 1067. Alp Arslan was forced to invade Kerman and also Fārs, which Qavurt had previously seized from a local dynasty, but the two brothers were eventually reconciled.

Alp Arslan must have been familiar with the course of Toghrïl Beg's difficult negotiations with the ՙAbbāsid caliph, and it seems that he himself was determined to avoid situations in which disputes might develop as to the respective powers and prerogatives of caliph and sultan. On his accession, he obtained formal recognition from the long-reigning caliph al-Qāim, with whom his uncle had dealt, but he declined to visit Baghdad in person or to become involved in the intrigues of the caliphal court. While keeping his distance, he did, however, keep a close watch on affairs in Baghdad. Alp Arslan's prime concern was to prevent any augmentation of the influence of the Fāimid caliphs in Cairo, Shīՙites whose secret emissaries worked assiduously for the Fāimid cause in a region (Iraq) where a number of the Arab emirs were themselves Shīՙites. To that extent, at least, he and the ՙAbbāsid caliph had common ground for cooperation. Hence, he was careful to ensure that his military representative (shahna) in Iraq was personally acceptable to the caliph, while NizŃām al-Mulk endeavored to work closely with the caliph's successive viziers. The policy of avoiding Baghdad while treating the caliph with a blend of courtesy and firmness undoubtedly paid off: In 1066, when Alp Arslan designated his son, Malik Shāh, as valiahd (heir apparent) and had his name read in the khutba together with his own, he was able to secure caliphal recognition for him, and in 1071-1072, one of Alp Arslan's daughters was married to al-Qāim's heir, al-Muqtadi.

Although Alp Arslan's reputation as one of the greatest medieval Muslim rulers arose in part from his spectacular success against the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071, it is unlikely that he cherished the ambition to be a ghāzī (frontier warrior for the faith). On the other hand, he cannot have been unhappy to see the restless Turkmens devote their energies to jihad (holy warfare) on the Byzantine marches, an undertaking that deflected their attention from the heartlands of the Seljuk Empire. The danger was that the Turkmens, who included many former followers of Qutlumush, as they pressed forward, would wholly emancipate themselves from Seljuk control and perhaps even set up an independent state. Thus, Alp Arslan was compelled early in his reign to turn his attention to the northwest. Several major dynasties based on the Iranian Plateau (for example, the Sāsānids, the Il-Khans, and the Safavids) found it necessary to seek control of the strategic region between the Black Sea and the Caspian, bounded on the north by the Caucasus and on the south by the Araks River; to this rule Alp Arslan was no exception.

In 1064, therefore, within a year of his accession and the overthrow of Qutlumush, he invaded Byzantine Armenia, capturing its administrative capital, Ani, and obtaining the submission of the great fortress of Kars. He then advanced into Georgia, where he married a niece of the Georgian king. Three years later, in 1067, he marched into Arran (the country between the Araks and Kura rivers), where he received the formal submission of its Shaddadid ruler. Shortly afterward, the ruler of Shirvan also submitted, with the result that Seljuk's suzerainty was extended along the western shores of the Caspian as far north as Darband. Then, in 1068, a further invasion of Georgia, this time led by the Shaddadid ruler of Arran, reaffirmed Alp Arslan's overlordship over that now-isolated Christian kingdom (Armenia had finally come under Muslim rule and the Byzantine frontier had contracted in a westerly direction).

Initially, the Seljuks, as they advanced into the Middle East, had appeared to have as their goal the occupation of the Iranian Plateau. That achievement, however, had inevitably led to the conquest of Iraq, partly because of the need to put down the prevailing anarchy there and partly to counter long-standing Fāimid ambitions in that area. Toghrïl Beg's occupation of Baghdad had forced the Seljuk sultanate and the ՙAbbāsid caliphate into a symbiotic relationship, which committed the sultan to restoring Sunni orthodoxy and combating Shīՙite heterodoxy in the Fertile Crescent. In consequence, a principal concern of Alp Arslan from the time of his accession was the question of the military frontier with the Fāimids in northern Syria. By 1070, the matter of relations with the Fāimids was coming to a head: That year, the sharif of Mecca informed Alp Arslan that the khutba in Mecca was no longer being said in the name of the Fāimid caliph in Cairo but in that of the ՙAbbāsid caliph and the Seljuk sultan, a circumstance that the sultan sought to turn to his advantage. Furthermore, a delegation of rebellious Egyptian emirs was seeking his assistance in overthrowing Fāimid rule. Alp Arslan therefore began to plan the invasion of Fāimid Syria and perhaps to contemplate a subsequent invasion of Palestine and Egypt.

Meanwhile, however, the virtually independent Turkmens were raiding deep into Byzantine Anatolia, plundering throughout the countryside and, wherever possible, breaking into the cities, including those two later centers of Seljuk rule, Konya and Kayseri. The Byzantines, predictably, reacted to protect the line of communication with their most easterly outposts: Malatya, Diyarbakir, Antioch, and Edessa. In 1070, therefore, the Byzantine emperor, Romanus IV Diogenes, sent an expedition to reinforce these cities. While much obscurity surrounds Seljuk-Byzantine relations of this period, it appears that Alp Arslan, preoccupied with his plan to attack the Fāimid strongholds in Syria, agreed to sign a truce with the emperor. While the two imperial powers sought to stabilize the border zones between them, however, the sultan was in no position to control the Turkmens in eastern Anatolia, and it was their ongoing predatory raids that finally provoked the emperor into mounting a major military expedition against them. Assembling a huge force at his base in Erzurum, he proceeded to lead his troops into the Armenian districts north of Lake Van.

Alp Arslan, regarding this move as a breach of the recent truce, abandoned his siege of a Fāimid client in Aleppo and hastened to bar the emperor's further advance. The two armies met at Manzikert (now Malazgirt) and fought the great battle of August 26, 1071, which resulted in the utter destruction of the Byzantines and the capture of the emperor himself. Alp Arslan treated his captive honorably, releasing him in exchange for a ransom, promises of tribute and a marriage alliance, and probably cession of territory, but these arrangements were voided by the emperor's deposition and blinding on his return to Constantinople that same year. Hence, the issues at stake between the two empires were left unresolved. Following Manzikert, Alp Arslan had only a year to live, but during the reign of his son Malik Shāh (1073-1092), Sulaimān ibn Qutlumush, the son of Alp Arslan's old rival, penetrated Anatolia as far west as the Aegean Sea, capturing Nicaea (now İznik) around 1077.

The Battle of Manzikert has been correctly viewed as one of history's decisive battles, for it marked the formal beginning of the process whereby the Byzantines eventually suffered the permanent loss of provinces that were major sources of revenue and recruits; the Turks became the conquerors of, and eventually the dominant ethnic group in, Anatolia; and Christian and Hellenistic Asia Minor became Muslim Turkey. Indirectly, Manzikert led to the appeal by later Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus (r. 1081-1118) for military assistance from Latin Christendom and hence to Pope Urban II's famous sermon at Clermont in 1095, which unleashed two centuries of crusading zeal in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean. In this light, the account of Manzikert that reached the Latin West through the writings of the historian of the First Crusade, William of Tyre, who heard that the battle “was fiercely contested by almost equal forces,” bears examination. William was completely mistaken as to Alp Arslan's treatment of Romanus Diogenes, but his account, the stuff of legend, conformed to Christian preconceptions of their Islamic adversaries.

The foe, magnificent but infidel, elated by his great success and rendered still more arrogant by victory, commanded that the emperor be brought before him. Seated upon his royal throne, he ordered Romanus to be thrown beneath his feet, and, to show his contempt for the Christian name and faith, in the presence of the attendant princes, he used the emperor's body as a footstool, mounting and dismounting upon it.

Although throughout his reign Alp Arslan's main concern (like Toghrïl Beg') seems to have centered on western Iran and the Fertile Crescent, he could not altogether ignore his eastern borders with his Ghaznavid and Qarakhanid neighbors. As far as the Ghaznavids were concerned, the treaty that had followed the 1040 Seljuk victory at Dendenkan continued in force. With the Qarakhanids, now masters of Transoxiana (Bukhara, Samarqand, and western Farghana), there remained residual tension, for they were long-standing antagonists of the Seljuks and now their possessions included territory formerly ruled by Alp Arslan's father, Chaghrï Beg. Early in Alp Arslan's reign, the sultan had campaigned in the western Qarakhanid khanate, which was then ruled by the pious and respected Tamghach khan Ibrāhīm ibn Nasՙr. As the years passed, however, the two rulers gradually had developed a kind of modus vivendi exemplified by a series of marriage alliances, including the marriage of a daughter of Alp Arslan to Ibrāhīm's successor, Shams al-Mulk Nasՙr, and the marriage of Alp Arslan's heir, Malik Shāh, to a Qarakhanid princess. War broke out between Alp Arslan and Shams al-Mulk Nasՙr, however, in 1072. One version of the story asserts that Shams al-Mulk Nasՙr had caused the death of the sultan's daughter, suspecting her of having urged the Seljuks to invade his territory; Alp Arslan thereupon led a large army across the Amu Dary՚a. Soon after the crossing, he ordered the execution of a mamlūk who had disobeyed him. The condemned man, enraged at what he regarded as an act of injustice, broke loose from his escort and stabbed the sultan to death.

Significance

Building on the foundations laid by Toghrïl Beg, Alp Arslan consolidated and extended his predecessor's conquests to create an empire extending almost from the Mediterranean to the Pamirs. Under the aegis of his brilliant minister, NizŃām al-Mulk, that empire acquired the character of a traditional Irano-Islamic monarchy, with the Seljuks cast in the role of renovators of a hitherto decrepit political order. Inevitably, war and administrative tasks left Alp Arslan little opportunity to establish a reputation as a great patron, and the achievements of the Seljuks in literature, architecture, and the decorative arts belong to a later age.

At Manzikert, Alp Arslan changed the course of Middle Eastern history, for his victory foreshadowed the end of Byzantine Christian dominance in Asia Minor and its ultimate Turkification and Islamization, while also contributing to the call for a crusade in Latin Christendom. Alp Arslan figures in the Muslim historiographical tradition as a brave soldier, a pious Muslim, a champion of the faith, and a just and, for the most part, magnanimous ruler.

Seljuk Great Sultans, 1037-1157

Reign

• Sultan

1037-1063

• Toghrïl Beg

1063-1072/73

• Alp Arslan

1073-1092

• Malik Shāh I

1092-1093

• Maḥmūd I

1093-1104

• Berk Yaruq (Barkyaruk, Barkiyarok)

1104-1105

• Malik Shāh II

1105-1117

• Muḥammad Tapar

1117-1157

• Aḥmad Sanjar (Sinjar)

Bibliography

Barthold, W. Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion. Translated by T. Minorsky. Edited by C. E. Bosworth. 4th ed. London: Gibb Memorial Trust, 1977. This authoritative study of those areas of Central Asia ruled by the Russian czars in the nineteenth century is the work of one of the greatest of Russian Islamicists. Covering the Islamic period down to the first quarter of the thirteenth century, it is especially good on the Seljuks and their contemporaries.

Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. The New Islamic Dynasties: A Chronological and Genealogical Manual. 1967. Rev. ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. A historical survey of the Islamic dynasties, including the Seljuks in eastern Persian lands and elsewhere. Bibliography, index.

Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. “The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (a.d. 1000-1217).” In The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, edited by J. A. Boyle. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1968. This chapter provides a masterly and very detailed review of the Seljuk period. The reign of Alp Arslan and the vizierate of NizŃām al-Mulk are both discussed.

Cahen, Claude. “Alp Arslan.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. 1. 2d ed. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1960. This is the best short account of the career of Alp Arslan from an authoritative source.

Cahen, Claude. Pre-Ottoman Turkey: A General Survey of the Material and Spiritual Culture and History, c. 1071-1330. New York: Taplinger, 1968. This definitive study of the Seljuk period of Turkish history gives a straightforward, scholarly account of the rise of the Seljuks and their involvement in Anatolia prior to 1071.

Friendly, Alfred. The Dreadful Day: The Battle of Manzikert, 1071. London: Hutchinson, 1981. A highly readable but also very detailed account of Manzikert and the events leading up to it. Written for the nonspecialist.

Irwin, Robert. “Muslim Responses to the Crusades.” History Today 47, no. 4 (April, 1997). Presents a rich overview of the Muslim perspective on the Crusades, including the responses of the Seljuks before the First Crusade in the late eleventh century. Provides photographs and a short list of further readings.

Lambton, Ann K. S. “The Internal Structure of the Saljuq Empire.” In The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 5. Edited by J. A. Boyle. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1968. This is an excellent account, by a leading authority, of the political and administrative institutions of the Seljuk Empire. It can be usefully supplemented by the same author’s Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988).

Lev, Yaacov, ed. The Medieval Mediterranean: Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400-1453. Vol. 9 in War and Society in the Eastern Mediterranean, Seventh-Fifteenth Centuries. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997. Explores the world of the Crusades and other military encounters in the Middle East and the greater Mediterranean area, including Egypt from the time before the Seljuks to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Topics include armaments and supplies, regional administration, and the impact of the Crusaders on rural populations. Good for a broad overview of a thousand year history of military conflict between Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other peoples.

Luther, K. A. “Alp Arslān.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica. Vol. 1. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. Particularly valuable for its listing of the sources available for the study of Alp Arslan’s reign.

Müneccimbasi, Ahmet ibn Lutfullah. A History of Sharvan and Darband in the Tenth-Eleventh Centuries. Translated and edited by V. Minorsky. Cambridge, England: W. Heffer, 1958. This translation and abridgment of an eleventh century work dealing with the minor Islamic dynasties of the Seljuk period in the area north of the Araks River and south of the Caucasus Mountains is essential reading for understanding the circumstances that drew Alp Arslan into this region.

Rice, Tamara Talbot. The Seljuks in Asia Minor. New York: Praeger, 1961. A popular account of the Seljuks, their culture and arts, in the series Ancient Peoples and Places. Attractively illustrated, it is particularly useful as a guide to the better known Seljuk monuments in Turkey.

Vryonis, Speros. The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh Through the Fifteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. This fine study of the complex interaction of political, social, and cultural developments as Byzantine rule gave way to that of the Turks in Anatolia sheds much light on the circumstances under which the Turkmens penetrated the Byzantine frontier both before and after the Battle of Manzikert.