REVIEW ARTICLE RECENT PUBLICATIONS ON THE HISTORY OF

REVIEW ARTICLE
RECENT PUBLICATIONS ON THE HISTORY
OF IRAN UNDER THE SELJUQS
Aziz BAŞAN, The Great Seljuqs. A History (London: Routledge, 2010): xii, 209
pp. Includes bibliography and index, ISBN 978-0-203-84923-1; David DURANDGUÉDY, Iranian Élites and Turkish Rulers. A History of Iṣfahān in the Saljūq
Period. (London: Routledge, 2010): xxiii, 435 pp. Includes bibliography and
index. ISBN 978-0-415-45710-1; Christian LANGE and Songül MECIT (eds), The
Seljuqs: Politics, Society and Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2011): 288 pp. ISBN 978-0-748-63994-6; Andrew C.S. PEACOCK, Early Seljūq
History. A New Interpretation (London: Routledge, 2010): xi, 190 pp. Includes
bibliography and index. ISBN 978-0-415-54853-3.
There is consensus among specialists that “the Seljuqs remain one of the
understudied Muslim dynasties”.1 In more detail, Peacock states that “[t]here is not a
single book-length study of the Seljūq Empire in the Middle East in a western
language”,2 although there are several, even if somewhat dated, in Turkish.3
Durand-Guédy sets out with the observation that there is a “growing gap between
the expanding corpus of sources on this crucial period and the meagre number of
serious studies devoted to it, whether in Iran, Turkey, the West or Japan”4 and posits
that Bosworth’s contribution to the Cambridge History of Iran5 is still the standard
account. All authors agree that this is deplorable because of the extreme significance
of the Seljuq period in the history of the Middle East (at least for Iran and Anatolia,
but in a way also for the Arab East). “Crucial”, “pivotal” and other such epithets are
used to stress this.
Now, a lacuna in itself is no reason to devote time and labour to filling it, and
even less reason to write a special review article on works aiming at doing just that.
In fact, a number of monographs and longer articles have been published on the
Seljuqs over the last few years, and a group of younger scholars seem determined to
make the best out of this lacuna (and there are some senior scholars in the field too).
Why the Seljuqs?
————
1 Lange and Mecit, Seljuqs: Introduction.
2 Peacock, Early Seljuq History: p. 3.
3 See Başan, Great Seljuqs.
4 Durand-Guédy, Iranian Élites : p. 1.
5 Bosworth, C.E., “The political and dynastic history of the Iranian world (AD 1000-
1217)”, in The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 5: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, ed. J.A.
Boyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968): pp. 1-202.
Eurasian Studies, IX/1-2 (2011): pp. 263-275.
© Istituto per l’Oriente C.A. Nallino \ Orientalisches Institut der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
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There are a number of reasons one might adduce. Some authors point to the
many and important changes that took place during the Seljuq period, whether or not
they were brought about by them (Lange and Mecit use the metaphor of the
switchman who makes a train change its course without having to know the train’s
ultimate destination). I am not sure whether this could not be said of any major
dynasty in the medieval Middle East, but I am convinced that the Seljuqs are not the
only case in point. It would be difficult to admit that in more than one century,
indeed up to two centuries in some places, and so vast a region no great changes
could be identified, and therefore all dynasties that ruled for any significant period
would be such “switchmen” because all ruling dynasties at least exercise the
minimal degree of activity that warrants the use of the metaphor.
The major changes that occurred in Seljuq times are most prominently: the
“Sunni revival”, which put an end to the “Shi’i century”, and the concurrent rise of
the madrasa, together with a new role for the caliph; the increased importance and
systematisation of the iqṭāʿ; and, of course, the task of warding off the crusaders in
Syria and Palestine – the appearance of Frankish invaders was an entirely novel
phenomenon.
Another reason to see the Seljuqs as a particularly important dynasty in the
history of the Middle East is that they may be said to be the first dynasty of Turkic
(and therefore nomadic) background to rule over Iran – many more dynasties of that
type were to follow. The same could be said of the Qarakhanids in Transoxiana
(who were earlier than the Seljuqs by two generations), but then a boom in
Qarakhanid studies is unlikely ever to take place because of the scarcity of the
sources. So, if we want to know how Turkic rule was first established in Iran, we
have to turn to the Seljuqs. Likewise, if we want to know what it means to say that a
“steppe tradition” of rule and government was introduced to the settled Iranian
lands, we must consider the Seljuqs; later dynasties could evidently draw on already
established precedents. There is another standard argument we must consider too:
the Seljuqs are sometimes construed as a contrast to the Mongols, and so may serve
as a “benevolent” model for nomadic rule in a sedentary context.
Is there a specifically ‘nomadic’ way of ruling settled countries? And if so, did
the Seljuqs conform to any of the patterns we can observe in such cases? And if we
can identify such features, how long did the Seljuqs retain to them? Or is the whole
question of whether a ruling group comes from the steppe or the sown completely
irrelevant, since the only way of governing Iran with any reasonable chance of
success is the Iranian way? In other words, is identifying ‘Turkic’ or “Iranian”
methods of rule a form of essentialising rulers and ruled alike in a way that is no
longer admissible in modern (or post-modern) historical scholarship?
Since this volume deals with “nomads in the political field”, I have chosen not to
address the first group of questions linked to the consequences of Seljuq rule (or
simply of the Seljuq century) for the history of Islam, but to concentrate on the
debate that is evolving around “the Seljuqs and the nomads”.
The standard narrative about Turkic or Mongol nomads coming to Iran (or to
China, for that matter) is that they take on the superior culture of the sedentary
agrarian empire rather quickly, as a general rule no later than after the second
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generation. Remnants of nomadic ways may persist, but in an antiquated manner:
petrified rituals (e.g. a preference for executing rivals within the royal family or
within the ruling stratum without shedding their blood, for example by having the
culprit strangled “with his own bowstring” as Başan repeats in numerous places), or
a more or less innocent predilection for certain pastimes such as the royal hunt
(which does not in itself distinguish steppe culture from Iranian since Iranian kings
were no less keen hunters than their Turkic counterparts). In the really serious
matters, such as bureaucratic accountancy, the levying of taxes and, above all, the
military, the Seljuqs, like the Mongols after them, are said to have dropped their
steppe ways rather quickly. Acculturation therefore is seen as a one-way affair: the
nomads have to adapt to the habitus of the sedentary agrarian empire or they will not
survive. No similar effort is required of the other side. Since they represent the
superior culture, sedentary elites can remain just as they were. (One of the major
points in Jean Aubin’s latest publication6 was to put this idea to rest. Acculturation
in his view was double-sided.)
Peacock explicitly aims at putting this narrative into question. The absolute
power of the Seljuq sultans as rulers in the Islamic-Iranian mode is not only
contested with regard to their relationship to their Turkmen followers; another vital
aspect are the urban notables, who have been studied in Khurasanian contexts, but
not in Western Iran. Durand-Guédy, by adopting a local perspective, shows very
well how much the power of the central bureaucracy – and indeed the rulers
themselves – was limited, even in what many consider as the Seljuq capital, Isfahan.
This author, in articles published since or in print, has also addressed the “Turkmen
problem” in Seljuq history.
Thus, in this review essay, I shall focus on two or three new and innovative
research tracks that are opened up in the books under review. First, there is the new
assessment of the “Turkmen problem”, or, as Peacock puts it, the fact that the Seljuq
sultans “found their nomadic subjects an embarrassment”,7 including the question of
the extent to which the Seljuq sultans remained beholden to Turkmen ways. Second,
there are the new insights to be gained by leaving the imperial perspective for a
while. Religious questions will not be addressed in this essay, nor will the history of
art and literature – all subjects that are central to the volume edited by Lange and
Mecit.
————
6 Aubin, Jean, Emirs mongols et vizirs persans dans les remous de l’acculturation, Studia
Iranica, Cahier 15 (Paris: Peeters, 1995).
7 Peacock, Early Seljuq history: 4.
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David DURAND-GUÉDY, Iranian Élites and Turkish Rulers. A History of Iṣfahān in
the Saljūq Period (London: Routledge, 2010): xxiii, 435 pp. Includes bibliography
and index.
The “politics of notables”, to use a term first coined by Hourani for the Ottoman
Empire in the eighteenth century, reflects a widespread situation in the history of the
pre-Mongol Near and Middle East too. Studies have largely concentrated on two
regions: Syria and Khurasan. In all cases, very much the same patterns can be shown
to be at work. Imperial rule is either absent or distant, and its representatives on the
local and regional levels are weak; at any rate, they cannot hope to govern the city
without help from the notables. Notables are a not very numerous group of people,
often coming from no more than a handful of families, who assume leadership of
city quarters or of entire cities and can attract the loyalty of large followings. They
are responsible for tax collection, the upholding of order and so forth, and they are
the interlocutors of the representatives of imperial power at the local level. In times
of crisis, they decide whether their city is going to open its gate to a pretender or
conqueror or whether it is going instead to defend itself. Notable families controlled
most of the relevant offices, among them that of the city judge; in some cases, the
office of šayḫ al-islām is heavily contested. In other cities, the office of raʾīs was the
one that made the difference. Everywhere, control of the extensive awqāf
established for the newly-founded madrasas was an important issue; this could be
combined with corresponding professorships. The factional violence that haunted
many Iranian cities in the pre-Mongol period was clearly linked to this situation, and
it comes as no surprise that very frequently, though by no means always, this
factional violence appears in the shape of clashes between Sunni schools of law, the
Ḥanafīs and the Šāfiʿīs.
Durand-Guédy’s book is the first to address a city in Western Iran, Isfahan, and,
moreover, it is the first to address a capital city, where the presence of the ruler
should have been systematically more important than it was in the “provincial” cities
of Herat or Nishapur on the one hand and the Syrian cities on the other. The author
presents the rise of two notable families, the Khujandīs, who were the leaders of the
Šāfiʿī faction, and the Ṣāʿids, who were their counterparts on the Ḥanafī side. Both
families had come to Isfahan from Khurasan, and it is indeed fascinating to see how
the Khujandīs became ‘naturalised’ through their involvement in city life. Both
families were, moreover, more or less directly linked to a dynasty that acted as their
patrons; the Khujandīs were introduced to Isfahan by Niẓām al-Mulk, and they later
worked together with the ʿAbbāsid caliphs; the Ṣāʿids were first linked to the Seljūq
sultans, and later to the Ḫwārazmšāhs.
The Khujandīs are much better represented in the sources, and one of the major
findings of the book is that members of this family, together with apparently wellorganised urban militias, were an important factor in driving the Ismāʿīlīs out of the
fortress of Šāhdiz, which they had occupied (incidentally, without any traceable
connection to the Ismāʿīlīs sitting at Alamut). This is the most outstanding example
of notable power – indeed of urban power – demonstrated in the book. Other
examples include decisions to deflect imperial armies to other targets so that Isfahan
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could avoid a siege, and so forth. Factional strife set in early on and increased over
time until the Mongol invasion; as in other cities (such as Marv), Isfahani notables
did not refrain from using the Mongols as allies in their own local interest – it goes
without saying that this never worked out as the notables had planned.
Durand-Guédy has developed his research on the notable families of Isfahan in
his contribution to Lange and Mecit, “An emblematic family of Seljuq Iran: The
Khujandīs of Isfahan”, which presents additional material. By adopting a local
perspective, Durand-Guédy shows that even at the height of its power and in its very
capital, the Seljuq Empire was unable to exert control over its urban spaces directly,
and did not even pretend to. Indirect forms of rule were the norm in Isfahan as
elsewhere, and in this respect there is no real difference between a capital and a
provincial city.
The very concept of the ‘capital city’ is also under discussion. In recent articles,
Durand-Guédy shows that the Seljuq sultans did not live in cities. Even in the period
when they are said to have fully conformed to Islamic-Iranian models of rule, they
camped outside, on the hunting grounds, on summer pastures, or if they did set up
camp in the vicinity of a city, it would be in royal gardens rather than in royal
palaces intra muros. It is more difficult to ascertain whether their itineraries were
modelled on the pastoral nomadic pattern, but residential areas for summer and
winter can be clearly identified in at least some cases (e.g., Masʿūd b. Muḥammad).
In a forthcoming article,8 Durand-Guédy shows that it cannot be firmly established
that any Seljuq sultan resided in a city, although this does not, of course, exclude
that they came into cities – to hold audiences, for example. The royal camp was
extra muros, often in royal gardens. Elsewhere, he expands on this subject by
showing how the sultan Masʿūd b. Muḥammad moved around, not only between
Hamadan and Baghdad, but also into Adharbaijan; the use of royal pastures appears
as a central subject.9
Their way of using Isfahan as a ‘capital’ clearly distinguishes the Seljuqs from
the only “local” dynasty Isfahan had in the pre-Mongol period, the Kakuyids. Indeed, the Kakuyids emerge as the only dynasty that can be seen as a true representation of local loyalties, and this goes a long way towards explaining the fact that they
were able to survive for some generations in the midst of much more powerful
neighbours (such as the Buyids and, above all, the Ghaznavids in western Iran).
The local perspective also helps to retrace identity constructions in Iranian
societies in the Seljuq period. Religious identifications have been at the centre of
discussions, and it is true that ‘factional’ identities often revolved around religious
markers, such as the schools of law or of speculative theology (kalām). Regional,
————
8 Durand-Guédy, David, “Ruling from the outside: A new perspective on early Turkish
kingship in Iran”, in Every Inch a King: Comparative Studies in Kings and Kingship in the
Ancient and Mediaeval Worlds, ed. L. Mitchell and C. Melville (Leiden: Brill, 2011
forthcoming).
9 See Durand-Guédy, David, “Where did the Seljuqs live? A case study based on the reign
of sultan Masʿūd b. Muḥammad (1134-1152)”, StIr XL/2 (2011, forthcoming).
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and indeed local, urban identities have been treated much less frequently, but
apparently they also held enormous potential. Isfahan as a city was linked to
Baghdad more than to any other place, and before the coming of the Seljuqs it had
already acquired a culture of competition with the ʿAbbasid capital. The bureaucrats
who came with the Seljuqs from the east continued to identify themselves as
Khurasanis (and looked down on the Westerners from Jibāl). Never before has the
regional structure of Iran been taken to imply such significant consequences, and a
picture of a deep rift between Jibāl in the west and Khurasan in the east emerges.
In sum, Durand-Guédy’s book is an excellent example of what can be achieved
by adopting a local perspective. There are probably quite a number of Iranian cities
that could be studied in a similar way. At first sight, the sources for Isfahan did not
look particularly promising, but the author has succeeded in bringing together scraps
of evidence from all quarters, including poetry, and has mined all the sources to the
limit, but without overstretching his conclusions. This gives the book the additional
quality of being a demonstration of the use of scant sources.
Aziz BAŞAN, The Great Seljuqs. A History (London, New York: Routledge, 2010):
xii, 209 pp. Includes bibliography and index.
Turkish historiography about the Seljuqs forms a large body of literature, even if
most of the works seem a little dated; Sümer, Köymen and Kafesoğlu wrote their
most influential monographs decades ago and, for a number of reasons, works of
similar scope have since been rare in Turkey. The Great Seljuqs seem to have been
abandoned, at least temporarily, but we have recently seen a number of good and
influential monographs (such as those by Merçil, Sevim and Özaydın10) on regional
Seljuq states or individual rulers.
Most of the international research on the Seljuqs is now being published in
English and is written by European or American authors. (Japanese studies should
be mentioned too, but they are not linguistically accessible to the present writer.) In
this field, as elsewhere, research in non-European languages is not always read as
widely as it deserves, and so there have already been efforts to make Turkish
research on the Seljuqs available.
Başan’s monograph is not the first attempt at situating Turkish research on the
Seljuqs in its historical and ideological context. In the introduction, he dismisses
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10 Merçil, Erdoğan, Fars Atabegleri Salgurlular (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1991²);
Merçil, Erdoğan, Kirman Selçukluları (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, Türk Tarih
Kurumu, 1989); Sevim, Ali, Selçuklu Devletleri Tarihi: Siyaset, Teşkilat ve Kültür
(Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1995); Özaydın, Abdülkerim, Sultan Muhammed Tapar
Devri Selçuklu Tarihi (498-511/1105-118) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1990); Idem,
Sultan Berkyaruk Devri Selçuklu Tarihi (485-498/1092-1104) (Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu, 2001).
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Strohmeier11 out of hand: Strohmeier “has attempted to evaluate the politics and
ideologies of Turkish historians on the Seljuqs [...] arguably Strohmeier fails in this
task”. However, the discussion of Strohmeier in the introduction is brief and clearly
does not do justice to the German researcher’s work. Leiser12 is referred to in the
bibliography, but I am not aware of any reference to this work in the book itself. As
the title indicates, Leiser offers far more than just a translation of Kafesoğlu’s work,
and he has translated several other works besides this. It is a pity that Başan has
chosen not to discuss the works of these two authors.
Turkish historiography in the 1950s and 1960s followed a very ideological
agenda. It was important to stress the Turkishness of the Seljuqs, and above all their
state in Anatolia. (For this reason, the Rum Seljuqs have received more attention in
Turkey: they are so very evidently part of the national history.) The Seljuqs are seen
as direct precursors of the Ottomans, who thus do not have to be seen as heirs to the
Byzantines or to Iranian ideas of kingship (only), but can be styled as pure Turks. To
a certain extent, the Turkish authors, with their emphasis on the ‘steppe tradition’ of
the Seljuqs, occupy the opposite position to the mainstream ‘Western’ one, which
stresses the ‘Iranian’ character of Seljuq rule for all periods from the earliest phases
of the conquest. Turkish authors tend to make the Seljuqs appear to have passed
through Iran without really being touched by Iranian culture.
Başan summarises the “master narrative” present in the works of Köprülü,
Köymen, Sümer, Kafesoğlu13 and others. The main body of the book makes very
difficult reading indeed, even for readers who have a fairly advanced knowledge of
the subject. One of the most salient features of earlier (and some of the current)
Turkish historiography is the strong emphasis on events, the “history of kings and
wars”. Başan does not spare his readers any of the events, and so the text is terse and
indigestible.
As far as the narration of events goes, the book does not replace Bosworth’s
chapter in the Cambridge History of Iran, which remains the benchmark and the
work of reference for the period.
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11 Strohmeier, Martin, Seldschukische Geschichte und türkische Geschichtswissenschaft:
Die Seldschuken im Urteil moderner türkischer Historiker (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1984).
12 Leiser, Gary, A History of the Seljuks: İbrahim Kafesoğlu’s Interpretation and the
Resulting Controversy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988).
13 Too many works to give exhaustive references here, so only a few key publications follow.
Sümer, Faruk, Oğuzlar (Türkmenler): Tarihleri, Boy Teşkilatı, Destanları (İstanbul: Türk
Dünyası Araştırmaları Vakfı, 1992, first published 1965); Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad, Osmanlı
Devleti’nin İlk Kuruluşu (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 19945); Köymen, Mehmed A., Büyük
Selçuklu İmparatorluğu – İkinci İimparatorluk Devri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1954);
Büyük Selçuklu İmparatorluğu – Kuruluş Devri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1979);
Kafesoğlu, İbrahim, Sultan Melikşah Devrinde Büyük Selçuklu İmparatorluğu (İstanbul:
İstanbul Üniversitesi, 1953); Idem, Harezmşahlar Devleti Tarihi (Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu, 1956).
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The presentation here of the relationship between the Seljuq sultans and their
nomadic followers does not deviate much from the traditional view: the Seljuq
sultans very soon became Iranian in outlook, although they retained many of their
Central Asian traditions in warfare and statecraft, such as patterns of succession.
Here, a more general remark is in order: there were Iranian dynasties, such as the
Buyids, that were “family concerns” to an extent that would qualify them as
“Turkic” in the extreme, and even among the Samanids, the succession was not
always from father to son, features that are often taken as indicative of a “steppe
tradition”. Therefore, the “Turkishness” of given features must be shown rather than
simply being asserted. To come back to the nomads: the pages on the “Türkmen”
(50-1) are mostly about the etymology of the term, with other being sections about
events linked to the Iraqi Türkmen and so on. It is only in the concluding chapter
(“Evaluation”) that Başan presents some general information about Central Asian
nomads, although this is barely linked to Seljuq history, in sentences such as: “The
importance of safe and adequate winter pasturage may go a long way towards
explaining the early history of the Seljuqs”, immediately following which cases are
quoted, but not discussed. It is true that the need for “safe and adequate pasturage”
has been underrated as a motif in Seljuq history, and not only the early history, and
many cases could probably be cited of the sultans themselves going in quest of
pasture, but Başan does not really address the question of how independent the
Seljuqs ever became of the Türkmen.
Sogdian script is not cuneiform (p. 47). Khurasan is not “almost completely
without water and vegetation, even in comparison to the Gobi and Kara-Kum” (p.
152); there are deserts in and next to Khurasan, but it also has enormous agricultural
potential, as well as famous pastures (e.g. the imperial pastures of Rādkān-i Ṭūs).
Arslan Arghun was not Čaġrı Beg’s son, but his grandson through Malikšāh (p. 104
and elsewhere). These are only three of a certainly much greater number of factual
errors.
To sum up: Başan’s work can be used (with caution) as a summary of Turkish
scholarship on the Seljuqs, but I suggest that we continue to use the Turkish
originals. Başan does not link the narrative of the Seljuqs, as culled from Turkish
historiography, to the ideological premises of the period, and he seems to stick to the
original question of his masters: How can we prove the Turkishness of the Seljuq
Empire and its successor states? Can we link the Ottoman Empire to Central Asia
via the Seljuqs, and since we have to try, how can we achieve this? – In all, Başan
has contributed a weak book to a strong series, the “Routledge Studies in the History
of Iran and Turkey”.
The long-lasting Seljuq narrative, from the Rum Seljuqs to the Ottomans, is
retraced by Peacock,14 whose excellent article shows how the Seljuq theme was
used by different dynasties, who either claimed descent (often matrilinear) from the
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14 Peacock, Andrew, “Seljuq legitimacy in Islamic history”, in The Seljuqs: Politics,
Society and Culture, ed. Christian Lange and Songül Mecit (Edniburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2011, forthcoming).
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Seljuqs or else referred to Rum Seljuq models in their administrative practice. The
article concentrates on the Karamanids and the Konya region, but also includes
examples for Seljuq-Ottoman ‘continuity’.
Andrew C.S. PEACOCK, Early Seljūq History: A New Interpretation (London:
Routledge, 2010): xi, 190 pp. Includes bibliography and index.
The Seljuqs came to Iran as a group leading Turkmen warriors, and the accepted
wisdom is that the relationship between the leading clan (the descendants of Seljuq)
and its Turkmen followers evolved over time; as Peacock himself has it, the
Turkmen warriors became an “embarrassment” for the Seljuq family, who had now
become a dynasty ruling according to Islamic-Iranian styles. This evolution is one of
the central questions in Seljuq history in general.
The book addresses this question, but before we discuss its findings, some
remarks on the other problems it deals with are in order. First, Peacock presents one
of the best surveys of the available sources known to the present writer. He
disentangles the various strands without trying to harmonise them; contradictions in
the sources remain visible in the text. He discusses the Maliknāme tradition as well
as the independent Persian sources such as Bū l-Fażl Bayhaqī and Gardīzī; in the
Maliknāme tradition, he distinguishes an earlier and a later version (the one used
inter alia by Ibn al-Atīr). A typical feature of the Maliknāme tradition is its
confusion about the individual members of the Seljuq family and their respective
contributions to the early history of the clan; Peacock does not try to resolve these
problems. Indeed, his assumption that they have no cogent solution is convincing
and must be upheld. All this makes the book, first of all, a very solid piece of
scholarship.
The origins of the Seljuqs are shrouded in mystery. Peacock opts for a “Khazar”
thesis (which has also recently been adopted by Bulliet). This makes sense to me,
and it is doubtful whether a more convincing thesis could be produced.
The reasons for the initial migration are likewise discussed without a firm
conclusion. Political strife within the Khazar qaganate is an option, as well as
climate change. (Here, Peacock refers to some of the recent research on the climate
history of Central Asia; it is clear that anecdotal evidence in narrative sources cannot
serve as a firm basis for far-reaching assumptions if it is not supported by evidence
provided by accepted methods in the exact sciences.)
In a very similar fashion, Peacock discusses the various Turkmen (or Ġuzz)
groups active in Iran and Muslim Central Asia until the 1040s. He shows that there
was no overall command, and that members of the Seljuq family did not have to
cooperate; indeed there was conflict and competition at practically every turn of
early Seljuq history. The relationship between the Seljuq leaders and their Turkmen
followers remains rather obscure, but that is due to the sources, which only very rarely give a glimpse of non-Seljuq leadership. It is, however, interesting to note that
Peacock discusses not only the commonly accepted tribal mode of leadership, but
also theorises that the Seljuq army of conquest may have been organised according
to the decimal system much more strongly associated with the Mongols (p. 81). In
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fact, Peacock uses the term ‘tribe’ quite freely, without paying much attention to the
debates that surround it in social anthropology; there is nothing to show, however,
that the Seljuq leading family was in any way genealogically related to its followers,
or that agnatic kinship was the organising principle of the Seljuq army (with or
without the decimal system as an overarching military format), or whether or to
what degree Seljuq followers conceived of their social world in terms of agnatic
kinship.
That said, Peacock’s thesis is “that early Seljūq history should be understood in
this steppe context” (p. 165) of “typical steppe state formation, of internal strife
leading to the rise of a leader”. This thesis can be said to have been demonstrated in
the book. Furthermore – and in line with that – pastoralist interests account for much
of what the early Seljuqs did. Peacock reiterates his findings published in an earlier
article15 about the motives for and routes of Seljuq penetration into eastern Anatolia
and Caucasia: their campaigns were not motivated by an innate lust for plunder or
wanton destruction, but were aimed at securing pasture for the Turkmen herders and
their flocks.
But even within the “steppe tradition”, there is room for forms of warfare that are
more generally linked to the settled way of life. Already in the early stages of the
Seljuq conquest of Iran, sieges were not infrequent. (In the Mongol and post-Mongol
periods, siege warfare accounted for most of the military encounters; pitched battles
in the open field were rare events in comparison with fighting around a fortress or a
city wall.) Peacock is also quite justified in stressing the discipline of Seljuq-led
troops as compared with their Ghaznavid enemies. Plunder and looting was
important, but it was not uncontrolled. Indeed, strong military leadership in the
context of steppe warfare translates into control over booty; it could be argued that a
strong leader is strong because he is able to prevent individual looting and
distributes booty instead. What is taken on the battlefield or after a siege, or can be
gained in conquest, is handed out to the emirs and the warriors by the leader and not
appropriated on an individual basis in or after battle or conquest.
In sum, Peacock has provided (another) important contribution to the history of
the Seljuqs, distinguished by a very considerate use of the sources, and by refusing
the harmonised narrative that is still frequently expected from historians. The book
stops at the conquest of Baghdad in 1055, and this date is seen as a turning point:
from then on, the Seljuq leaders tried to reduce the importance of their Turkmen
warriors and started to rely on ġulām forces instead. The question of the degree to
which the Turkmen then really became an embarrassment for the Seljuq leaders is
left open in this book, and the matter of how important Turkmen forces continued to
be, both within the framework of the imperial army and its regional ramifications
and otherwise, is not addressed here.
————
15 Peacock, Andrew, “Nomadic society and Seljūq campaigns in Caucasia”, Iran and the
Caucasus, IX/2 (2005): 205-30.
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Other articles reveal the continuing importance of the Turkmen warriors
throughout the Seljuq period. Durand-Guédy, for example, has addressed this
subject in a well-researched piece,16 and shows where major concentrations of
Turkmens were to be found, identifying some of their groups and their leaders. He
adduces numerous examples of where Turkmen were the principal body of military
manpower available to Seljuq sultans and pretenders. The present writer has also has
made a case study of Turkmen military importance17 in his contribution to
Lange/Mecit, “Arslan Arghun – nomadic revival?”
Christian LANGE and Songül MECIT (eds), The Seljuqs: Politics, Society and Culture
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011).
This review was written before publication and so references to the contributions are
without page numbers. My thanks to the editors and the publishers at Edinburgh
University Press for letting me have the manuscript of the volume.
This volume goes back to a conference held under the title “The Seljuqs – Islam
revitalized?” in Edinburgh in September 2008. It contains 15 contributions in all,
besides a very substantial introduction. I have mentioned some of the contributions
in the preceding sections (Peacock, Durand-Guédy, my own), and will address only
a selection of the remaining ones.
In its title, the conference announced that the contributions will revolve around
the “Sunni revival” paradigm that is attributed to the Seljuqs, who are said either to
have actively promoted it or else to have been the ‘switchmen’ who made the train
of Islamic culture take that track.
The introduction (by the editors) is one of the best summaries currently available
of the state of the art in “Seljuq studies”, and it also details some of the reasons why
a general history of the Seljuqs has not yet been written in any Western language.
The “Sunni revival” is directly questioned in, e.g., Robert Gleave, “Shi’i
jurisprudence during the Seljuq period: rebellion and public order in an illegitimate
state”. First, Gleave puts to rest the idea that there were practically no innovative or
important Shi’i thinkers during the Seljuq period (when everyone was busy helping
with the “Sunni revival”). He names the authors and the works and, in the case he
studies – the theories about ‘rebels’ and illegitimate rulers – he shows that Shi’i
thought was no less fascinating in this period than in any other one.
Deborah Tor also addresses questions of Sunni piety in her “ ‘Sovereign and
pious’: the religious life of the Great Seljuq sultans”, but she does so from a quite
————
16 Durand-Guédy, David, “Goodbye to the Turkmens? An analysis of the military role
played by nomads in Saljūq Iran after the conquest (11th-12th centuries)”, in Nomadic
Military Power: Iran and Adjacent Areas in the Islamic Period, ed. Kurt Franz and
Wolfgang Holzwarth (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2011, forthcoming).
17 Paul, Jürgen, “Arslan Arghun – nomadic revival?”, in The Seljuqs: Politics, Society and
Culture, ed. Christian Lange and Songül Mecit (Edniburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2011, forthcoming).
274
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surprising perspective. She analyses reports about the personal piety and religious
observance of a number of Seljuq sultans and, time and again, she raises the
question of “whether, or to what degree, these sources are tendentious”, since she
admits that all we have to work with are the literary sources of late Seljuq
historiography. Her contribution was discussed quite controversially during the
conference, and I still think she makes an important point. The following argument
was at the heart of the debate: “[W]hat is important for our present purposes –
evaluating the piety or lack thereof of specific sultans – is not whether or not a sultan
actually committed one specific act or another, but the fact that the historical
memory of him is of a pious or impious individual [...]”. Indeed, the issue is the
ways in which historical memories are formed, and the process of associating vice or
virtue with any individual is, to me at least, a mystery; it is no surprise that a case
study cannot do much do elucidate this.
The “Sunni revival” is also the background of Christian Lange’s “Changes in the
office of ḥisba under the Seljuqs”. Here, it becomes clear that a change in the
religious atmosphere did indeed occur under the Seljuqs; while the muḥtasib was
previously a market inspector working in the public sphere, his – sometimes
arrogated – competences tended increasingly to infringe on people’s privacy. At the
end of the period, Ġazālī advocates a very “robust” understanding of the office
indeed. But it is not so certain whether this process was inspired by the Seljuq
sultans or their viziers; I would venture to say that the re-orientation of the ḥisba
comes across more as something which originated in “civil society”.
Some of the main questions I personally consider vital for the Seljuq period are
addressed in a quite surprising context in the book. One of the contributions I have
most profited from is Scott Redford’s “City building in Seljuq Rum”. Redford takes
the Seljuq inscriptions from Sinop on the Anatolian Black Sea coast as an example,
and shows not only that they were commissioned by the sultan, but that local lords
also participated in the marking of Sinop as a Muslim space after the conquest of the
city in 1214. A whole series of inscriptions went along with a huge building spurt in
the following year and the inscriptions shed light on the local structure of power. In
particular, the term ṣāḥib (which Redford translates as ‘governor’ throughout) might
merit closer attention. The term is used for local and regional lords in some twelfthand thirteenth-century sources. The question here is the relationship of the sultan to
local and regional lords, be they nomadic or settled, Turk or Iranian, and the
character of local rule.
In a way, this question also is addressed in Carole Hillenbrand’s “Aspects of the
court of the Great Seljuqs”. First, she quotes a visual representation of a
(presumably) Seljuq sultan in a court scene – this picture sits well with DurandGuédy’s results. And then, she draws our attention to the multifarious ways in which
subordination and hierarchy can be expressed in court protocol, ritual and ceremony.
She also mentions “the little courts of upstart military barons and provincial
governors” that offered ample opportunities and patronage for men of letters. This
again stresses the importance of local rule – “military barons” who tried to grab
power wherever they could and to emulate their superiors.
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In sum, the last years have seen a mass of publications on the Seljuq periods.
Earlier accepted wisdom is being challenged in at least the following points:
First, not only were the Turkmen important during the conquest, but they
continued to be so throughout the Seljuq period, in ways that still remain to be
explored in detail.
Second, the local elites – urban notables – played a central role at the local level,
and no administration could work without them. While this has long ago been
proved for Khurasan and Syria, we now have corresponding results for Seljuq
Isfahan.
Third, the Seljuq sultans probably remained within the steppe tradition in many
ways, one of them being their place of residence – outside the towns.
Fourth, the “Sunni revival” may still be used as a shorthand for the evolution of
Muslim thought during the Seljuq period, but the sultans themselves were probably
much less involved in what was going on than we used to think. And there are
important points on which our ideas about the “Sunni revival” must be
fundamentally adapted to accommodate new findings.
JÜRGEN PAUL
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg