The Sultanate of Rum 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.
Although 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 Persian 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 in older Western sources.
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, a number of small principalities, or beyliks, emerged and rose to dominance
in the territory of the Sultanate, including that of the House of Osman, which later founded
the Ottoman Empire.
Establishment
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 and Nicomedia.
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, 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 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 put pressure on the Artuqids.
Downfall
Kaykhusraw II began his reign by capturing the region around Diyarbekir, but in 1239
he had to face an uprising led by a popular preacher named Baba Ishak.
After three years, when he had finally quelled the revolt, the Crimean foothold was lost
and the state and the sultanate's army had weakened.
It is in these conditions that he had to face a far more dangerous threat, that of the expanding
Mongols.
Mongol forces took Erzurum in 1242 and in 1243, the sultan was crushed by Bayju in the
Battle of Köse Dag and the Seljuq Turks were forced to swear allegiance to the Mongols
and became their vassals.
The sultan himself had fled to Antalya after the 1243 battle, where he died in 1246, his
death starting a period of tripartite, and then dual rule that lasted until 1260.
The Seljuq realm was divided among Kaykhusraw's three sons.
The eldest, Kaykaus II, assumed the rule in the area west of the river Kızılırmak.
His younger brothers, Kilij Arslan IV and Kayqubad II were set to rule the regions east
of the river under Mongol administration.
In October 1256, Bayju defeated Kaykaus II near Aksaray and all of Anatolia became officially
subject to Möngke Khan.
In 1260 Kaykaus II fled from Konya to Crimea where he died in 1279.
Kilij Arslan IV was executed in 1265 and Kaykhusraw III became the nominal ruler of all of Anatolia,
with the tangible power exercised either by the Mongols or the sultan's influential regents.
The Seljuq state had started to split into small emirates that increasingly distanced
themselves from both Mongol and Seljuq control.
In 1277, responding to a call from Anatolia, the Mameluk sultan Baybars raided Anatolia
and defeated the Mongols, temporarily replacing them as the administrator of the Seljuq realm.
But since the native forces who had called him to Anatolia did not manifest themselves
for the defense of the land, he had to return to his homebase in Egypt, and the Mongol administration
was re-assumed, officially and severely.
Also, Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia captured Mediterranean coast from Selinos to Seluecia,
also cities of Marash and Behisni from Seljuq in 1240s.
Near the end of his reign, Kaykhusraw III could claim direct sovereignty only over lands
around Konya.
Some of the Beyliks and Seljuq governors of Anatolia continued to recognize, albeit nominally,
the supremacy of the sultan in Konya, delivering the khutba in the name of the sultans in Konya
in recognition of their sovereignty, and the sultans continued to call themselves Fahreddin,
the Pride of Islam.
When Kaykhusraw III was executed in 1284, the Seljuq dynasty suffered another blow from
internal struggles which lasted until 1303 when the son of Kaykaus II, Mesud II, established
himself as sultan in Kayseri.
He was murdered in 1307 as well as his son Mesud III soon afterwards.
A distant relative to the Seljuq dynasty momentarily installed himself as emir of Konya, but he
was defeated and his lands conquered by the Karamanids in 1328.
The sultanate's monetary sphere of influence lasted slightly longer and coins of Seljuq
mint, generally considered to be of reliable value, continued to be used throughout the
14th century, once again, including by the Ottomans.
Culture and society The Seljuk dynasty of Rum, as successors to
the Great Seljuqs, based their political, religious and cultural heritage off the Perso-Islamic
tradition, even to the point of naming their sons with Persian names.
Though of Turkic origin, Rum Seljuks patronized Persian art, architecture, literature, while
they used Persian as a language of administration.
Moreover, Byzantine influence in the Sultanate was also significant, since Greek aristocracy
remained part of the Seljuk nobility, and the local Greek population was numerous in
the region.
In their construction of caravanserais, medreses and mosques, the Rum Seljuks translated the
Iranian Seljuk architecture of bricks and plaster into the use of stone.
Among these, the caravanserais, used as stops, trading posts and defense for caravans, and
of which about a hundred structures were built during the Anatolian Seljuqs period, are particularly
remarkable.
Along with Persian influences, which had an indisputable effect, Seljuk architecture was
inspired by Christian and Muslim Armenians.
As such, Anatolian architecture represents some of the most distinctive and impressive
constructions in the entire history of Islamic architecture.
Later this Anatolian architecture would be transmitted to Sultanate India.
The largest caravanserai is the 1229-built Sultan Han on the road between the cities
of Konya and Aksaray, in the township of Sultanhanı depending the latter city, enclosing 3,900
square meters.
There are two caravanserais that carry the name "Sultan Han", the other one being between
Kayseri and Sivas.
Furthermore, apart from Sultanhanı, five other towns across Turkey owe their names
to caravanserais built there.
These are Alacahan in Kangal, Durağan, Hekimhan and Kadınhanı, as well as the township of
Akhan within Denizli metropolitan area.
The caravanserai of Hekimhan is unique in having, underneath the usual inscription in
Arabic with information relating to the edifice, two further inscriptions in Armenian and Syriac,
since it was constructed by the sultan Kayqubad I's doctor who is thought to have been a Christian
by his origins, and to have converted to Islam.
There are other particular cases like the settlement in Kalehisar site near Alaca, founded
by the Seljuq commander Hüsameddin Temurlu who had taken refuge in the region after the
defeat in the Battle of Köse Dağ, and had founded a township comprising a castle, a
medrese, a habitation zone and a caravanserai, which were later abandoned apparently around
the 16th century.
All but the caravanserai, which remains undiscovered, was explored in the 1960s by the art historian
Oktay Aslanapa, and the finds as well as a number of documents attest to the existence
of a vivid settlement in the site, such as a 1463-dated Ottoman firman which instructs
the headmaster of the medrese to lodge not in the school but in the caravanserai.
The Seljuk palaces, as well as their armies, were staffed with ghulam, enslaved youths
taken from non-Muslim communities, mainly Greeks from former Byzantine territories.
The Ghulam practice may had offered a model for the latter Devshirme during the times
of the Ottoman Empire.
The Dynasty
As regards the names of the sultans, there are variants in form and spelling depending
on the preferences displayed by one source or the other, either for fidelity in transliterating
the Persian-influenced variant of the Arabic script which the sultans used, or for a rendering
corresponding to the modern Turkish phonology and orthography.
Some sultans had two names that they chose to use alternatively in reference to their
legacy.
While the two palaces built by Alaeddin Keykubad I carry the names Kubadabad Palace and Keykubadiye
Palace, he named his mosque in Konya as Alaeddin Mosque and the port city of Alanya he had
captured as "Alaiye".
Similarly, the medrese built by Kaykhusraw I in Kayseri, within the complex dedicated
to his sister Gevher Nesibe, was named Gıyasiye Medrese, and the one built by Izzeddin Keykavus
I in Sivas as Izzediye Medrese.
See also Alaeddin Mosque
Anatolian beyliks Anatolian Seljuks family tree
Babai Revolt Byzantine–Seljuq Wars
Ince Minaret Medrese Karatay Medrese
Rûm Province, Ottoman Empire Seljuq architecture
Seljuq dynasty Timeline of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm
Timeline of Turkish history Timeline of the Turks
References
Sources
External links