Seljuqs3

1104 - 1117 Ghiyāth ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Abū Shujāʿ Muḥammad I, Sixth Seljuq Sultan. Born 1082, he initially supported Barkyaruq and was made ruler of Ganja as a reward. In 1099, however, the ex-vizier and ex-rebel Mu'ayyid al-Mulk arrived in his court, exhorting him to rebellion against Barkyaruq. Despite the violent fate which had befallen Mu'ayyid al-Mulk's previous puppet, Muḥammad agreed. After four defeats, Muḥammad beat Barkyaruq in battle and killed him (1104). 

As Sultan, he immediately faced two rebellions from former supporters of Barkyaruq and then turned on a bigger target: the Assassins of Dizhkuh fortress. Their agents were widespread and included (as it turned out) the vizier Saʿd al-Mulk, who almost succeeded in poisoning the Sultan on their behalf. In the end Muḥammad prevailed. Buoyed with this success, he moved on to the biggest target of them all: the Assassins of the craggy Alamut, whose knives in the night were feared from Syria to Samarqand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Muḥammad died shortly after making camp beneath the Alamut's walls.  

• 1) Muglīth ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Maḥmūd II, Seventh Seljuq Sultan (see below)

• 2) Ghiyāth ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Abū'l-Fatḥ Masʿūd, Tenth Seljuq Sultan (see below)

• 3) Rukn ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Abū Ṭalib Ṭughrīl II, Ninth Seljuq Sultan (see below)

• 4) Seljuq Shah. He joined Maḥmūd II's unsuccessful rebellion against the Seljuq Sultan Sanjar in 1131. In the reign of Masʿūd, he was appointed ruler of Fars in central and southern Iran. Knowing that the region was insecure, he refused to go. Eventually, Masʿūd led him there by force, annihilating the rebels as he went. As soon as he had installed Seljuq Shah and gone home, the rebels returned and Seljuq Shah immediately fled the region. Captured, he was imprisoned opulently in the palace Diz Sipid castle and the rebels ruled in his name until 1147.

  • a) Malik Shah, born 1134. He was sent to Takrit "for his safety" in 1146 and remained there until he was discovered there by his cousin Muḥammad II in 1157.

• 5) Dāwūd. He supported his brother's campaign against the Abbasid Caliph in 1135, but in the aftermath the city of Isfahan, which was displeased at having been beseiged, declared him Sultan instead.

• 6) Muʿizz ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Abū'l Ḥārith Sulaymān Shah, Thirteenth Seljuq Sultan (see below)

• 1) Fatima, who may have married Al-Muqtafi, Thirty-First Abbasid Caliph (see ABBASIDS)

1117 Muglīth ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Maḥmūd II, Seventh Seljuq Sultan. He was raised to the throne after his father's death, but in the face of his uncle Sanjar's army he resigned the Sultanate later that year. Sanjar made him ruler of Iraq and gave him two of his daughters in marriage - in effect making Maḥmūd co-ruler of the western portions of the empire. Thereafter, he spent most of his time with his concubines in the harem or with his beloved birds. He spent very little time actually ruling, a state of affairs which the Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad attempted to take advantage of. In 1126, Maḥmūd responded to these movements by beseiging and conquering Baghdad. In 1130, he faced another challenge, an invasion led by his brother Masʿūd, which Maḥmūd defeated in battle at Asadabad. He reconciled with Masʿūd and led a rebellion against Sanjar, attempting to to reclaim full power over the Seljuqs, a course which ended in his death.

He married (first) his cousin Mahmaluk Khatun, daughter of Sanjar, Seventh Seljuq Sultan (see below), who died aged seventeen.

He married (second) Amir Sittī Khatun, sister of his first wife (see below)

• 1) Mugīth ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Malik Shah II, Eleventh Seljuq Sultan (see below)

• 2) Ghiyāth ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Abū Shujāʿ Muḥammad II, Twelfth Seljuq Sultan (son of Amir) (see below)

• 1) Gawhar Nasab (daughter of Amir). When her brother Malik Shah II was deposed in 1153, she fled with him to Khuzistan.

1117 - 1156 As-Salātīn Muʿizz ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Abū'l-Ḥārith Sanjar, Eighth Seljuq Sultan. Born 1086, he supported his half-brother Barkyaruq after the death of Malik Shah I in 1092. He was therefore entrusted with an army to deal with one of Barkyaruq's rebellious uncles, Arslan Arghū, ruler of Khorasan (Despite being only ten years old at the time!). Arslan Arghū was stabbed by a servant before any fighting could occur and Sanjar became the new ruler of Khorasan. He then occupied himself with the pacification of Khorasan and the expansion of the empire to the east. Attacking the Ghaznavids, who had once ruled the Seljuqs, he reduced them to vassals in 1117. 

    That same year, his brother died beneath craggy Alamut. Sanjar marched against the new sultan, his nephew Maḥmūd II, demoted him to ruler of Iraq and the west and then returned to his base in Khorasan, for the Qarakhan Qutur Khan had invaded with a force of one hundred thousand men. Fortunately the Khan was captured on a hunting expedition and his invasion defeated without a fight. Eventually, Sanjar took the battle to the Qarakhans, conquering Samarqand and Transoxiana in 1130. This brought him into contact with new enemies, the Qara-Khitai, former rulers of China who had retreated to the steppe and set up in khanate in modern Kazakhstan. Sanjar drove off their advances, at first, but was defeated by a renewed attack in 1141 and fled, abandoning Transoxiana and his own wife in his haste. Meanwhile, in the east, his Ghaznavid vassal had been carrying on a war with the Ghurids of Kandahar to much success. Too much success - after decapitating the Ghurid sultan, he was pursued by the sultan's more competant brother, who defeated him and took the Ghaznavid territories. Sanjar managed to prevent the Ghurid advance into his territories in a battle near Herat in 1152, but was unable to recapture the territories lost. Thus Sanjar lost both of his conquests to unexpected external enemies. 

In 1153, a third disaster: a Seljuq slave official sent to the Ghuzz, nomadic kin and vassals of the Seljuqs in western Turkmenistan. Sanjar sent two armies to resolve the problem, both of whih failed. Arriving in person, he attempted to negotiate and basically resolved the difficulties. His lieutenants, however, bristled at the idea of negotiating with the uncultured Ghuzz. They physically forced Sanjar to order an attack on the Ghuzz, who defeated his army with ease. Capturing Sanjar after the battle, the Ghuzz set him upon a throne and declared that they had always been loyal to him. They escorted him back to his capital in Merv, which the pillaged, plundered, and burnt. They led Sanjar on to Nishapur, which they pillaged, plundered, and razed to the ground, slaughtering the loal inhabitants who had taken refuge inside the city's mosque. For two years the Ghuzz continued this pattern, leading Sanjar from city to city, letting him watch as they despoiled the lands which he had spent his whole life building. Finally, in 1155, he escaped from the Ghuzz and made it back to what remained of Merv, where he died. His tomb, which still stands in Merv, is depicted above.

He married Tarkān Khatun, who was captured by the Qara-Khitai in 1141 and held by them for two years.

• 1)  Mahmaluk Khatun, who married her cousin Maḥmūd II, Seventh Seljuq Sultan (see above)

• 2) Amir Sittī Khatun, who also married Maḥmūd II, Seventh Seljuq Sultan (see above)

• 3) Gawhar Khatun, who married her cousin Masʿūd, Tenth Seljuq Sultan (see below)

1131-1134 Rukn ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Abū Ṭalib Ṭughrīl II, Ninth Seljuq Sultan, born 1109. He succeeded his brother Maḥmūd II as ruler of Iraq in 1131. He was always subservient to his uncle Sanjar and never really managed to establish his control over even the western regions of the Seljuq realm. Given that the eastern portion of the empire died with Sanjar, while the western portion continued to eke out an existence for several decades, he is usually counted among the Sultans. He died in Hamadan in 1134.

After his death, his wife remarried to Ildiguz, the Atabeg of Azerbaijan, by then the most powerful man in the kingdom and had further children by him.

• 1) Rukn ad-Dunyā wa'd-Dīn Arslan, Fourteenth Seljuq Sultan (see below)

• 2) Muḥammad, who seems to have been supported by Inanj of Rayy as a rival sultan in 1160, briefly holding Isfahan and was still ruling in Yazd and Isfahan in the late 1170s, when he was put down by the Atabeg of Azerbaijan.