Goodbye to the Türkmens? The Military Role of Nomads in Iran after the Saljūq Conquest

NOMADEN UND SESSHAFTE

Sonderforschungsbereich Differenz und IntegrationWechselwirkungen zwischen nomadischen und sesshaften Lebensformen

in Zivilisationen der Alten Welt

Herausgegeben im Auftrag des SFBvon Jörg Gertel, Stefan Leder, Jürgen Paul und Bernhard Streck

BAND 18

WIESBADEN 2015DR. LUDWIG REICHERT VERLAG

NuS_Franz_NMP_Titelei.indd 2 30.03.15 08:34

Nomad Military Power in Iran and Adjacent Areas in the Islamic Period

WIESBADEN 2015DR. LUDWIG REICHERT VERLAG

Edited by Kurt Franz and Wolfgang Holzwarth

NuS_Franz_NMP_Titelei.indd 3 30.03.15 08:34

Goodbye to the Türkmens? The Military Role of Nomads in Iran after the

Saljūq Conquest

David Durand-Guédy

Like many later Turko-Mongol dynasties down to the Qājārs, the Saljūqs took power as leaders of nomads, but very soon undertook a process of state-building which led to the replacement of these nomadic elements, the Türkmens, by a stand-ing army whose backbone was composed of military slaves (mamlūks). Not sur-prisingly scholarship has focused so far on the most striking features of this new standing army, like the recruitment and organisation of the mamlūks, or its fund-ing through the assignment of tax revenues and of land (the iqṭāʿ system).1 Con-versely, the military role of the Türkmens after the conquest has been largely over-looked. Existing research, when not completely ignoring the issue, evokes the “special relationship” between the Saljūqs and the Türkmens and mentions the role of the latter as “tribal auxiliaries” (to quote Lambton) but without considering this in any detail.2 The elusive quality of the sources has a lot to do with this lack of in-

This article was written in 2010 while I was a member of Collaborative Research Centre ‘Differ-

ence and Integration’ (SFB 586) at the Universities of Halle-Wittenberg and Leipzig and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. My thanks to Jürgen Paul for reading an earlier version of this draft and to Edmund Bosworth and Peter Golden for answering my queries.

1 On the recruitment of the mamlūks by the Saljūqs, see above all Ayalon, “Mamlūks of the Sel-juks,” and id., Eunuchs, 144–65. See also Sanaullah, Decline, 18–35 (chapter 2 “The constitution of the armed force”); Lambton, Continuity, 242–47; Bosworth, “Ghulām. ii.,” EI2, 2:1083. On the iqṭāʿ system, see Cahen, “L’évolution de l’iqṭāʿ,” 38–44; id., Pre-Ottoman Turkey, 38–40; Lamb-ton, “The Evolution of the iqṭāʿ,” 46–48; Bosworth, “Barbarian Incursions,” 13–14.

2 The most detailed discussion of “tribal auxiliaries” in Saljūq warfare in a Western European lan-guage is only a few lines long: see Lambton, “Internal Structure,” 228–29 (repeated in ead., Conti-nuity, 6 and 9, and ead., “Īlāt,” EI2, 4:1099). In the encyclopedias, the relevant notices are silent as to the use of nomads in warfare after the Saljūq conquest (see Kafesoğlu, “Selçuklular,” İA; Ca-hen, “Ghuzz,” EI2; Bosworth, “Ḡozz. ii.,” EIr and id., “Saldjūḳids. i.–v.,” EI2; Kellner-Heinkele, “Türkmen,” EI2). Or they make only brief mention thereof (e.g. Bosworth, “Saldjūḳids. iii.,” EI2, 8:942: after the death of Malikshāh “the internecine warfare, affecting western Persia in particular, inevitably affected the personal authority of the contenders, who had to seek military support from the great slave commanders of the army and from the Türkmen begs and their personal fol-lowings”). Sanaullah and Luther, the authors of the most detailed monographs dealing with the

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terest. But other factors, such as the conception scholars had of the Saljūq state, may also have been instrumental. The aim of this article is to focus on the military role by nomadic pastoralists in Saljūq warfare after the conquest, and to ask the following questions: On what occasions did they intervene? How and why? And eventually what does it tell us on the Saljūqs themselves? I have chosen to concen-trate on western Iran, the area most documented and also the least investigated.3

1. Preliminaries

All research on nomads in Saljūq Iran faces the problem of sources. First of all, be-cause the historical sources concentrate primarily on state actors (the king, his ar-my and his government) and secondly, the urban actors.4 The nomadic pastoralists, as well as the sedentary farmers, are notable by their absence from texts that were composed by city-dwellers. That said, the classic chronicles of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī (completed c. 571/1175-6), ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī (finished in 579/1183), Rāwandī (finished in 601/1204-5), Ibn al-Athīr (finished in 628/1230-1) and Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 654/1256) remain our most useful sources to look for the no-mads after the Saljūq conquest.

In addition to the lack of concern for the nomads in our sources, another major problem is the way they are mentioned. In an insightful article based on the Tīmū-rid period, Jürgen Paul has shown how slippery the terminology about nomads in medieval chronicles is. Paying close attention to the context, he argues, is the only way to determine whether technical terms refer to the nomads or not.5 For exam-ple, in our sources, khayl usually keeps its generic sense of ‘army’, ‘cavalry’. Thus when the Saljūq vizier Anūshirwān b. Khālid (d. 533/1138) declared that he was helped by the arbāb al-dawlat min al-khayl to move to Baghdad, he probably means some great emirs and not Türkmen leaders.6 But when Abū Ḥāmid says that

history of western Iran in the sixth/twelfth century, do not consider the issue (see Luther, Politi-cal Transformation, 59). Cahen, in his article on the “tribus turques d’Asie Occidentale,” makes no particular reference to their military exploitation. In his carefully considered article on the transformation of armies made up of nomads into professional armies, Paul (“The State and the Military”) mentions the case of the Saljūqs but does not consider what happened to the Türkmens after the establishment of the professional army. The most important study on the military role of the Türkmens during the period under discussion here is still Sümer, Oğuzlar (see 133–61 and esp. 150–56 for western Iran).

3 For an overview on the Türkmens after the conquest, see first Sümer, Oğuzlar, summed up in his “Oğuzlar,” DİA. On Central Asia and Khurāsān: Barthold, Turkestan; Lambton, “Saljūq Ghuzz Settlement;” Köymen, İkinci imparatorluk devri, esp. 430–45; Ayan, Oğuz İsyanı; Paul, “The Role of Ḫwārazm.” On northern Āẕarbayjān: ʿAzīzzāda, Dasht-i Mughān, 111–26. On Anatolia and Armenia: Turan, Doğu Anadolu Türk Devletleri Târihi; Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey; Ocak, Baba Resul. On Syria: Mouton, Damas, 243; Eddé, Alep, 237 and 509–11.

4 See the introductory remarks of Lambton, “Saljūq Ghuzz Settlement,” 107–8. 5 See Paul, “Terms for Nomads.” 6 See al-Bundārī, Zubda, 143, l. 18.

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Ṭoghrıl III “headed for Āẕarbayjān and went with the khayl of ʿIzz al-Dīn [b.] Qıpchāq,” here the word refers to the nomads since we know that ʿIzz al-Dīn [b.] Qıpchāq was the leader of the Yıwa, one of the Oghuz tribes which occupied the Zagros mountains.7 The term ʿashīra, which denotes a tribal organisation, appears a few times in connection with a nomadic context, but rarely.8

7 Abū Ḥāmid, Dhayl, 433, l. 10 (sulṭān bā jamʿī az khawāṣṣ rūy bi Āẕarbayjān nihād, dar miyān-i

khayl-i ʿIzz al-Dīn Qıpchāq raft). On the Yıwa, see below, note 85. 8 A case in point is the arrival at Alp Arslān’s court of a Türkmen emir “accompanied by a great

host of his clansmen (wa-maʿahu min ʿashīratihi khalq kathīr),” see Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:37. (For quotations from Ibn al-Athīr’s Kamīl and from the Akhbār al-dawla al-saljūqiyya, I follow the renderings of Richards and Bosworth unless mentioned otherwise. The different rendering ‘Turkomans’, ‘Turkmen’, etc., have been edited to follow the use adopted in this article, i.e. Türk-mens. I do not however indicate the page number since both translations already include refer-ence to the pagination of the Arabic edition.) On the issue of ‘tribalism’ in early Saljūq politics, see Peacock, Early Seljūq History, 47–71 and Durand-Guédy, “The Türkmen-Saljūq Relation-ship,” esp. 32–33, 46.

Table 1 The Saljūq and Eldigüzid families

Mīkāʾīl

Ṭoghrıl Beg (d. 455/1063)

Chaghrı (d. 452/1060)

Alp Arslān(d. 465/1073)

Amīr Yāqūtī Qāwurt (d. 466/1074)

Malikshāh(d. 485/1092)

Ismāʿīl (d. 486/1093)

Berk Yāruq (d. 498/1105)

Muḥammad(d. 511/1118)

Sanjar (d. 552/1157)

Maḥmūd (d. 525/1131)

Masʿūd (d. 547/1152)

Sulaymān (d. 556/1161)

Ṭoghrıl II(d. 529/1134)

∞ ♀ ∞ Eldigüz Saljūqshāh

Dāwūd (d. 539/ 1144-5)

Muḥammad II (d. 554/1159)

Malikshāh III(d. 555/1160)

Arslān (d. 571/1176)

Muḥammad Pahlawān

(d. 581/1186)

Qızıl Arslān(d. 587/1191)

Ṭoghrıl III(d. 590/1194)

Abū Bakr (d. 607/1210)

Amīr-i Amīrān ʿUmar

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The word almost exclusively used to refer to the Turkic nomadic pastoralists in western Iran after the conquest is Turkamān. Technically it may have first referred to the “Islamicized Turkic populations.”9 Sources speak also of Ghuzz in reference to the Oghuz, a nomadic group that was occupying the steppes east of the Caspian Sea, and from which came most of the followers of the Saljūqs. Therefore in a Sal-jūq context, Turkamān/Türkmens and Ghuzz/Oghuz are interchangeable in the sources.10 Which one of these terms is used depends on the author: Bayhaqī (d. 470/1077) never uses the term Ghuzz in his history of the reign of Masʿūd of Ghazna (421–432/1030–40), while it occurs repeatedly in the writing of Ibn al-Athīr, the other great source for the emergence of the Saljūq state.11

As far as warfare is concerned, ‘Türkmens’ stands in contrast to several other technical terms referring to professional soldiers. The most common are mamlūk and ghulām which both mean slave. Khaylbāshiyya, literally ‘head of the cavalry’, may have been reserved for non-Türkmen military commanders, like in this pas-sage describing the rebellion of al-Basāsīrī in Baghdad (451/1059):

when the homes of Anūshirwān and of [Ṭoghrıl Beg’s vizier] ʿAmīd al-Mulk were plundered, [Ṭoghrıl Beg’s wife] had the khaylbāshiyya, the Türkmens and the Sultan’s entourage (ḥāshiya) come.12

The term amīr (‘commander’) however is clearly generic: nomadic leaders are usu-ally called ‘begs’, but they can also be termed amīr. Thus, at the end of the Saljūq dynasty, Ẓahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī refers to the leaders of the Oghuz living in east-ern Khurāsān as “great amīrs (umarā-yi buzurg).”13

The term turk (pl., atrāk) is more problematic. In the part of his chronicle deal-ing with the emergence of the Saljūq state Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī seems to distinguish ‘Türkmens’ from atrāk on several occasions. For example in 450/1058, when the emirs ʿUmar and Inānch left Baghdad in protest, “they were followed by all the Türkmens and atrāk who were then in Baghdad.”14 The same author tells us that in 465/1073, the army of Malikshāh was made up of “Türkmens, Bedouins (ʿArab), atrāk and military slaves (ghulāms).”15 According to Lambton, atrāk refers to

9 Golden, Introduction, 212. See also id., “Ḡozz. i.,” EIr. See also Kafesoğlu, “Türkmen adı;”

Cahen, “Ghuzz,” EI2, 2:1108; id., Pre-Ottoman Turkey, 8. 10 See Sümer, Oğuzlar, 127. The subtitle of Sümer’s book is in fact Türkmenler. See also Peacock,

Early Seljūq History, 48–53. 11 In Ibn al-Athīr’s Kāmil, the term Ghuzz disappears after the Saljūq conquest of Iran, reappears

with reference to the situation in Khurāsān from 538/1143 on, and then completely disappears while the word Turkamān continues to be used.

12 Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 34, l. 2. The term khaylbāshiyya is also to be found in the works of a contemporary of Malikshāh, the Isfahani writer Mufaḍḍal al-Māfarrūkhī in reference to Alp Arslān’s army (see al-Māfarrūkhī, Maḥāsin, 102, tr. in Durand-Guédy, Iranian Elites, 110).

13 Ẓahīr al-Dīn, Saljūq-nāma, 61. See also Akhbār, 177 (the leader of the Yıwa is called “the amīr Maḥmūd b. Berchem al-Īwāʾī”). On the term ‘beg’, see Bowen, “Beg,” EI2.

14 Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 33, l. 8. For this part, Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī has used contemporary texts. 15 Ibid., 161, l. 9. See also ibid., 212, l. 4: in 474/1082, for the funeral ceremonies for Malikshāh’s

son, “Türkmens and atrāk gathered in the capital [Isfahan].”


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“slaves or freedmen of Turkic origin.”16 In other words, it would refer to non-nomadic Turkic soldiers as opposed to the (nomadic) Türkmens. This explanation is probably generally valid, but not always. Concerning one of Ibrāhīm Yınāl’s re-volts, Ibn al-Athīr uses the term atrāk to mean Türkmens.17 It is also the case in Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, in the Akhbār al-dawla al-saljūqiyya, and in Āqsarāyī’s chroni-cle of the Saljūqs of Anatolia.18 It makes it clear that the meanings of these terms are not as obvious as they might appear.19

2. State Building and Marginalisation of the Türkmens

Before the Reign of Malikshāh

Before the reign of Malikshāh (r. 465–485/1072–92), the Türkmens were omni-present in western Iran. In 431/1040, Ṭoghrıl Beg’s definitive conquest of Nīshā-pūr and his recognition by the Caliph confirmed the military power of the Türk-mens after a half century of struggle that had pitted them against the Qarakhānids and the Ghaznavids in the far east of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate. Although Ṭoghrıl Beg would soon acquire slave soldiers (apparently around 447/1055), his army nonetheless remained primarily a Türkmen one and was identified as such.20 When he approached Baghdad in 448/1056, the inhabitants asked one local leader: “Are these not the same Ghuzz that we fought in 435 [1043-4]?” (referring to the ʿIrāq-iyya Türkmens who had arrived in western Iraq and Mesopotamia before Ṭoghrıl Beg).21

Ṭoghrıl Beg’s nephew and successor, Alp Arslān (d. 465/1072), increased the slave element in the army and clearly favoured it, a notable case being the battle of Manzikert against the Byzantines: when Byzantium attacked,

16 Lambton, Continuity, 4. 17 See Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 9:645: “many atrāk had united to Ibrāhīm (kāna Ibrāhīm qad ijtamaʿa

maʿahu kathīr min al-atrāk).” We are sure that these atrāk are Türkmens because Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, whose account appears to be based on the same source as Ibn al-Athīr, has Turkamān. See Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 31–32 “Then Ibrāhīm Yınāl arrived after [Ṭoghrıl Beg] at the camp of the Türkmens and made an alliance with them (thumma waṣala Ibrāhīm Īnāl baʿdahu ilā ḥilal al-Turkamān fa-ḥalafahum).”

18 See Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 3, l. 14: al-atrāk (example quoted by Peacock, Early Seljūq History, 96, note 167). Akhbār, 110: fī umam min al-Turk (see below, Table 2, year 531). Āqsarāyī, Musāmira, 71.

19 Peter Golden, to whom I asked the question, would see the term “Turk/atrak as generic – used loosely – referring to Turkic-speakers as a whole, perhaps other non-Oghuz groupings when paired with Turkmen” (e-mail of 23/7/2010).

20 For reference to Ṭoghrıl Beg’s mamlūks, see e.g. Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 29, ll. 5–6. The most famous of these slave eunuchs is Khumar-Tegīn al-Ṭughrāʾī, who was, notably, responsible for the campaign against al-Basāsīrī. On the role of the mamlūks in the service of the first Saljūqs, see Ayalon, “Mamlūks of the Seljuks” and id., Eunuchs, 144–62; Peacock, Early Seljūq History, 96–98. See also Shimizu, “Gawhar Āʾīn,” for the story of one individual mamlūk.

21 See Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 4, ll. 14–15.

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The sultan was with the scattered remnants of the army … he remained with around 4,000 ghulāms. He did not think it wise, despite that [small number of troops], that he should return to his lands nor did he assemble [all] his troops.22

Nevertheless, in some cases, Alp Arslān was also able to exploit the military poten-tial of the Türkmens amongst whom he had been brought up and whose way of life he shared largely. This collaboration is particularly obvious in the conquest of the southern Caucasian regions.23

As far as western Iran is concerned, there is no source that would enable us to draw up an accurate map of the Türkmen presence in the fifth/eleventh century. That presence is, however, attested by various pieces of information scattered through the sources. Before the capture of Baghdad, Türkmens were to be seen around the ‘Khurāsān road’, in Kurdistan (Dīnawar, Qarmīsīn/Kirmānshāh and Ḥulwān), a region that they had bloodily conquered under the command of Ṭogh-rıl Beg’s foster brother Ibrāhīm Yınāl.24 In the following decades, they were prob-ably already very numerous in Āẕarbayjān, from where they raided Christian terri-tories, and are clearly mentioned around the Rayy–Hamadān–Ḥulwān axis (i.e. in the Jibāl/ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam province, see Fig. 1).

Not only did the Türkmens occupy the very core of Saljūq power, they played a major role in all the revolts that shook the Saljūq state under the first three Saljūq Sultans: that of Ibrāhīm Yınāl against Ṭoghrıl Beg, that of Qutalmısh against his cousin Alp Arslān, and that of Qāwurt against his nephew Malikshāh (see Table 2, phase I).25 Each crisis triggered a race between the opponents to be the first to gain the support of the Türkmens. In the winter of 450/1058-9, Ṭoghrıl Beg left Bagh-

22 Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 8:260, ll. 22–24, tr. in Hillenbrand, Turkish Myth, 37. 23 Peacock (“Nomadic Society” and Early Seljūq History, 144–55) emphasises the convergent inter-

ests of the Sultan and the Türkmens (in particular the ʿIrāqiyya Türkmens). During the 456/1064 campaign of Alp Arslān, the military objective was clearly to gain control of the winter and summer pastures.

24 See Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:609 s.a. 447. Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 10:138, ll. 17–19, notes that in 534/1139-40 an earthquake in the region of Ḥulwān killed many Türkmens.

25 The main source on this period is Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī’s Mirʾāt. On the revolt of Ibrāhīm Yınāl, see al-Bundārī, Zubda, 15–17; Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 8:190 (but he speaks only of Ibrāhīm Yınāl’s great army – bi-jaysh ʿaẓīm – without mentioning the Türkmens); Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 9:639–40 and 645 s.a. 450 (Ibn al-Athīr uses the word atrāk to speak of Ibrāhīm Yınāl’s troops, see above, note 17); Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 31–50 passim. On Qutalmısh’s revolt, see al-Bundārī, Zubda, 28–29; Ibn al-Athīr; Kāmil, 10:36–37 s.a. 456; Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 110. On Qāwurt’s, see al-Bundārī, Zubda, 48–49; Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 8:277; Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:78–79 s.a. 465 (without any explicit reference to the Türkmens); Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 161. For secondary literature, see Bosworth, “Political and Dynastic History,” 44, 54, 58, 88–89; Sümer, Oğuzlar, 120–30 passim. Kafesoğlu (in his article “Selçuklular”) says nothing on the distance, tension or disaffection that was growing between the Saljūq state and the Türkmens. Neither does he place any emphasis on the Türkmen identity of the various revolts against the Sultan’s authority (on Ibrāhīm Yınāl’s revolt, see Kafesoğlu, “Selçuklular,” İA, 10:367, tr. 44; on that of Qutalmısh, ibid., 10:367–68, tr. 45; on that of Qāwurt, ibid., 10:363, tr. 38), while it is noted by other Turk-ish historians, like Turan and Köymen (see Özgudenli, “Formation of the Seljuk State Concept,” 264).


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dad in haste and headed for Jibāl “fearing that Ibrāhīm Yınāl [would] arrive before him at Hamadhān where were the camps of the Türkmens (ḥilal al-Turkamān).”26 But he came too late: Ibrāhīm Yınāl had already visited their camps and “had made them swear not to be reconciled with his brother, asking them not to go to Iraq nor to other places.” In exchange for their support, Ibrāhīm Yınāl promised “not to appoint any vizier contrary to their wishes.”27 In other words, the Türkmens con-verted their strategic position into political gains. The Türkmen presence in Jibāl was so strong that during that struggle Hamadān was “surrounded on all sides.”28 When Ibrāhīm Yınāl was finally defeated, Ṭoghrıl Beg killed “thousands of Türk-mens” along with him.29

In 456/1064, after the death of Ṭoghrıl Beg, the same race for the Türkmen en-campments of Jibāl took place. Qutalmısh rushed to Rayy, taking advantage of the fact that his cousin Alp Arslān was still in Khurāsān. Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī reports:

[Qutalmısh] went to the Türkmens and took up residence with them. He demanded troops from them (istajāsha30 bi-him). Their leaders (akbaruhum) went to meet him. Then he had a strong position, and all the corrupt joined him, and he left for Sāwa with fifty thousand horsemen.31

Alp Arslān’s vizier al-Kundurī attempted to oppose Qutalmısh with the mamlūks at his disposal, but was defeated and had to take refuge in Rayy, which was then surrounded by the Türkmens. Finally Qutalmısh and his Türkmens were defeated by Erdem, Alp Arslān’s general, who had arrived from Khurāsān.

The last event of that series took place in 465/1073. This time the race pitted Qāwurt, who had set out from Kirmān with a small force of only 2,000 horsemen, against his nephew Malikshāh who was in Khurāsān. At stake, as before, were the Türkmens who were, as the source explicitly states, “located between Rayy and Hamadān.”32 Malikshāh and his vizier Niẓām al-Mulk got there first and distribut-ed gold to the Türkmens so that they fought by his side. But despite that they abandoned their positions in the middle of the battle and started looting the belong ings of Malikshāh’s Kurdish and Bedouin troops.33 This battle confirmed in a very dramatic way what the previous decades had already shown. First, that the Türk-mens represented the most serious threat to the stability of the Saljūq state (one should remember that at that time the Ismāʿīlīs of Iran had not yet launched their general offensive). Secondly, that they were not reliable on the battlefield. Their de-

26 Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 31, ll. 17–18. 27 Ibid., 31–32. 28 Ibid., 32, l. 5. 29 Ibid., 50, l. 1. 30 The edition has istajāsa. I have not found this form in the dictionaries and I follow a suggestion

made to me by Jürgen Paul who proposed to read instead istajāsha (translated by Lane as “to demand armies,” but unlike here with direct object).

31 Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 110, ll. 17–19. 32 Ibid., 161, l. 4. 33 Al-Bundārī, Zubda, 48, ll. 9–14.

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fection did not prevent Malikshāh from winning the day, but he and his vizier were not to forget the lesson.

The Reign of Malikshāh

The marginalisation of the Türkmen nomads during Malikshāh’s reign took two aspects. First on a structural level, Malikshāh completed what his great-uncle Ṭoghrıl Beg had begun and his father Alp Arslān had carried on: the building up of a standing army formed by slaves and freedmen, some of them not even Turk, nor indeed Eurasian (African slaves would play a significant role in sixth/twelfth cen-tury Saljūq warfare).34 In the relevant chapter of his Siyar al-mulūk (a mirror for princes dedicated to Malikshāh), Niẓām al-Mulk emphasises the need to have a multi-ethnic army in order to promote the natural competition existing between the different constituent groups in the hour of battle. However, while Niẓām al-Mulk mentions Daylamis, Khurāsānīs, Georgians and Shabānkāraʾī Kurds as po-tential recruits, he significantly omits any reference to the Türkmens.35 These are instead the topic of another chapter which could be entitled ‘How to deal with your former allies when they are not useful anymore?’ The vizier acknowledges their role in the foundation of the Saljūq state, but given “the problems that they have since caused” (and here Niẓām al-Mulk is thinking of the revolts of Ibrāhīm Yınāl, Qutalmısh and Qāwurt), he sees their presence as problematic. In a much-quoted passage, Niẓām al-Mulk tries to work out what to do with them: he pro-poses that a thousand Türkmens should be maintained as ghulāms at the Sultan’s court, so that they would settle down and their aversion (nifrat) disappear. It is not clear whether Niẓām al-Mulk is speaking of an aversion to the dynasty or, as Darke has supposed, to “settled life.”36 We do not know to what extent Niẓām al-Mulk’s proposal corresponds to reality or whether, as is often the case in this source, he is propounding an ideal model. The only reference to Türkmens present in the capital Isfahan during the reign of Malikshāh is for the funerals of the Sultan’s

34 On the establishment of the standing army during Malikshāh’s reign, see Lambton, “Internal

Structure,” 228–31; ead., Continuity, 7–8, and more briefly Bosworth, “Saldjūḳids. iii.,” EI2, 8:941.

35 Niẓām al-Mulk, Siyar, 136–37, tr. 100–1. 36 See ibid., 139, tr. 102: “They will settle down with other people … and cease to feel that aversion

[to settled life] with which they are naturally imbued.” This passage has been quoted by Bar-thold, “History,” 117; Bosworth, “Army. ii.,” EIr, 2:501; Lambton, Continuity, 9; Sümer, Oğu-zlar, 130; Kafesoğlu, “Selçuklular,” İA, 10:394, tr. 195; Peacock, “Nomadic Society,” 206; Du-rand-Guédy, Iranian Elites, 89. Bosworth, “Saldjūḳids. iii.,” EI2, 8:941, probably has the same passage in mind when he speaks of the “alienation” of the Türkmens from the dynasty from the reign of Malikshāh on: “the Turkmens established in those northern and eastern parts of Persia suitable for pastoral nomadism or transhumance probably now began to feel a certain alienation from what was going on in the Sultans’ main centres in the west at Hamadhān and Isfahan.”


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Fig. 1 Pastoral nomads in western Iran in the sixth/twelfth century

son and heir, but they may have been nomad leaders who arrived at the royal camp for this occasion.37

The marginalisation of the Türkmens took another aspect. After the events of 465–466/1073–74, Türkmens are no longer mentioned in the centre of Jibāl. As it is

37 See Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 212, ll. 4–5: in 474/1082, “Türkmens and atrāk gathered in the cap-

ital (dār al-mamlaka) on the death of prince Dāwūd [the son of Malikshāh] and cut their hair.”

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son and heir, but they may have been nomad leaders who arrived at the royal camp for this occasion.37

The marginalisation of the Türkmens took another aspect. After the events of 465–466/1073–74, Türkmens are no longer mentioned in the centre of Jibāl. As it is shown in Table 2, subsequent sources only mention them on the western side of the Zagros, northern Āẕarbayjān, and eastern Anatolia (see also Fig. 1).38

While no source says as much, it seems clear that Malikshāh must have, one way or another, removed the Türkmen nomads who were staying “between Rayy and Hamadān.” We can probably link that displacement with the violent confron-tations attested in the sources between Türkmens and Kurds in eastern Iraq at the end of the fifth/eleventh century.39 These facts fit very well with the ‘classical’ the-ory of an organised diversion of the Türkmens towards the edges of the Saljūq Em-pire (a theory advanced by Barthold and accepted by Cahen).40 Peacock has criti-cised this theory and insisted on links between the Saljūqs and the Türkmens. However, both positions are not irreconcilable. Such a deliberate moving was not contradictory with a continuing collaboration: while the Türkmens were undesira-

37 See Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 212, ll. 4–5: in 474/1082, “Türkmens and atrāk gathered in the cap-

ital (dār al-mamlaka) on the death of prince Dāwūd [the son of Malikshāh] and cut their hair.” 38 Stern (“Inscriptions,” 26.) considers that the famous towers of Kharraqān, erected south of Qaz-

wīn in 460/1067-8 and 486/1093-4, were funerary towers of “chiefs” of “some Turkmen tribe” using this “grazing territory.” It would mean that there were still Türkmens in Jibāl after the death of Malikshāh. However Stern (himself a specialist of the Ismāʿīlīs) was not so sure about the identity of those buried in Kharraqān, except that they were Turks (the onomastic in the in-scription leaves no doubt about that). Indeed he speaks also of them as “members of the Seljūq aristocracy.” It seems to me very doubtful that they had been indeed Türkmen tribal ‘chiefs’. Be-cause if this was true, we wonder why these nomads are absent from the very detailed account of the long conflict between Malikshāh’s sons for control of the Sultanate, in the course of which the protagonists (in particular Berk Yāruq) had no hesitation in mobilising Türkmens in other regions much further from the centre of Saljūq power (see below). On the inscriptions of Khar-raqān, see also Blair, Monumental Inscriptions, 134–36, 172–73.

39 In 495/1101-2, Qarābilī (or Qarābellī, see Sümer, Șahıs adları, 2:68), a leader of the Salghur Tü-rkmens, entered the lands of the Surkhāb Kurds to pasture his flocks, setting off violent clashes in which the Kurds came off second-best: “The Türkmens took control of the all the lands of Surkhāb b. Badr, apart from Daqūqā and Shahrazūr” (Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:346–47 s.a. 495). Three years later, the sources speak of disturbances caused by the Türkmens on the Khurāsān road (Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:395 s.a. 498). On these events see also Sanaullah, Decline, 34–35; Cahen, “Tribus turques,” 180–81; Sümer, Oğuzlar, 150–51.

40 See Barthold, “History,” 117; Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey, 23, 26. See also Kafesoğlu, “Selçuk-lular,” İA, 10:396, tr. 99 (“The Seljuk attempt to direct these Turkmen systematically toward their eastern borders thus clearly became the second distinguishing characteristic of Seljuk di-plomacy”); Koca, “Oghuz Tribe,” 137. The idea of an organised plan is taken up again by Bos-worth, “Ḡozz. ii.,” EIr, 11:186. Lambton, “Īlāt,” EI2, 4:1099, does not seem to accept it and simply says that after the establishment of the professional army, “considerable bodies of Ghuzz … were … still to be found in the country [i.e. Iran], although the general tendency was for them to move in a westerly direction towards Syria and Asia Minor.” Peacock insists on the contrary on the help the Saljūqs provided to the Türkmens, but deals only with the period prior to the death of Alp Arslān.


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ble in the heart of the plateau, they were still useful for the purpose of extending the western boundaries of the Saljūq Empire, alongside the professional army. Malikshāh thus sent Artuq (of the Döger tribe) and his Türkmens to help Ibn Jahīr to conquer Diyār Bakr in 477/1084-5.41 Likewise Malikshāh’s brother, Tutush, conquered Damascus with Türkmen troops.42 In Syria and northern Mesopotamia, there was no downside to using these troops: first, it was very cheap (as the no-mads did not want any salary, only the spoils of war), second, it ensured good rela-tions between the Saljūq family and their first followers. The use of Türkmen troops in Saljūq warfare is thus very different depending on the region under con-sideration.

After the Reign of Malikshāh

The reasons that had impelled the first Saljūqs to replace the Türkmens with mili-tary slaves still had their relevance in later decades. Although cheap, the use of no-mad troops required continuous negotiations that were liable to put the conduct of the war at risk. “Either you let us plunder, or we leave you,” Ṭoghrıl Beg is said to have been told by his troops before Mosul in 449/1057, putting in jeopardy his plans to establish himself as a legitimate and responsible ruler.43 Furthermore, the intervention of the Türkmens did not by any means guarantee victory, far from it. The contrast between the large size of some armies with a strong nomadic identity and their meagre military record is striking: both Qutalmısh and Tutush may have led more than 50,000 horses, but their expeditions ended in disaster. When the sources mention the intervention of nomads, we more often see them looting than actually fighting. And when they do fight, they are quick to flee or to change sides, as in 465/1073 at the battle between Malikshāh and Qāwurt, or 584/1188 at the battle between the ʿAbbāsid army and the Sultan Ṭoghrıl III.44 There was, howev-er, nothing predictable about the attitude of the nomadic warriors: there are also examples of troops remaining loyal contrary to all expectations. In 514/1120-1, the Qıpchāq nomads that the Georgians had recruited did not go over to the Saljūq army, which also counted Türkmen contingents, as the Sultan Ṭoghrıl II’s emirs had expected.45

41 Īlghāzī b. Artuq (d. 516/1122), notes Claude Cahen, was clearly still a nomadic chief: “Ilġāzī’s

strength is that of a nomad chief, his great personal clientele of Turcomans that he must round up for each campaign” (Cahen, “Diyār Bakr,” 237).

42 See Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:111; Cahen, “Première pénétration,” 37–38; El-Azhari, Saljūqs of Syria, 48.

43 Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 16, ll. 9–11. 44 Refer to Table 2 for bibliographical reference. 45 See Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:567 s.a. 514. On the Qıpchāqs, see Golden, “Qıpčaqs,” 148. Similar-

ly, in 493/1100, the Türkmen troops in Sanjar’s service in Khurāsān refused to be bribed by Ḥabashī, the Chief Justiciar (amīr-i dād ), who offered them a large sum of money in exchange for his freedom. See Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:296–98 s.a. 493.

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Mobilising nomads could also take time, especially if the numbers were large. This is best shown by the last attempts made by the Khwārazmshāh Jalāl al-Dīn (d. 628/1231) to resist the Mongols in northwestern Iran. After a crushing defeat on the plain of Mughān in 628/1230-1, an Āẕarbayjāni castellan with whom he had taken refuge advised the Khwārazmshāh to go to Arrān, where he could make use of the mountainous, wooded terrain to escape his pursuers, and also recruit Türk-mens “who, joined together, would form a mass comparable to a band of ants or a swarm of locusts.” His secretary Nasawī recounts how he was sent to win over the Türkmen begs one by one:

I went to successive groups of khans, emirs and Türkmen horsemen; I sent them to the Sultan and as soon as I had sent one of them on, I went to the mountains to seek an-other. Some days later, when I returned to the Sultan I saw that the army had regained its usual brilliant appearance and that thousands of men were moving about in the camp.46

Interestingly, Jalāl al-Dīn entrusted this delicate mission to his Iranian secretary ra-ther than to one of his emirs. It may be because of the strained relations between the slave emirs and the Türkmens. The Saljūq-nāma recalls that the ill-fated war that pitted Sanjar against the Türkmens of eastern Khurāsān was started at the in-stigation of a brutal mamlūk – a fact that the Khwārazmshāh certainly remem-bered.47

There were also tactical problems. Significantly, when he describes the war be-tween Sanjar and the Türkmens, ʿImād al-Dīn speaks of a “Türkmen manner of fighting (rasm al-qitāl al-Turkamān).”48 He does not elaborate, but this raises a question as to how compatible these two modes of warfare may have been. The sources do not enable us to give a definite answer. In the description of the military operations, the focus is on the mamlūks and even when ‘tribal auxiliaries’ are men-tioned the Türkmens remain invisible. For example, Ibn al-Athīr reports that in 493/1099-1100, Berk Yāruq mobilised Türkmens to confront his brother Muḥam-mad. But in the detailed description of the deployment of both armies before the battle, only the mamlūks, the Bedouin and the Kurds are mentioned.49 the Türk-mens had deserted en route? Or that they were placed under mamlūk command (and therefore do not appear in the order of battle)? Or indeed, that their link with the rest of the army was so weak that the sources do not bother to take them into

46 Nasawī, Sīra, 230, tr. 383. 47 See Ẓahīr al-Dīn, Saljūq-nāma, 60–63. 48 Al-Bundārī, Zubda, 283, l. 3. 49 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:296 s.a. 493, says that the emir Kürbughā commanded the left wing of

Berk Yāruq’s army, while the right wing was led by the emir Gawhar Āʾīn supported by ʿIzz al-Dawla b. Ṣadaqa’s Arabs and Surkhāb b. Badr’s Kurds; the Sultan and his vizier occupied the centre. We have other examples in which an army’s order of battle is given without the ‘tribal auxiliaries’ being mentioned, like the armies led by Eldigüz against the Georgians in 561/1165-6 (see Akhbār, 160–1), or by Masʿūd al-Bilālī against Baghdad in 549/1155 (see al-Bundārī, Zubda, 238).


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Table 2 Mobilisation of Türkmens by or against the Saljūqs in western Iran (* or near Baghdad) between 443/1051 and 590/1194

Phase Year (AH)

Türkmens gathered by

Origin (and number) of

the Türkmen troops

Result of the campaign or

battle

Opponent Source(s)

I (before Malik-shāh)

450 Ibrāhīm Yınāl

near Hama-dān

defeat Ṭoghrıl Beg Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 31–32, 50

456 Qutalmısh near Rayy (5,000 horse)

defeat Alp Arslān Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 110, ll. 17–19

465 Malikshāh “between Rayy and Hamadān”

victory (de-spite the Tü-rkmens’ be-trayal)

Qāwurt Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 161, l. 4

II (after

Malik-shāh)

486 Ismāʿīl b. Yāqūtī

Āẕarbayjān (thousands of horse)

defeat Berk Yāruq Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:224 s.a. 486

487 Tutush Syria and probably Āẕarbayjān (50,000 horse)

defeat Berk Yāruq al-Bundārī, Zubda, 84, l. 12

493 Berk Yāruq eastern Iraq (region of Shahrazūr)

defeat Muḥammad b. Malikshāh

Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:294 s.a. 493

513 Sanjar probably Central Asia (min kuffār al-Turk ulūf )

victory Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad

Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 9:205, l. 21; Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt/Gh., 676

514

Georgians northern Caucasus (Qıpchāqs)

victory Ṭoghrıl II Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:567 s.a. 514

514 Ṭoghrıl II probably Mughān

defeat Georgians Ibn al-Qalā-nisī, Dhayl, 205, tr. 155–56

526 Masʿūd Kurdistan (emir Qıpchāq, 10,000 horse)

skirmishes* Saljūq Shāh Ibn al-Athīr, Bāhir, 77–78

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Phase Year (AH)



the Türkmen troops


battle

Opponent Source(s)

II (after

Malik-shāh,

cont’d)

530 Dāwūd b. Maḥmūd

Khūzistān victory Masʿūd and Saljūq Shāh


531 emir Mengubars

Fārs (umam min al-Turk)

not conclu-sive

Masʿūd Akhbār, 110

532 Dāwūd b. Maḥmūd

Āẕarbayjān (no battle fought)

the Byzan-tine emperor at Aleppo

Ibn al-Azraq, Taʾrīkh, 180, tr. 95

544 emir Albuqash and Malikshāh b. Maḥmūd

probably eastern Iraq (khalq kathīr min al-Turkamān)

?* Caliph al-Muqtafī

Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 10:137, l. 23.

549 emir Masʿūd al-Bilālī

eastern Iraq (30,000 horse)

defeat* Caliph al-Muqtafī

al-Bundārī, Zubda, 236, ll. 15–16; id., 238, ll. 7–9; Akhbār, 131

553 Malikshāh b. Maḥmūd

Lurs (?) (al-Akrād al-Lar) from Khūzistān

victory Ay-Doghū b. Kushdo-ghān alias Shumla


561 Atabeg Eld-igüz and Arslān

Mughān victory Georgians Akhbār, 159

573 Malikshāh b. Maḥmūd’s son

Khūzistān defeat Caliph al-Mustaḍīʾ


585 Ṭoghrıl III western Āẕarbayjān, eastern Iraq (region of Shahrazūr) (Ḥasan-i Qıpchāq, 10,000 horse)

(no battle fought, but plunder in western Āẕarbayjān)

Qızıl Arslān al-Bundārī, Zubda, 302; Akhbār, 178–79; Abū Ḥāmid, Dhayl, 433, ll. 9–11

II.bis (the

last ten years)

584 Caliph al-Nāṣir

eastern Iraq (Yıwa Oghuz)

defeat (be-cause the Türkmens changed sides)

Ṭoghrıl III Akhbār, 177; Rāwandī, Rāḥat, 345–46


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Phase Year (AH)



the Türkmen troops


battle

Opponent Source(s)

II.bis (the

last ten years,

cont’d)

585 Qızıl Arslān Āẕarbayjān (Bardān, possibly a nomadic group)

(no battle fought)

Ṭoghrıl III Rāwandī, Rāḥat, 356, ll. 2–5

587 Amīr-i Amīrān b. Pahlawān

Mughān victory Abū Bakr b. Pahlawān

Akhbār, 186

591 emirs of Jibāl

eastern Iraq (?) (Yıwa)

(no battle fought)

Khwārazmi-ans (Yūnus Khān)

Rāwandī, Rāḥat, 377, l. 11

account? We cannot tell. Saljūq warfare, which relied on the use of cavalry, would appear to have had everything to gain by using Türkmen contingents. But if the Türkmens were fine horsemen, they were also pastoralists and could not leave their flocks unattended for long. They could intervene therefore in two ways: as a task force composed only of horsemen, or as the entire nomadic group, with families and flocks. The first option (termed īlghār in post-Mongol contexts) was naturally tactically preferable; on the other hand, Türkmen horsemen could not stay away from their families and flocks indefinitely.50 In this perspective, it is possible that the apparently inept way Tutush conducted his campaign in Iran after the double victory over his nephew Berk Yāruq was due to the (nomadic) composition of his army. Indeed the sources tell us that for unexplained reasons, Tutush, having wiped out all his rivals, suddenly halted his campaign for several months, thus giv-ing his defeated, sick and forlorn adversary the opportunity to rebuild his forces and eventually defeat him:

From the defeat by his uncle to his recovery and departure from Isfahan four months had past without his uncle making a move or doing anything. Had he attacked him when he was ill or during the illness of his brother, he would have conquered all the lands.51

Did the Türkmens who accompanied Tutush go back to their pastures during this period of time? This is a possibility. In most of the cases listed in Table 2, the Tü-rkmens intervened probably as a task force of the īlghār type following the prince. We have only one example of the participation of a whole nomadic group. During

50 My thanks to Jürgen Paul for his explanation on this subject. See Doerfer, Türkische und Mon-

golische Elemente im Neupersischen, 1:193, no. 70. See also Paul, “Terms for Nomads,” 454, on the nomadic troops following the Aq Qoyunlu leader Uzun Ḥasan.

51 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:245 s.a. 488.

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the campaign against Baghdad in 549/1155, Masʿūd al-Bilālī and several of the Sul-tan’s emirs arrived at the western foothills of the Zagros, and they “pushed the Tü-rkmens before them with their families and their flocks.”52 Ibn al-Jawzī estimates their numbers at twelve thousand. During the battle near Baghdad, the Saljūq emirs deliberately drove the Türkmens’ herds onto the battlefield so as to bring about a state of chaos that would allow them to retreat safely.53 In many cases it appears that the benefit of nomadic contingents lay above all in their capacity for sowing chaos. This disruptive effect appears clearly during Eldigüz’s campaign in Georgian territory in 561/1165-654 and also during the struggle of Ṭoghrıl III’s against the Atabeg of Āẕarbayjān in 585/1189.55

For all these reasons, even while the Saljūq Sultanate was undermined by an ir-reversible crisis of authority, its military organization remained unrivalled. The cri-sis that shook western Iran after the death of Malikshāh in 485/1092, and then in-tensified after the death of Muḥammad in 511/1118, had enabled some of the most powerful and capable emirs to set up their own autonomous principalities. Some of these emirs were freed slaves (like the Atabegs of Āẕarbayjān, the Zengids at Mo-sul); others were Türkmen leaders. Sonqur b. Mawdūd (d. 556/1161), founder of the Salghurid dynasty in Fārs, was from the Salghur, an Oghuz tribe present in the Kūhgīlūya Mountains, between Fārs and Luristān. Ay-Doghū b. Kushdoghān (d. 570/1174-5), alias Shumla, was from the Afshār tribe (another sub-groupings of the Oghuz which would play a major role in the following centuries). With the help of the Türkmens of the western Zagros, Shumla took control of Khūzistān in 550/1155-6.56 Zayn al-Dīn b. Beg-Tegīn, a Türkmen commander in the service of the Zengids of Mosul, for his part took control of the Irbil region and founded the ephemeral dynasty of the Beg-Tegīnids.57 Whatever the identity of these state-founding emirs (freed slaves or Türkmen begs), it seems that they all set out to re-produce in miniature the Saljūq state model: a state ruled by a Turkic aristocracy, assisted by Iranian secretaries, financed by commercial and agricultural revenue and defended by a slave army owning land grants (iqṭāʿ). Apparently the states founded by the Türkmen begs, such as Sonqur and Shumla, were no exception to

52 Al-Bundārī, Zubda, 236, ll. 15–16 (sāqū bayn aydayhim al-Turkamān bi-buyūtihim wa-

mawāshīhim wa-ahālīhim wa-ḥawāshihim). See also Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 10:156, l. 23. Ac-cording to Ibn al-Jawzī, a “great number of Türkmens” joined Masʿūd al-Bilālī when the latter came to the Foothills region (al-Liḥf ) to join forces with the emir Alp Qush’s. The text does not indicate whether these Türkmens owed their allegiance to Alp Qush. A modified and abridged version of this account also appears in Akhbār, 131. On these events, see Luther, Political Trans-formation, 53–63.

53 Al-Bundārī, Zubda, 238, ll. 7–9. 54 Akhbār, 161. 55 Ibid., 178–79. 56 See Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 11:201 s.a. 550 (kāna qad jamaʿa jamʿan kathīran min al-Turkamān wa-

sāra yurīdu Khūzistān). See also al-Bundārī, Zubda, 287. Shumla’s Afshār origin is noted by Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 11:424. See also Bosworth, “Salghurids,” EI2; Sümer, Oğuzlar, 333–34; Köprü-lü, “Afshār,” EI2; Zaryāb, “Sūgand-nāma.”

57 See Cahen, “Begteginids,” EI2.


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this.58 Although we must stay very prudent, these rulers seem to have become largely independent from the nomads – even though they had benefited from their military support initially – and in some cases opposed them (as in the case of Shumla, who fought the Türkmens around 568/1172-3).59

3. Who Availed of the Nomads?

While the general picture is the preeminence of professional soldiers in warfare in Western Iran, nomads still appear on the battle ground. Between the death of Ma-likshāh in 485/1092 and the end of the Saljūq dynasty in 590/1194, I have been able to identify 18 military campaigns (19 if we go up to 591) for which at least one source mentions the involvement of nomads in of from western Iran.

The first two cases are the campaign of Ismāʿīl b. Yāqūtī (d. 486/1093) and Tu-tush (d. 488/1095), two relatives of Malikshāh who both fought against his son Berk Yāruq. Their expeditions, one year apart, in the heart of the Iranian plateau can be considered as replays of the expeditions of Qutalmısh and Qāwurt in the previous decades (see above, section 2). Ismāʿīl b. Yāqūtī was Malikshāh’s cousin. He intervened in the succession struggle at the request of Malikshāh’s widow, the powerful Terken Khātūn, who was seeking support against her stepson Berk Yā-ruq.60 As for Tutush he was Malikshāh’s brother and claimed the Sultanate for himself after the death of Malikshāh.61 Both had their base in regions with a strong Türkmen presence: Āẕarbayjān in the case of Ismāʿīl b. Yāqūtī, Syria for Tutush. In both cases, the majority of their forces was probably made up by Türkmens. Ibn al-Athīr explicitly states that Ismāʿīl b. Yāqūtī “gathered a large host of Türkmens and others (jamaʿa khalqan kathīran min al-Turkamān wa-ghayrihim).”62

The Türkmen identity of Tutush’s troops is noted, for example, by ʿImād al-Dīn: “[Tutush] left Damascus and assembled a great number of Türkmens (qad ḥashada jumūʿ al-Turkamān).”63 It is also confirmed by other significant facts. While the Saljūq Sultans had always appointed a slave emir to the position of shiḥ-na of Baghdad, Tutush appointed a Türkmen emir from his entourage “accompa-

58 In the treaty (ʿahd-nāma) agreed to between Shumla’s son and the Atabeg of Āẕarbayjān

Muḥammad Pahlawān b. Eldigüz (in the name of the Sultan Ṭoghrıl III) in 573/1177-8, one of the clauses concerns the recognition of the iqṭāʿs and private property (milk) held by Shumla in the various parts of his territories. This document is to be found in Mukhtārāt, 206–11, and has been studied by Zaryāb, “Sūgand-nāma.”

59 See Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 11:424 s.a. 570. 60 On Ismāʿīl b. Yāqūtī’s expedition, see Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:224 s.a. 486; Ẓahīr al-Dīn, Saljūq-

nāma, 37, § 4. 61 On Tutush’s expedition, see Sanaullah, Decline, 86–94, who summarises the content of the vari-

ous sources (these are indicated by Bosworth, “Political and Dynastic History,” 107, note 1). 62 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:224 s.a. 486. 63 Al-Bundārī, Zubda, 84, l. 12.

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nied by a band of Türkmens.”64 We have already noted that the erratic strategy of Tutush might be explained by the return of the Türkmens to their pasture. Besides, the theft of cattle which Tutush’s troops were accused of may also be connected to their nomadic identity (although nomads were not the only ones to raid flocks).65 It may also be noted that, in his expedition seeking the Sultanate, Tutush looped through al-Jazīra, Diyār Bakr, Khilāṭ, and Āẕarbayjān, all areas where Türkmens were numerous.66

Another case of Türkmen involvement concerns jihād. In western Iran, after the marginalisation of the Ismāʿīlī threat, jihād was synonymous with war against the Georgians. When Muḥammad II became Sultan in 548/1153, Eldigüz, the powerful Emir of Arrān linked by marriage to the Saljūq family (see Table 1), of-fered him his services. “If the Sultan should choose to summon him in his presence he would come, but if the Sultan adjudged it preferable that he should remain there facing the enemy of Islam, he would remain.” Ḥusaynī adds that “a large force and huge mass of Türkmens had assembled round him.”67 The participation of these Türkmen troops in the war against the Georgians is explicitly mentioned for 561/1166 (the term jihād appears in a speech attributed to Eldigüz and made on this oc-casion). According to the Akhbār, “uncounted numbers of Türkmens had flocked to the Sultan [Arslan]’s side; no one could set limit to them because of their nu-merousness. They headed for the land of the Georgians.”68

The most common situation however concerns Türkmens mobilised by Saljūq princes trying to make up for their military inferiority. War was expensive due to the need to pay for the troops’ wages as well as their equipment and food. During the aforementioned campaign against the Georgians, the Emirs of Eldigüz spoke out:

We have expanded our wealth on our troops and men and have assembled an army of such as size that the wide land, open lands are too constricted for it …69

By contrast, the nomad fighter costs nothing as he was paid by the sharing out of booty: “In redistribution mode,” writes Paul, “the ruler is obliged to give what has been gained, much or not so much.”70 Several members of the Saljūq family had re-course to these cheap and available horsemen during their bid for the Sultanate for lack of other means. After the reign of Malikshāh, the first seems to have been Berk Yāruq. In 493/1100, abandoned by all his emirs, he fell back on the region of Shah-

64 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:244 s.a. 488. 65 Before Rayy “the Turks conducted themselves very badly … they stole the people’s herds” (Ibn

al-Qalānisī, Dhayl, 129, tr. 31). 66 See Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:233 s.a. 487. 67 Akhbār, 128. 68 Ibid., 159. The Türkmens involved would clearly have been in the main those who moved be-

tween the plain south of the Araxes (Dasht-i Mughān) and the slopes of Mount Sabalān. 69 Akhbār, 158. 70 Paul, “The State and the Military,” 53–54.


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razūr where he stayed three days.71 There, “he was joined by a great host of Türk-mens and others (iltaḥaqa bihi ʿālam kathīr min al-Turkamān wa-ghayrihi).”72 Berk Yāruq then went to Hamadān but interestingly he did not respond to the in-vitation of the raʾīs of Hamadān, who invited him to come into the city and take possession of the iqṭāʿs of the region.73 Distributing iqṭāʿs to his emirs might have caused his counter-attack to loose momentum.74 Furthermore, bringing nomads near Hamadān would have run the risk that they might abandon the war against Muḥammad for the sake of immediate pillaging.

In the sixth/twelfth century, other Saljūq princes mobilised Türkmen contin-gents. A significant case is Dāwūd b. Maḥmūd. Installed by his father in Āẕarbay-jān, he was dislodged in 530/1135-6 by his brother, the new Sultan Masʿūd, and ar-rived in Khūzistān in an abject condition. There,

large military forces of Türkmens and others gathered around him there (ijtamaʿa ʿalayhi hunāka ʿasākir kathīr min al-Turkamān wa-ghayrihim). Their numbers reached ten thousand horsemen.75

With this army, Dāwūd attacked and defeated the local ruler, his uncle Saljūqshāh b. Muḥammad. Dāwūd’s base was in Āẕarbayjān (he returned there in 532/1137-8 or later), and it is probable that he had strong connections with the Türkmens be-fore his expedition to Khūzistān.76 In any case, after his return to Āẕarbayjān, we see him sending Türkmen contingents to Zengī in northern Mesopotamia. Another example of a Saljūq outsider is Malikshāh III b. Maḥmūd (d. 555/1160). The image that the sources give of this prince is essentially that of a plunderer, something that betrays an evident lack of resources, and possibly also the identity of his follow-ers.77 While no source indicates that Malikshāh III recruited Türkmens, we do know that he had no hesitation in using Akrād al-Lar to attack Shumla in Khūzi-stān in 553/1158-9:

[Malikshāh b. Maḥmūd] wrote to the Akrād al-Lar who were there and invited them to join him. Delighted with his coming, a large host came down to him from the mountains there and offered him allegiance.78

71 On these events, see Sanaullah, Decline, 105–6; Bosworth, “Political and Dynastic History,” 109. 72 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 10:294 s.a. 493. The “others (wa-ghayrihi)” were probably nomads as well,

possibly Kurds. 73 Ibid. 74 I thank the editors for bringing to my attention that nomads could be interested in holding iqṭāʿs

(in Syria for example the Bedouin were keen to gain iqṭāʿs without abandoning mobility). 75 See Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 11:46 s.a. 530. Richards’s translation has simply “large forces.” 76 ʿImād al-Dīn merely states that when Dāwūd b. Maḥmūd was in Āẕarbayjān, he had numerous

troops. See al-Bundārī, Zubda, 160, l. 19. 77 In 545/1150, Malikshāh b. Maḥmūd “raided Isfahan and made away with several herds” (al-

Bundārī, Zubda, 226, ll. 7–8). On the death of the Sultan Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd in 554/1159, the sources again speak of Malikshāh’s pillaging in the Qum and Kāshān regions, see Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 11:237 s.a. 553.

78 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 11:238 s.a. 553.

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The most obvious hypothesis for these Akrād al-Lar are the Lurs, who today oc-cupy a territory close to Khūzistān and who were possibly engaged in long-range pastoral nomadism even before the Mongol invasion. In any case the term ‘Kurd’ (pl., Akrād) was widely use in pre-Mongol Iran as a synonym for nomads.79 An al-liance of Malikshāh b. Maḥmūd with the Türkmens is all the more likely given that later his son is explicitly associated to the Türkmens of Khūzistān, with whom he ravaged the city of Bandanījīn, 150 km east of Baghdad (see Fig. 1).80

4. The Last Decade of the Saljūq Dynasty: A Return to the Origins or a Revelation?

From Malikshāh’s reign until 581/1186, we have seen that the Türkmens appear af-ter all rarely in the armies of the various protagonists fighting in western Iran. The changing situation in the following years merits special consideration. After the death of the mighty Atabeg of Āẕarbayjān Muḥammad Pahlawān in 581/1186, warfare became endemic. The factual framework of this period is very complicated, and sometime obscure.81 What is clear, however, is that all the protagonists had re-course to the Türkmens: the emirs of Jibāl, the various members of the Eldigüzid family, the Saljūqs and last but not least, the Caliph. I will focus on the significative cases of the ʿAbbāsid Caliph and the last Saljūq Sultan.

In 584/1188, the Caliph al-Nāṣir (r. 575–622/1180–1225) was the first ruler since Tutush’s campaign almost a century earlier to launch Türkmen nomads into the Iranian plateau. The Caliph allied himself with the Yıwa to fight the Saljūq Sul-tan Ṭoghrıl III.82 According to Ḥusaynī, the Yıwa made up the left wing of the Ca-liph’s army:

The vizier Jalāl al-Dīn’s left wing was commanded by the emir Maḥmūd b. Berchem al-Īwāʾī, who had bands of Türkmens and Kurds with him (jumūʿ al-Turkamāniyya wal-Akrād).83

This is the first time that the incorporation of Türkmen troops into a ‘classic’ army is explicitly mentioned in the sources. This relationship between the Caliph and the

79 See Durand-Guédy, “The Saljūq-Türkmen Relationship,” 19–20. 80 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 11:440 s.a. 572 (wa-kāna maʿahu min al-Turkamān jamʿ kathīr). 81 For an account of events during this period, see Bosworth, “Political and Dynastic History,”

180–82 and Luther, Political Transformation, 241–67. Meisami’s article on the period (“Col-lapse”) is an unconvincing paraphrase of the sources and devoid of any historical analysis.

82 Sümer surmises that the ʿAbbāsid Caliph and the Yıwa were allied since 567. On the Yıwa, see above all Sümer, “Yıva,” and Oğuzlar, 348–56. See also Houtsma, “Ghuzenstämme,” 226; Ca-hen, “Tribus turques,” 181. In the eighth/thirteenth century, the Qara Qoyunlu dynasty would emerge from the Yıwa, see Sümer, “Ḳarā-Ḳoyunlu,” EI2, 4:584.

83 Akhbār, 177. See also Rāwandī, Rāḥat, 345–46: “the Yıwa army (lashkar-i Aywa) pursued [one of Sultan Ṭoghrıl’s generals].” For ‘Berchem’ I follow Sümer’s reading. Iqbāl’s edition has ترجم, but it is برجم in Ibn al-Athīr. See Sümer, “Yıva,” 156–57. I have not found any correspondence in Rásonyi’s Onomasticon.


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Türkmens, seems surprising at first sight. But the contacts had begun as soon as the Saljūq authority over Baghdad faded. In 549/1155 the Caliph had not only success-fully repelled an offensive by Saljūq emirs (the one led by Masʿūd al-Bilālī; see above) but he had also taken prisoner the families of the Türkmens who had joined the expedition. This was a worst-case scenario for the Saljūq Sultan Muḥammad II, who had not taken part in the operation. When the defeated emirs returned to Hamadān, he addressed them in very strong terms:

You have lost your honour (nāmūs), you have destroyed yourselves, you have had Türkmens killed (ahlaktum al-Turkamān) and their young children and wives put in captivity (ʿaraḍtum lil-saby al-dharārī minhum wal-niswān).84

The Sultan’s concern for the Türkmens was not only out of pity. It was also moti-vated by his fear of seeing the young nomads being trained as military slaves (a process which the Saljūqs wanted to keep as their monopoly) at the service of a fiercely anti-Saljūq state. Two decades before, the Saljūqs had already forbidden the Caliph al-Muqtafī to buy Turkic ghulāms precisely to prevent him from build-ing an effective army.85 In 553/1158-9, four years after the first Saljūq defeat against the ʿAbbāsids, the same Caliph al-Muqtafī had sent an army to Dīnawar in Jibāl to put an end to the plundering being carried out by the Yıwa.86 This opera-tion was also an opportunity for the ʿAbbāsids to impose themselves in a strategic territory (that of the Yıwa) and to send to Baghdad prisoners who could become soldiers.87

The ʿAbbāsid conquest of Khūzistān in 591/1194-5 pursued the same objec-tive: beyond the obvious expansionist dimension, there was also the intention to control a region where the winter pastures of various nomadic groups were locat-ed.88 But in 584/1188-9 a new step was taken when the Caliph directly used the Türkmens as tribal auxiliaries. We should appreciate the irony of the situation: 150 years after the conquest of Baghdad by Ṭoghrıl Beg and his Türkmen followers, an ʿAbbāsid Caliph came to fight the descendant of Ṭoghrıl Beg near his own capital, with the help of the Türkmens.

An equally telling case is that of Sultan Ṭoghrıl III himself. The last Saljūq Sul-tan took advantage of the weakening of the state of the Atabegs of Āẕarbayjān to reclaim his independence and to try to re-establish a free Saljūq Sultanate in west-ern Iran. What is interesting for our subject is his special relationship with the

84 Al-Bundārī, Zubda, 239, ll. 20–21. The causes and consequences of this war have been analyzed

in detail by Luther, Political Transformation, 53–63. 85 See al-Bundārī, Zubda, 235; Akhbār, 129. This ban was put in place at the beginning of al-Muq-

tafī’s reign (r. 530–555/1136–60) to suppress independent tendencies on the part of the ʿAbbās-ids after the military expeditions of the previous Caliphs al-Mustarshid (d. 529/1135) and al-Rashīd (d. 532/1138). On this subject, see Ayalon, “Mamlūks of the Seljuks,” 308–10.

86 See Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 11:239 s.a. 553. 87 Ibid., 11:239 s.a. 553, the author says that “the heads [of the rebels] and the prisoners were sent

to Baghdad.” 88 On the ʿAbbāsid reconquest of Khūzistān, see ibid., 12:108–9 s.a. 591.

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Türkmens. Let us first review events. In 584/1188, after rebelling against Atabeg Qızıl Arslān, Ṭoghrıl III was joined by the Türkmens of the Yıwa (the very Türk-mens whom the Caliph had sent to fight him). In 585/1189, having suffered a de-feat, Ṭoghrıl III abandoned his treasury and equipment and took refuge with Ḥa-san-i Qıpchāq.89 Ḥasan-i Qıpchāq was leader of close to 50,000 Türkmens who ranged between Āẕarbayjān and the region of Shahrazūr.90 He was a powerful rul-er, as Ibn al-Athīr remembers:

His writ was effective over Türkmens both distant and near at hand. His word was never gainsaid. They considered obedience to him a duty and rulers avoided any move against him.91

Ṭoghrıl III spent the next two months in his company and formed an alliance with him. He received “an army and equipment (lashkar wa asbāb).”92 He took part in the pillaging of the territories ruled by the Eldigüzid family in western Āẕarbayjān (Ushnū, Urmiya, Khūy, Salmās).93 He even married Ḥasan-i Qıpchāq’s sister, who bore him a son.94 The following spring (586/1190), Ṭoghrıl III was captured and imprisoned in a fortress, but after a few months, in 587/1191, he was freed by a Türkmen named Maḥmūd b. Anās-oghlū.95 In the victorious battle that he then fought against the emirs of Jibāl, he may have used Türkmen troops although it is not explicitly stated (we just know that this Maḥmūd b. Anās-oghlū was at his side).96 We also know that he received the support of the sons of Kafshūd, who were Türkmen begs who occupied the region of Zanjān.97

How can we explain this ‘special relationship’ between Ṭoghrıl III and the Tü-rkmens? Like other outsiders, he sought to compensate for his lack of resources by relying on cheap and available nomadic forces. And the fact that the Caliph had been the one to first use nomadic forces on the plateau certainly made things easier (if it was a problem at all). The Atabegs of Āẕarbayjān themselves seem to have had

89 See Abū Ḥāmid, Dhayl, 433, ll. 9–11, tr. 159. Akhbār, 179–80. On Ḥasan-i Qıpchāq and his fam-

ily, see Sümer, Oğuzlar, 151–52 (with a family tree). 90 The territory of Ḥasan-i Qıpchāq can be worked out from several pieces of information drawn

from Akhbār, 179–80: in summer 585/1189, Ḥasan-i Qıpchāq was in Āẕarbayjān; he then re-treated to his citadel of Karkhānī, which lay “near the river Zāb,” between Irbil and Daqūqā (see Yāqūt, Buldān, 4:257, ll. 9–10). In spring 586/1190, he is seen entering Āẕarbayjān once more.

91 Ibn al-Athīr, Kamīl, 11:75. Ibn al-Athīr’s presentation of Ḥasan-i Qıpchāq may be biased, since the Türkmen leader would be like himself a loyal servant of the Zengid dynasty.

92 Abū Ḥāmid, Dhayl, 433. 93 Akhbār, 178–79 (“they devastated these lands and wrought havoc (fasād ) there … They had dev-

astated those lands”). See also Abū Ḥāmid, Dhayl, 433, ll.17–18. 94 Akhbār, 179–80; al-Bundārī, Zubda, 302, l. 5. 95 See Akhbār, 182. The form Anās-oghlū given by Rāwandī, Rāḥat, 364, ll. 1 and 369, l. 10, should

be preferred to the form Sanā-oghlū which appears in the printed version of Akhbār al-dawla al-saljūqiyya (in Rāwandī, the name appears in a quatrain). Only Ḥusaynī identifies Maḥmūd b. Anās-oghlū as a Türkmen (rajul min al-Turkamān). For more on this person, see Sümer, Oğuz-lar, 154–55.

96 See Rāwandī, Rāḥat, 369, l. 10. 97 See Akhbār, 182 (awlād Kafshūd al-Turkamāniyya qad malakū [Zanjān]).


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closer relations with the Türkmens than in Eldigüz’s day. Not only did their court attract Türkmen begs (such as the above-mentioned Maḥmūd b. Anās-oghlū who served Pahlawān and Qızıl Arslān), but they also seem to have brought nomadic troops in the ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam. Indeed Rāwandī says that while Ṭoghrıl III allied him-self with Ḥasan-i Qıpchāq, the Atabeg Qızıl Arslān received the support of the Bardān of Āẕarbayjān:

In Hamadhān, in the four corners of Iraq [i.e. ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam], the Bardān of Āẕarbay-jān and the Atabeg have taken the money of those who opposed them, and they also took the money legally obtained, and the revenue of the iqṭāʿ and the revenue reserve of wheat of the army (kandūhā-yi lashkarī). In Hamadhān, the Bardān of Āẕarbayjān took power and caused suffering to the people (khalq), who hated them.98

The Bardān of Āẕarbayjān, which are not defined in any source, may well have been a nomadic group.99 In any case the Türkmens were increasingly more numer-ous during the second part of the sixth/twelfth century. After the crumbling of the Saljūq state in eastern Iran in 548/1153, westward migrations had reinforced no-madic groups which were already advantaged by a dynamic demography. Besides, the maintenance of a mobile herd could appear more viable than agriculture in these troubled times and re-nomadisation was probably at work. The expression turk-olmush (lit. ‘who has become a Turk’) in a Saljūq decree concerning the ad-ministration of the nomads in the Zagros may also refer to these ‘neo-nomads’.100

Beyond these contextual factors (cheap and increasingly numerous forces), the relationship between the Saljūqs and the Türkmens was much closer than what is usually admitted in most of the existing scholarship. Throughout their history in Iran the Saljūqs followed a peripatetic way of life, moving from pastures to pas-tures, hardly ever entering the cities they controlled, and living in a tented en-campment.101 The links with the Türkmens were all easier. Not only did they speak the same language, but they lived, more or less, the same way. At another level some sources clearly suggest that they were far from estranged. A decree writ-ten by Sanjar chancellery alludes to the “kinship” (Quranic dhū l-qurbā) between the Sultan and the Türkmens of Gurgān.102 And if Saljūq court poetry does not

98 Rāwandī, Rāḥat, 356, ll. 2–5. 99 Neither the meaning nor the spelling of this name (Yardān in Rāwandī, Rāḥat, 339, l. 1; Bar-

dān, ibid., 356, l. 5; Bazdān or Yazdān, ibid., 356, l. 2) is certain. Iqbāl (ibid., 339, note 1) gives no view on its pronunciation but considers that “one may conclude that it must be the name of a group or tribe.”

100 See Mukhtārāt, 419, and Durand-Guédy, “The Türkmen-Saljūq Relationship,” 21–22. Accord-ing to Sümer, Yıwa, Afshār and Sālūr (Salghur) Türkmens left Central Asia for Iran in 1130. See Sümer, Oğuzlar, 349.

101 See Durand-Guédy, Iranian Elites, 93–101; id., “Ruling From the Outside” and “Where Did the Saljūqs Live?”

102 See Muntajab al-Dīn Juwaynī, ʿAtabat al-kataba, 80, and Durand-Guédy, “The Türkmen-Saljūq Relationship,” 41–42. The military obligations of the Türkmens towards Sanjar are ex-plicitly mentioned in another decree of same inshā’ compilation. See Muntajab al-Dīn Juwaynī, ʿAtabat al-kataba, 85, tartīb-i ḥasham-i Turkamānān and my commentary in “The Türkmen-

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speak of the Türkmens (Amīr Muʿizzī, the court poet of the Great Saljūq Sultans for nearly 50 years, never once used the word ‘Ghuzz’ or ‘Türkmens’), nothing proves that it was because they were despised (more than once he celebrates the Turkic identity of his patrons). And there is of course the case of Beg Arslān b. Palangirī alias Khāṣṣ Beg (d. 547 or 548/1153), a young Türkmen that Sultan Mas-ʿūd (r. 529–547/1134–52) met when in northern Āẕarbayjān and who quickly be-came the most powerful emir in his court: his career vividly shows that at this early date there was no insurmountable barrier between them.103

To come back to the case of Ṭoghrıl III, I find it striking that this Sultan who had such close links with the Türkmens is also the one who is described in first-hand sources as the most educated. We know from a witness that this Saljūq read and even wrote poetry,104 and that he learnt calligraphy.105 It was also for him that Ẓahīr al-Din Nīshāpūrī wrote his Saljūq-nāma, the first comprehensive history of the Saljūq dynasty.106 In the accepted understanding of the period in Western scholarship, the Saljūqs moved from the Türkmen traditions toward the Iranian civilisation. The whole process is seen as a progressive, and one-way, acculturation, on the model later theorised by Ibn Khaldūn (the softening of the ruling class). Yet the case of Ṭoghrıl III is a good example that things may not have been so linear. A better knowledge of the Iranian culture (at the time the Saljūqs had been in Iran for seven generations) was not inevitably a synonym of turning one’s back on the Tü-rkmens. In the case of Ṭoghrıl III, there may be something more. He was only nine or ten years old when the Saljūq-nāma was offered to him. What does this book recount? The history of his ancestors when they were still Türkmen begs: how Maḥmūd of Ghazna was disturbed to be faced with adversaries (the Saljūqs) who could raise numerous valorous warriors who cost nothing;107 how Ṭoghrıl Beg and Chaghrı conquered Iran with their horsemen; how Sanjar did not want to attack his own kin; and how he unhappily yielded to the pressure of his ill-intentioned (slave or descendant of slave) emirs. Could it be that the young and educated Ṭoghrıl III, edified by the story of his ancestors and determined to restore a free

Saljūq relationship,” 42. A fifteenth century translation of Rāwandī’s chronicle (the Muntakhab al-tawārīkh al-saljūqiyya, quoted by Barthold, “History,” 116–17) mentions that the Türkmens held important positions in Sanjar’s army: the left wing was under Qayı and the Bayats, the right under Bayundur and Pecheneg. Sanjar’s availing of nomadic forces is also attested in 513/1119 (see reference in Table 1). The situation in eastern Iran, directly in contact with the Central Asian steppes, may have been different from western Iran.

103 Ẓahīr al-Dīn, Saljūq-nāma, 78, merely says that Khāṣṣ Beg was “promoted” (bar-kishīda būd ) by the Sultan Masʿūd b. Muḥammad, without mentioning his Türkmen origins. Those origins are, by contrast, noted by Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 10:153, l. 16, Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 11:163 s.a. 547, and above all Rashīd al-Dīn who describes Khāṣṣ Beg as “the son of a Türkmen who was one of the Ghuzz that came to Āẕarbayjān (pisar-i Turkamānī būdh az baqiyat-i Ghuzzān ki bi-Āẕarbayjān āmada būdhand).” Jāmiʿ, 1:367, ll. 13–14, tr. 110.

104 See Rāwandī, Rāḥat, 57, ll. 1–8. 105 See ibid., 43, ll. 3–5. 106 See Morton’s introduction in Ẓahīr al-Dīn, 45. 107 See ibid., 7.


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Sultanate, reconsidered the ghulām army model which had led to the Atabegate system and the powerlessness of the Saljūqs, and tried instead to rely on the same kind of troops who, a century earlier, had established the great Saljūq Empire? If so, one could say that his actions were inspired, or mediated, by history. In the case of this Sultan, therefore, and perhaps also in the cases of other pretenders on whom we have less information, the recourse to nomadic forces may have been a matter not just of expediency, but also of identity. It was a way of reconnecting with his-tory as well as a way of remaking it.

This article makes no claim to have comprehensively dealt with the military use of nomads by the Saljūq rulers in western Iran after the conquest. The reason is that depending on one’s interpretation of the nature of the Saljūq state, the scarcity of references to their intervention will be explained either by technical considera-tions (the removal of the nomads from the heart of the plateau, the problems posed by their participation to military operations along with ghulāms, or the reluctance to rely on these troops), or on the contrary by the particular nature of our corpus (written during the last years of and mostly after the end of the Saljūq dynasty). The striking resurgence of Türkmens’ military role at the end of the period is a strong argument for the second hypothesis. Only further research on the Saljūq rule itself will enable us to be more assertive in our conclusions.

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Goodbye to the Türkmens? The Military Role of Nomads in Iran after the Saljūq Conquest

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