The Seljuq Period (5th /11th to 6th /12th century)

Abstract

As a result of the overthrow of the Ghaznavids and Buyids, the Seljuqs were able to build up a new supremacy and thus to bring a further partition of the eastern Islamic world to a standstill. They did not lay stress on their Turkish origin but adopted the Moslem-Persian civilisation the more readily since they themselves were unlettered and thus obliged to depend on the existing Iranian governmental administration. A purely Turkish dynasty in whose power lay a vast complex of countries, the Seljuqs bore an uncommonly large contribution to the spread of Persian literature and Persian culture: in fact this period constitutes one of the peaks in the history and civilisation of Iran. This rise can be attributed to the progress of the towns, to excellent schools (e.g. the Nizāmiyya), to the shifting of the civil administration from the hands of the old nobility into those of the intelligent bourgeoisie as well as to the penetrating though not apparent influence of the Ismā‹īlites. In contrast to the Buyids, the Seljuqs hoisted the flag of the Sunna and, like Sultān Mahmūd, acknowledged the Caliph of Baghdad as their head. While western Islam became spiritualised through the reforms of al-Ghāzalī (b. 450/1058–9 in Tūs, d. there in 505/1111), the course of eastern Islam was marked by the increasing influence of Sufism which in the 5th/11th century spread out far and wide as a protest against oppression, religious and otherwise - a protest that was the more effective because of the close association that existed at this period between Sufism and Ismā‹īlism.¹ Through the Seljuq universities with their pronounced Sunnite syllabus, the State gained control of all learning, as had been the case with poetry since the time of Sultān Mahmūd.