Ahmad Sandjar

Muizz ad-Dunya wa-d-Din Abu al-Harith Ahmad Sanjar , shortly Sanjar (Sanǧar) ( Persian معز الدنيا والدين أبو الحارث أحمد سنجر, DMG Muʿizz ad-Dunyā wa-'d-Dīn ʾAbū 'l-Ḥāriṯ ʾAḥmad Sanǧar , born November 27, 1084 or November 5, 1086 in Sinjar ; †  May 8, 1157 ) was the last Sultan of the Seljuks from 1118 to 1157 , who ruled over both Iraq and Iran as head of the dynasty . After his very long and successful reign, control of the eastern parts of the empire was lost and the Great Seljuks sank to one of many (western Iranian) local powers.

Sultan Sanjar Mausoleum in Merw

Life

origin

He was the youngest son of Sultan Malik-Shah I and was born around 1085 during a campaign by his father near Sincar. After the death of his father in 1092, a dispute over the succession broke out between him and his brothers or half-brothers Mahmud , Berk-Yaruq , Muhammad Tapar and uncles Tutusch , Arslan Arghun, and a series of rebellions shook the empire.

Governor of Khorasan

Sanjar was 1096 (reg. 1094-1004) from his older brother half, Sultan Barkiyaruq, for the suppression of an uprising his uncle Arslan Arghun according Chorasan sent. On his arrival he had already been murdered, so that Berk-Yaruq then enfeoffed him with the east of the province. There he took his seat in Balkh and had to put down two rebellions by Seljuq princes in 1097/8.

When his brother Muhammad rose up against Berk-Yaruk in 1198/9 and thus began a protracted and exhausting fratricidal war, Sandjar took his side. In the opposite combination, Sultan Berk-Yaruq got help from the Emir Habaschi ibn Altun-Taq , who at that time administered Tabaristan and the central and western parts of Khorasan, and this also from the Ismailis in Tabas . The united troops were defeated by Sandjar and his emirs at a place called Naushajan (1000). Habaschi was killed and Berk-Yaruq withdrew to Gorgan and later Isfahan , while Sandjar moved his seat to Merw .

After the failure to Sultan Barkiyaruq allied with the 1102 Transoxania ruling (Eastern) Qarakhanid Qadir Khan Dschibrail b. Umar . This came, aided by the breach of loyalty by Sandjar's emir Kün-Toghdi as far as Tirmidh , where he was defeated and killed by Sandjar (July 1102). Sandjar then sent troops to Transoxania and set his brother-in-law , the Karakhanid prince Muhammad (r. 1102-1129), as the new ruler (Arslan Chan).

Around 1105/6 Sandschar's position of power in Khorasan was so consolidated that he referred to himself as the " Malik of the East" on a coin . Nominally, however, he was subordinate to his brother Muhammad I (ruled 1105–1118), who was also dubbed the "exalted Sultan".

Head of the dynasty

But when Sultan Muhammad I died in 1118, he prevailed in the battle of Saveh (August 1119) against his fourteen-year-old son Mahmud (ruled 1118–31). At the request of his mother, he treated the vanquished in a friendly manner, married him to one of his daughters, returned most of the possessions (western Persia, Iraq) to him, but appointed the highest-ranking officials himself and from then on dominated the Seljuk Empire. From then on his name was first read in the Chutba and also appeared for some time on Mahmud's coins.

After the death of Mahmud II (1131), he initially supported the claims to the throne of Muhammad Tapar's son Toghril (r. 1132-34) and defeated his brothers and rivals Masud and Seljuk in 1132 at Dinawar . Then he lost interest in the power struggles, but tried to dampen the ambitions of the caliph al-Mustarschid and used the Atabeg Zengi (1132) for this purpose .

Foreign policy

Sandschar was able to reunite the empire and keep the previous vassals under his suzerainty. So he occupied z. B. 1130 Samarkand and had the Qarakhanid Muhammad II Arslan Chan deported to Merw because he threatened to become too powerful. From the Ghurid prince Izz ad-Din Husain (r. 1100–1146) he received weapons, mail shirts and steel helmets as tribute, the Khorezm Shah Atsiz (r. 1127–56) did military service and even the Ghaznawide Bahram Shah (r. 1118 –1151/7) was obliged to pay an annual tribute of 250,000 dinars. His name was read out in the Chutba between Mecca and Kashgar .

Catastrophe in the Katwansteppe

But in 1141 Sandjar had to assist his vassal, the Qarakhanid Mahmud (ruled 1132–41) against the Kara Kitai under Yelü Dashi (ruled 1124–43), who were advancing from the east . He lost the battle in the Katwansteppe (or in the Dirgham Valley, 12 km from Samarkand, on September 9, 1141). His army was pushed into the wadi , and he escaped to Tirmidh with only a few people from his bodyguard, leaving about 30,000 dead on the several hundred li (500 m) long battlefield. In addition to a number of dignitaries, Sandjar's wife Terken Chatun, a daughter of the Qarakhanid Muhammad II, was captured.

The catastrophe called for an interpretation in contemporary sources. The Khorezm Shah Atsiz, who took Bukhara in 1140 after his (first) rebellion against Sandjar and only concluded peace in early 1141, is said to have instigated the Kara Kitai to intervene. Another person seeking help is said to have been the tribal troops of the Karakhanids (ie the Karluken ), against whom Sandschar also proceeded in the course of his assistance to Mahmud in the summer of 1141 and whose compromise offer he rejected. So the Karluken turned to the Kara Kitai and there was an impolite correspondence between Sandjar and Yelu Dashi; but the Gur-chan knew about the indiscipline of Sandschar's ranged forces and was not impressed by its rhetoric.

Incidentally, the increasing military operations in the 1130s meant a high financial burden for the nomads as well as for the settled people. The 1141 expedition alone cost 3 million dinars, excluding gifts for dignitaries and similar special expenses.

Revolts and imprisonment

After the catastrophe, his empire fell apart within a few years. The Khorezm Shah Atsiz hoped the defeat to use for themselves and occupied Merv and Nishapur, but was beaten and 1143/4 and 1147/8 before Gurgandsch be forced back to peace. The Ghurids advanced to Herat in 1147 to support a rebellion against Sandjar. Ala ad-Din Husain von Ghur (r. 1149–1161) stopped paying tribute to Sandjar, but was defeated in 1152 near Herat, captured and released for a ransom.

The Seljuk tribal troops (ie the Oghuz ) in the Balkh area were found to be unreliable in assisting the Ghurids in a successful advance on this city in 1152. Qumach, the governor there, raised the already oppressive taxes in kind of 24,000 mutton a year more brutally and advanced against them with 10,000 men. After Qumach's defeat and death, the Sultan himself came, rejected the Oghuz's proposals for reparation and was promptly beaten twice (Oghuz leaders: Bachtiyar, Tuti Beg, Qorqut). He had to evacuate Merw and was captured in the process. After that, Nishapur fell in 1154 . During the uprising, the residences Merw and Nischapur were destroyed and eight libraries were burned in Nischapur alone.

After his capture, Sandjar remained formally on the throne for a period and only some of his emirs were executed by the Oghuz. Only after attempting to escape was he put in an iron cage and treated increasingly badly. Meanwhile, his leaderless troops began to plunder everywhere, the sects rose, and the social and religious differences in the empire culminated in a bloody chaos, described by the poet Anwari († 1187, "The Tears of Khorasan").

The loyal forces of the Seljuks therefore put Sandjar's nephew Suleiman (son of Muhammad I) on the throne, who was also mentioned earlier in Khorasan in the Chutba. But Suleiman became overwhelmed by the political situation in 1154 and fled to Khorezm and later to Baghdad. The reputation of the dynasty had sunk so low that the loyal forces now put the exiled Qarakhanid Khan Mahmud (after all the son of Sandjar's sister) on the throne. Sultan Muhammad II (ruled 1153–1160), who ruled in western Persia, agreed to the accession to the throne and sent Mahmud a certificate of appointment. Mahmud was negotiating with Atsiz about his offer of help against the Oghuz when Sandjar escaped from the Oghuz in November 1156 and died soon after in Merw.

Culture and society

During Sandschar's reign, the poet Anwari, the anecdote writer Nizami Aruzi († approx. 1160), the philosopher al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) and the physicist and astronomer al-Chazini († 1130, a textbook on mechanics: “ The book of the scales of wisdom ”), who was a student of the scholar and poet Omar Chayyām (1048–1131).

Religious strife, violence by and against religious factions, remained alive even in Sandjar's time. The Batinid sect is mentioned repeatedly here (names often used analogously: Ismailites, Qarmatians ). Sandschar went with his governor in Nishapur, Fachr al-Mulk (a son of Nizām al-Mulk ) against the Batinids, with Fachr al-Mulk 1106/7 being murdered. Furthermore, 1126 troops marched under the vizier Muin al-Mulk against the Ismailis in Kuhistan . In 1154 7000 Ismailis marched against Khorasan, but were defeated on the way.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Martijn Theodoor Houtsma: EJ Brill's first encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913-1936, Volume 2, p. 151.
2. ↑ Cf. Steven Runciman: History of the Crusades, p. 497 ff.
3. ↑ Fischer Weltgeschichte Zentralasien, p. 86
4. ↑ Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 5, p. 157
5. ↑ Albaum / Brentjes: Lords of the Steppe, p. 42
6. ↑ See world history in ten volumes, volume 3, Red. NA Sidorowa u. a., Berlin 1963, p. 571; Navid Kermani: The Terror of God: Attar, Job and the Metaphysical Revolt, p. 89 ff.

Web links

• Genealogy of the Middle Ages

predecessor	Office	successor
Muhammad I. Tapar	Sultan of the Great Seljuks 1118–1153