Malik Shah I.

Sultan Malik-Shah I.

Jalal ad-Daula wa-d-Din Abu l-Fath Malik-Shah (I.) ( Persian جلال الدولة والدين أبو الفتح ملكشاه, DMG Ǧalāl ad-Daula wa-d-Dīn Abū l-Fatḥ Malik-Šāh , Turkish Melikşah ; * 1055 ; † November 20, 1092 ) was a son of Alp Arslans and from 1072 Seljuk Sultan . His name Malik-Shah is a composite of Arabic ملك, DMG Malik  'King' and Persian شاه, DMG Šāh , 'ruler'.

His successor was proclaimed by his father at a family meeting in 1066, when various governor posts were distributed in the east. It was primarily contested by his uncle Qawurd († 1073/4), who invoked his right as the eldest of the family and had to be defeated in a three-day battle at Karaj near Hamadan . The battle proved to be a acid test for Malik-Shah, because Qawurd received a lot of sympathy from Malik-Shah's troops, so that an open revolt threatened. A key role in the events played Malik-Shah atabeg , the experienced vizier Nizam al-Mulk , whose swift actions to his protégé the recognition of the caliph and the province of Khorasan secured on their income and also recommended the execution Qawurds.

After his father's victory in the Battle of Mantzikert in 1071, he conquered most of Anatolia , which had previously belonged to the Byzantine Empire . He expanded the Seljuk power to Syria at the expense of the Fatimids and was able to snatch Edessa from Philaretos Brachamios in 1087 . Analogously, he set representatives in Damascus ( Tutusch I. ), Edessa, Aleppo ( Aq Sunqur ) and Antioch ( Yaghi-Siyan ).

After the conquest of Antioch , like the Assyrian and Sassanid kings before him, Malik-Shah took a bath in the Mediterranean near St. Simeon at the mouth of the Orontes - on horseback and in full armor. Then he had sand collected from the coast and sprinkled on his father's grave, Alp Arslan in Merw , to show him that his son had taken all lands to the edge of the earth .

In 1073 he commissioned the polymath Omar Chayyām with the construction of an observatory and the creation of a solar calendar . The modern Iranian calendar is based on the corresponding calculations of this calendar reform . Relations between the Seljuks and the nominally ruling caliph in Baghdad, whose representative and general the Seljuk Sultan was officially, became increasingly tense. The relationship with the famous Persian vizier Nizam al-Mulk also deteriorated considerably. Before it could be a conflict, Nizam al-Mulk was told by the assassins murdered.

The sultan himself was poisoned by one of his wives in 1092. The reason was the disputes among the wives over the succession of the sultan. After his death, the Seljuq Empire split into smaller states, most of which were hostile to each other. He was followed by Kilitsch-Arslan I in Anatolia, Mahmud I in Persia and his brother Tutusch I in Syria. The disunity between the Seljuq empires was one of the reasons for the unexpected success of the First Crusade , which began a short time later, in 1096. Malik Shah's sons were Berk-Yaruq , Muhammad I. Tapar and Ahmad Sandjar .

Remarks

1. ↑ Cf. CE Bosworth: The history of the Seljuq Turks: from the Jāmi al-Tawārīkh: an Ilkhanid adaption of the Saljūq-nāma of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī, p. 58; The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 5, pp. 88 f.
2. ↑ The Hakim of Nischapur Omar Chajjám and his Rubaijat , based on old and recent Persian manuscript finds by Manuel Sommer, Pressler, Wiesbaden 1974, p. 140

literature

• Ara Edmond Dostourian: Armenia and the crusades, tenth to twelfth centuries. Lanham, University Press of America 1993.
• St. Runciman: The History of the Crusades. Munich 1978

predecessor	Office	successor
Alp Arslan	Sultan of the Great Seljuks 1072-1092	Mahmud I.