Seljuk Capture of Baghdad (1055): Tughril Beg as Sultan

The Seljuk capture of Baghdad in December 1055 brought the Turkish leader Tughril Beg into the capital of the Abbasid caliphate and ended more than a century of control by the Buyid dynasty. Tughril came as the invited protector of the Sunni caliph al-Qa’im and soon took the title sultan, holding real power while the caliph kept religious authority. The arrangement shaped politics in the Islamic Middle East for generations and opened the way to the Seljuk empire that later fought Byzantium and the crusaders.

Background: a caliph without power

By the eleventh century the Abbasid caliphs, rulers in name of the Sunni Muslim world, had long lost real control. Since 945 Baghdad had been dominated by the Buyids, a dynasty from Daylam in northern Iran who were Shi’i Muslims. The caliph kept his title and appointed judges, but the Buyid emirs commanded the army and collected the taxes.

By the 1050s Buyid power was failing. The family was divided, its Turkish and Daylamite soldiers quarrelled, and Baghdad suffered riots between Sunni and Shi’i quarters. Meanwhile the Fatimid caliphs of Cairo, Ismaili Shi’is and rivals of the Abbasids, sought influence in Iraq and Syria.

The rise of the Seljuks

The Seljuks were a clan of the Oghuz Turks, nomads from the steppes east of the Caspian Sea who had converted to Islam. They took their name from their ancestor Seljuk. In the 1030s two of his grandsons, Tughril Beg and his brother Chaghri Beg, led their followers into Khurasan in north-eastern Iran.

Tughril entered Nishapur in the late 1030s and, in a symbolic act, sat on the throne of the Ghaznavid ruler. In 1040 the brothers defeated the Ghaznavid sultan Mas’ud at Dandanqan near Merv, a victory that gave them Khurasan. Chaghri remained in the east, while Tughril moved west, taking Rey and Isfahan and steadily absorbing the remains of Buyid territory.

Tughril presented himself as a champion of Sunni Islam and a servant of the caliph. The caliph al-Qa’im, who reigned from 1031 to 1075, saw in him a way to escape Buyid control and to resist the Fatimids, whose supporters were active in Iraq.

What happened in 1055

The decisive figure on the other side was al-Basasiri, a Turkish commander in Buyid service who dominated Baghdad and was suspected of contacts with Cairo. When al-Basasiri fell out with the caliph’s officials and left the city, the way was open.

In late 1055 Tughril advanced into Iraq. At the caliph’s direction the Friday sermon, or khutba, in Baghdad was read in Tughril’s name, a public sign of recognition. Tughril then entered the city in December 1055, during the month of Ramadan in the Islamic year 447.

The arrival was not peaceful. Fighting broke out between the townspeople and Tughril’s Turkmen troops. Tughril blamed the Buyid ruler al-Malik al-Rahim, who had come to meet him, and had him arrested. Al-Malik al-Rahim died in captivity a few years later, and Buyid rule in Baghdad was over.

Sultan and caliph

Tughril did not depose the caliph. Instead, the two men formed a partnership. In 1056 al-Qa’im married Tughril’s niece, the daughter of Chaghri Beg. In a ceremony in 1058 the caliph honoured Tughril with robes and the title King of the East and the West, and the term sultan, meaning power, became the standard name for his office.

The relationship was often tense. The caliph wanted the Seljuks to defend him, not to control him, and Tughril’s demand to marry one of the caliph’s daughters caused a long dispute. The marriage finally took place in 1062, shortly before Tughril’s death.

Al-Basasiri’s revolt, 1058–1060

In 1058 Tughril had to leave Iraq to put down a rebellion by his half-brother Ibrahim Inal in western Iran. Al-Basasiri seized his chance. In December 1058 he took Baghdad, sent the caliph into custody at Haditha on the Euphrates, and had the Friday prayer said in the name of the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir.

For about a year Baghdad formally acknowledged the Shi’i caliph of Cairo, though Fatimid help never arrived in strength. Tughril defeated Ibrahim Inal, returned to Iraq and restored al-Qa’im to Baghdad in early 1060. Al-Basasiri was killed in the fighting. Tughril’s position as protector of the Abbasids was now beyond challenge.

How the Seljuks governed Iraq

Tughril did not make Baghdad his home. His main residences were in Iran, at Rey and Isfahan, and he and his successors visited Iraq only occasionally. In Baghdad they were represented by a military governor, known as the shihna, who commanded the garrison and kept order, while the caliph’s own officials ran the court and the religious institutions.

This arrangement left the caliph with more dignity than he had enjoyed under the Buyids, but little more independence. The sultans controlled taxation in Iraq and expected the caliph to confirm their rule and their choice of heirs. Disputes over money, marriages and honours recurred throughout the Seljuk period, and in the twelfth century, as Seljuk power weakened, energetic caliphs such as al-Nasir were able to rebuild a small state of their own in Iraq.

The arrival of the Seljuks also brought Turkmen nomads into the settled lands of Iraq and western Iran. Their flocks and raids caused hardship for farmers, and much of the sultans’ energy went into directing these restless followers outwards, towards the Byzantine and Fatimid frontiers.

Sources and interpretation

Most of what is known about 1055 comes from Arabic chronicles written after the event, above all the universal history of Ibn al-Athir, compiled in the early thirteenth century from earlier accounts. These writers generally viewed the Seljuks as restorers of Sunni order, which colours their story of Buyid decline and Fatimid plotting.

Modern historians accept the main outline but stress that Tughril’s move on Baghdad was also opportunistic. The collapse of Buyid authority created a vacuum, and the caliph’s invitation gave legitimacy to a conquest the Seljuks would probably have attempted anyway.

Key people

• Tughril Beg (c. 990s–1063), first Seljuk sultan, who brought the Turks from Khurasan to Iraq.
• Al-Qa’im (ruled 1031–1075), Abbasid caliph who invited and then had to manage the Seljuks.
• Al-Malik al-Rahim, last Buyid ruler of Baghdad, arrested in 1055.
• Al-Basasiri, Turkish commander who backed the Fatimids and held Baghdad in 1058–1059.

Consequences

Tughril died at Rey in September 1063, childless. His nephew Alp Arslan, son of Chaghri, became sultan, with the Persian administrator Nizam al-Mulk as his vizier. Under Alp Arslan the Seljuks defeated the Byzantine emperor at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, opening Anatolia to Turkish settlement.

The capture of Baghdad also changed the religious balance of the region. The Seljuks backed Sunni scholars and schools, culminating in the network of madrasas founded by Nizam al-Mulk. The Fatimid Caliphate, which had come close to winning Baghdad through al-Basasiri, began a long decline.

The model of a powerful sultan ruling alongside a symbolic caliph lasted until the Mongols destroyed the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad in 1258.

Timeline

• 1040: Tughril and Chaghri defeat the Ghaznavids at Dandanqan.
• 1055, December: Tughril Beg enters Baghdad; the Buyid ruler is arrested.
• 1056: Caliph al-Qa’im marries Tughril’s niece.
• 1058: Tughril receives the title King of the East and the West.
• 1058, December: Al-Basasiri seizes Baghdad in the Fatimid name.
• 1060, January: Tughril restores al-Qa’im; al-Basasiri is killed.
• 1062: Tughril marries a daughter of the caliph.
• 1063, September: Tughril dies at Rey; Alp Arslan succeeds.

Why it matters

The events of 1055 made the Seljuk Turks the leading power of the Islamic Middle East and fixed the pattern of sultan and caliph that lasted for two centuries. They ended Buyid rule, strengthened Sunni institutions and began the chain of events that brought Turkish rule to Anatolia.