Sultanate of Rum (1077-1308): The Seljuks of Anatolia

The Sultanate of Rum was the Turkish Muslim state that ruled much of Anatolia, the Asian part of modern Turkey, from about 1077 until the early fourteenth century. Founded by a branch of the Seljuk dynasty after the Byzantine defeat at Manzikert, it was governed for most of its history from Konya. Its rulers built mosques, madrasas and a famous chain of caravanserais, and the state laid the foundations for Turkish Anatolia before collapsing under Mongol rule.

Origins after Manzikert

Turkish raiders had entered Byzantine Anatolia for decades, but the defeat of Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 and the civil wars that followed opened the region to settlement. Rival Byzantine factions even hired Turkish troops and handed them towns.

Suleiman ibn Qutalmish, a member of a branch of the Seljuk family that had fought the Great Seljuk sultans, took advantage. By the later 1070s he controlled Nicaea, close to Constantinople, and is traditionally counted as sultan from 1077. He was killed in 1086 in Syria fighting his Seljuk cousin Tutush.

Crusades and the move to Konya

Suleiman’s son Kilij Arslan I lost Nicaea to the First Crusade in June 1097 and was defeated by the crusaders at Dorylaeum on 1 July. The Byzantines recovered western Anatolia, and the Seljuks fell back on the central plateau, making Konya their capital.

For most of the twelfth century the sultans competed with the Danishmendids, another Turkish dynasty in northern Anatolia, and with Byzantium. Kilij Arslan II defeated Emperor Manuel I Komnenos at the Battle of Myriokephalon in 1176, ending Byzantine hopes of reconquering the plateau. He also absorbed the Danishmendid lands in the 1170s.

The golden age

The sultanate reached its height in the early thirteenth century. Kaykhusraw I took the Mediterranean port of Antalya in 1207, and Kaykawus I took Sinop on the Black Sea in 1214, giving the state access to two seas. Kayqubad I, who ruled from 1220 to 1237, captured the coastal fortress that he renamed Alaiye, today’s Alanya, and built palaces and fortifications.

Trade flourished. The sultans and their officials built caravanserais, fortified inns spaced roughly a day’s journey apart along the main roads. The best known include the Sultan Han near Aksaray, built in 1229, and another Sultan Han near Kayseri from the 1230s. Merchants could stay in them free for a few days, and the state offered a form of insurance against losses to bandits.

Konya became a cultural centre where Persian was the language of the court and of literature. The Alaeddin Mosque, completed under Kayqubad I, still stands on the citadel hill. Refugees from the Mongol advance in Central Asia arrived, among them the family of the poet Jalal al-Din Rumi, who settled in Konya and died there in 1273.

Society and culture

The sultanate ruled a mixed population. Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians, Armenians and Syriac Christians remained numerous in towns and villages for generations, alongside growing numbers of Turkish settlers, Turkmen nomads and immigrants from Iran. The sultans married Christian princesses, employed Christian officials and sometimes took refuge in Byzantium during family quarrels.

Persian culture dominated the court. Sultans took names from the Persian epic tradition, such as Kaykhusraw and Kayqubad, and Persian was used for chronicles, poetry and much administration. Arabic remained the language of religion and law, while Turkish was spoken by soldiers and nomads but only slowly became a written literary language.

Architecture combined these influences. Stone buildings with elaborately carved portals, a feature of Anatolian Seljuk work, drew on local building traditions as well as Iranian and Syrian models. Hospitals, madrasas and tomb towers built in Konya, Kayseri, Sivas and Divriği, where the Great Mosque and Hospital is now a World Heritage Site, survive as the main record of the period.

Mongol overlordship and decline

On 26 June 1243 a Mongol army defeated Sultan Kaykhusraw II at Köse Dağ in north-eastern Anatolia. The sultanate survived, but as a vassal paying tribute, and after the founding of the Ilkhanate in Iran its affairs were increasingly directed by Mongol officials and powerful ministers.

Rival claimants divided the throne, and Turkmen lords on the frontiers acted independently. The last sultan generally recognised, Mesud II, died around 1308, and the dynasty disappeared. Anatolia broke into small principalities, the beyliks, among them the Karamanids and the emirate of Osman, founder of the Ottoman state.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1071, 26 August: Byzantine defeat at Manzikert.
• c. 1077: Suleiman ibn Qutalmish established as sultan, based at Nicaea.
• 1097, June–July: Nicaea falls to the crusaders; Seljuk defeat at Dorylaeum.
• 1176, 17 September: Kilij Arslan II defeats Manuel I at Myriokephalon.
• 1207: Kaykhusraw I captures Antalya.
• 1220–1237: Reign of Kayqubad I, the sultanate’s peak.
• 1243, 26 June: Mongols defeat the Seljuks at Köse Dağ.
• c. 1308: Death of Mesud II, end of the dynasty.

Why it matters

The Sultanate of Rum turned Anatolia from a Byzantine Greek heartland into a largely Turkish and Muslim region. Its architecture and trade network still mark the Turkish landscape, and from its fragments rose the Ottoman Empire.