Rumi's Historical Context
Middle East Study Group
Grand Lake Neighborhood Center
May 19, 2007
Placing Rumi in the Context of Medieval Islam: From Shiites to Seljuks to Mongols
(Map reference: see the handout set of five maps from Marshall Hodgson’s Venture of Islam: 1. 10th century Shiite dynasties; 2. Greater Seljuk empire c. 1100; 3. Rum Seljuk and Khwarazmshah states c. 1200 (before Mongol invasion); 4. 13th c. Mongol empire in Middle East; 5. 14th c. emergence of Ottoman sultanate.)
The 10th century is called “the Shiite Century.” In 909 the Fatimids seized power in Tunis and founded an Ismaili Shiite caliphate there. In 969 they took over Egypt, establishing Cairo (al-Qahirah, “the conquerors”) as their capital, but they respected the religious freedom of all subjects. In 1171, Salah-al-Din (Ayyubid dynasty) re-established Sunnism there. From 932 to 1062, in western Persia and Iraq, the Buyids (Twelver Shiites) established a Persian dynasty with three brothers ruling from three major cities—Isfahan, Shiraz, and Baghdad, where the Abbasid caliph was kept prisoner as a figurehead. While tolerating other Muslim sects, the Buyids established Shiite schools and promoted learning. They were opposed by their fellow Persians in the east, the Khurasan-based Sunni dynasty of the Samanids, who ruled from 819 to 1005. Both regimes, however, contributed to a significant revival of Persian culture. Across the northern Syria-Mosul region, the Twelver Shiite Hamdanids ruled from 905 to 1004. They too were foes of the Buyids.
The military effectiveness of Turkish tribes from Central Asia played a major role in shaping (and perpetually reshaping) the political boundaries of medieval Islam. Turkish warriors first entered the Middle East as enslaved prisoners of war, then Turkish boys were turned over as tribute to the Abbasid caliphs, who trained them to be part of their own personal military and administrative regime. The military thus remained independent, without indigenous ties. Gradually, Turkish military forces took political control of the weakened Baghdad caliphate. In addition, Turkic tribes were hired by rulers (e.g. the Samanids) to provide ghazis (border warriors for Islam) to defend against invasions. The ghazis converted to Islam for practical reasons—they had no interest in doctrinal disputes, but the call to jihad was a unifying ideology in Muslim regions. Often they replaced their rulers with their own military elites. The most famous example is the Mamluks (“slaves”) of Egypt, who were brought there as boys from Turkish and Central Asian regions and who became a ruling military caste, controlling the state from 1250 to 1517. It was the Mamluks who finally stopped the Mongol armies, defeating them at Ayn Jalut (near Nazareth) in 1260.
The 11th century saw the revival of Sunni dominance in the Middle East, largely through the military success of two Turkish dynasties, both founded by ghazi warriors who had served the Samanid dynasty before establishing their own Turko-Persian empires. The first is the Afghanistan-based Ghaznavids, who who parlayed an iqta (military land grant) from the Samanids into an empire stretching from Khurasan to India. Their period of greatest strength was from 994 to 1040, when a rival Turkish group called the Seljuks defeated them in Khurasan, forcing the Ghaznavids to expand their empire eastward into northern India.
The Seljuk dynasty took its name from a pagan Turkic chieftain who converted to Islam in 956 in the service of the Samanids. In return for military services, clan chiefs received grants for large tracts of grazing lands (sheep, goats, horses & camels). This attracted other Turkic tribes from Central Asia into the Samanid region. In 1005 the Seljuks displaced the weakened, dependent Samanids and began to pressure the Buyids, who also had grown weak. In 1055 the Seljuks captured Baghdad, ending the Buyids’ Shiite control of the caliphate. A Turco-Abbasid Sunni alliance was cemented by the marriage of the Seljuk leader to the caliph’s sister. The Seljuk leader thus became the sultan (“authority”) of a revived Sunni caliphate. The Seljuks then pushed west to conquer Azerbaijan and Armenia, culminating in a historic victory over the Byzantine forces at Manzikert in 1071. This opened a path for Islam into the largely Christian region of Anatolia. In 1077 a Seljuk branch was established there that became known as the Rum Seljuk dynasty, since the Byzantine empire had always called the region eastern “Rome.” In 1096 the Byzantine emperor, pressured by Turkish tribes threatening Constantinople, asked the pope for help, leading to the First Crusade and the Crusader takeover of Jerusalem in 1099. The Seljuks, however, chose not to get involved, being caught up in internal rivalries in Iraq and Persia.
The Seljuks created a problem for themselves due to their tradition of giving each son of a military leader his own land to develop. This created rivalries that fragmented the empire. In 1153 other Turkish tribes rose up against Sanjar (“last of the great Seljuks”). His agrarian bureaucracy had been unable to fend off the pastoral nomads who rose to power in several regions of Khurasan. Power in the east shifted to the Khwarasmshah tribe, which ended Seljuk rule in Khurasan in 1157, then defeated the remaining Turkish tribes, setting the stage for their confrontation with the Mongols in the early 13th century.
The 13th century was dominated by the Mongol invasions, which lay behind the turbulent political context of Rumi’s life and work in Konya (then the capital of Anatolia). The first invasion came about because the Khwaramshahs had massacred 100 Mongol diplomats negotiating for peace. Genghis Khan (d. 1227) declared an all-out war against Islam and devastated the Khurasan region between 1219 and 1223. Fear of the Mongol armies drove many Persian intellectual and religious leaders to emigrate to Anatolia, including Rumi’s father, Baha al-Din, a cleric and mystic. Leaving their homeland in the (now Afghan) region of Balkh, the family travelled for years about the Middle East, finally settling in Konya around 1220 at the invitation of the Seljuk Rum sultan, Kay Qobad. Rumi’s father died in 1231. Rumi studied Islamic law in Damascus until 1237, when he took over his father’s post. In 1244, Rumi met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish who became the central figure in Rumi’s life until he disappeared in 1247. Rumi’s poetry was a continuing internal engagement with Shams’s powerful spiritual presence. But it’s clear from Franklin Lewis’s biographical research that Rumi was part of the urban elite in Konya and thus constantly involved in the political struggles of his time. Lewis (pp. 277-84) describes Rumi’s personal relationships with various authorities of this violent era, using extant letters to suggest his skill at combining diplomacy with pastoral counselling.
In 1243, the Mongols defeated the Seljuk Rum forces at Kose Dag, forcing the sultan to become a tribute-paying vassal. But Mongol Ilkhanid control was lax, allowing local Turkish amirs to develop small client regimes charged with sending taxes and custom dues back to the Mongols in Karakorum. From 1256, Anatolia was actually ruled by a brutally opportunistic Mongol appointee in Konya known as the Parvane, who was nominally the sultan’s personal assistant. He was also a supporter of Rumi’s dervish lodge (Lewis, 279-80). But as Ethel Wolper shows in Cities and Saints (see the May 5 “Perspectives” handout), the Mongols’ basic policy was decentralization, and this included support for local Sufi groups that were less doctrinaire and more open to the non-Muslim population than the madrasa-based Seljuk orthodoxy had been. In effect, Sufi lodges became populist civic spaces. This political background is obviously relevant when we consider Rumi’s inclusivist spiritual outlook.
In 1258 (a key date) the Mongols under Hulagu destroyed Baghdad and ended the Abbasid caliphate. Rumi died in 1273.
References:
Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, v. 2: Expansion of Islam in the Middle Period (1974).
Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (2000).
Ethel Sara Wolper, Cities and Saints: Sufism and the Transformation of Urban Space in Medieval Anatolia (2003).
Grand Lake Neighborhood Center
May 19, 2007
Placing Rumi in the Context of Medieval Islam: From Shiites to Seljuks to Mongols
(Map reference: see the handout set of five maps from Marshall Hodgson’s Venture of Islam: 1. 10th century Shiite dynasties; 2. Greater Seljuk empire c. 1100; 3. Rum Seljuk and Khwarazmshah states c. 1200 (before Mongol invasion); 4. 13th c. Mongol empire in Middle East; 5. 14th c. emergence of Ottoman sultanate.)
The 10th century is called “the Shiite Century.” In 909 the Fatimids seized power in Tunis and founded an Ismaili Shiite caliphate there. In 969 they took over Egypt, establishing Cairo (al-Qahirah, “the conquerors”) as their capital, but they respected the religious freedom of all subjects. In 1171, Salah-al-Din (Ayyubid dynasty) re-established Sunnism there. From 932 to 1062, in western Persia and Iraq, the Buyids (Twelver Shiites) established a Persian dynasty with three brothers ruling from three major cities—Isfahan, Shiraz, and Baghdad, where the Abbasid caliph was kept prisoner as a figurehead. While tolerating other Muslim sects, the Buyids established Shiite schools and promoted learning. They were opposed by their fellow Persians in the east, the Khurasan-based Sunni dynasty of the Samanids, who ruled from 819 to 1005. Both regimes, however, contributed to a significant revival of Persian culture. Across the northern Syria-Mosul region, the Twelver Shiite Hamdanids ruled from 905 to 1004. They too were foes of the Buyids.
The military effectiveness of Turkish tribes from Central Asia played a major role in shaping (and perpetually reshaping) the political boundaries of medieval Islam. Turkish warriors first entered the Middle East as enslaved prisoners of war, then Turkish boys were turned over as tribute to the Abbasid caliphs, who trained them to be part of their own personal military and administrative regime. The military thus remained independent, without indigenous ties. Gradually, Turkish military forces took political control of the weakened Baghdad caliphate. In addition, Turkic tribes were hired by rulers (e.g. the Samanids) to provide ghazis (border warriors for Islam) to defend against invasions. The ghazis converted to Islam for practical reasons—they had no interest in doctrinal disputes, but the call to jihad was a unifying ideology in Muslim regions. Often they replaced their rulers with their own military elites. The most famous example is the Mamluks (“slaves”) of Egypt, who were brought there as boys from Turkish and Central Asian regions and who became a ruling military caste, controlling the state from 1250 to 1517. It was the Mamluks who finally stopped the Mongol armies, defeating them at Ayn Jalut (near Nazareth) in 1260.
The 11th century saw the revival of Sunni dominance in the Middle East, largely through the military success of two Turkish dynasties, both founded by ghazi warriors who had served the Samanid dynasty before establishing their own Turko-Persian empires. The first is the Afghanistan-based Ghaznavids, who who parlayed an iqta (military land grant) from the Samanids into an empire stretching from Khurasan to India. Their period of greatest strength was from 994 to 1040, when a rival Turkish group called the Seljuks defeated them in Khurasan, forcing the Ghaznavids to expand their empire eastward into northern India.
The Seljuk dynasty took its name from a pagan Turkic chieftain who converted to Islam in 956 in the service of the Samanids. In return for military services, clan chiefs received grants for large tracts of grazing lands (sheep, goats, horses & camels). This attracted other Turkic tribes from Central Asia into the Samanid region. In 1005 the Seljuks displaced the weakened, dependent Samanids and began to pressure the Buyids, who also had grown weak. In 1055 the Seljuks captured Baghdad, ending the Buyids’ Shiite control of the caliphate. A Turco-Abbasid Sunni alliance was cemented by the marriage of the Seljuk leader to the caliph’s sister. The Seljuk leader thus became the sultan (“authority”) of a revived Sunni caliphate. The Seljuks then pushed west to conquer Azerbaijan and Armenia, culminating in a historic victory over the Byzantine forces at Manzikert in 1071. This opened a path for Islam into the largely Christian region of Anatolia. In 1077 a Seljuk branch was established there that became known as the Rum Seljuk dynasty, since the Byzantine empire had always called the region eastern “Rome.” In 1096 the Byzantine emperor, pressured by Turkish tribes threatening Constantinople, asked the pope for help, leading to the First Crusade and the Crusader takeover of Jerusalem in 1099. The Seljuks, however, chose not to get involved, being caught up in internal rivalries in Iraq and Persia.
The Seljuks created a problem for themselves due to their tradition of giving each son of a military leader his own land to develop. This created rivalries that fragmented the empire. In 1153 other Turkish tribes rose up against Sanjar (“last of the great Seljuks”). His agrarian bureaucracy had been unable to fend off the pastoral nomads who rose to power in several regions of Khurasan. Power in the east shifted to the Khwarasmshah tribe, which ended Seljuk rule in Khurasan in 1157, then defeated the remaining Turkish tribes, setting the stage for their confrontation with the Mongols in the early 13th century.
The 13th century was dominated by the Mongol invasions, which lay behind the turbulent political context of Rumi’s life and work in Konya (then the capital of Anatolia). The first invasion came about because the Khwaramshahs had massacred 100 Mongol diplomats negotiating for peace. Genghis Khan (d. 1227) declared an all-out war against Islam and devastated the Khurasan region between 1219 and 1223. Fear of the Mongol armies drove many Persian intellectual and religious leaders to emigrate to Anatolia, including Rumi’s father, Baha al-Din, a cleric and mystic. Leaving their homeland in the (now Afghan) region of Balkh, the family travelled for years about the Middle East, finally settling in Konya around 1220 at the invitation of the Seljuk Rum sultan, Kay Qobad. Rumi’s father died in 1231. Rumi studied Islamic law in Damascus until 1237, when he took over his father’s post. In 1244, Rumi met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish who became the central figure in Rumi’s life until he disappeared in 1247. Rumi’s poetry was a continuing internal engagement with Shams’s powerful spiritual presence. But it’s clear from Franklin Lewis’s biographical research that Rumi was part of the urban elite in Konya and thus constantly involved in the political struggles of his time. Lewis (pp. 277-84) describes Rumi’s personal relationships with various authorities of this violent era, using extant letters to suggest his skill at combining diplomacy with pastoral counselling.
In 1243, the Mongols defeated the Seljuk Rum forces at Kose Dag, forcing the sultan to become a tribute-paying vassal. But Mongol Ilkhanid control was lax, allowing local Turkish amirs to develop small client regimes charged with sending taxes and custom dues back to the Mongols in Karakorum. From 1256, Anatolia was actually ruled by a brutally opportunistic Mongol appointee in Konya known as the Parvane, who was nominally the sultan’s personal assistant. He was also a supporter of Rumi’s dervish lodge (Lewis, 279-80). But as Ethel Wolper shows in Cities and Saints (see the May 5 “Perspectives” handout), the Mongols’ basic policy was decentralization, and this included support for local Sufi groups that were less doctrinaire and more open to the non-Muslim population than the madrasa-based Seljuk orthodoxy had been. In effect, Sufi lodges became populist civic spaces. This political background is obviously relevant when we consider Rumi’s inclusivist spiritual outlook.
In 1258 (a key date) the Mongols under Hulagu destroyed Baghdad and ended the Abbasid caliphate. Rumi died in 1273.
References:
Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, v. 2: Expansion of Islam in the Middle Period (1974).
Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (2000).
Ethel Sara Wolper, Cities and Saints: Sufism and the Transformation of Urban Space in Medieval Anatolia (2003).
