Jalal al-Dawla Mu‘izz al-Din Abu’l-Fath Malik Shah I was the third Great Saljuq sultan (1072-1092), under whom the power of the sultanate reached its greatest extent.
A son of Sultan Alp Arslan, Malik Shah was appointed as his father’s heir in 1066. After his father’s death (1072), he was accepted as sole ruler by defeating his paternal uncle Qawurd, who had challenged him for supreme authority. He also had to put down two rebellions by his brother Tekish in 1081 and 1084, but thereafter his rule was secure. Malik Shah’s power was founded on two principal pillars: the central administration headed by his father’s Persian vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, and his large standing army of Turkish slave soldiers. Many of the more far-flung parts of the empire were granted to members of the Saljuq family as princes or governors. In the east of the empire, Malik Shah carried on wars against the Ghaznawids and Qarakhanids, and in the west against Georgia, Byzantium, and the Fatimid caliphate. He appointed his brother Tutush (I) as ruler of southern Syria and Palestine (1078), but as the Turkish conquest of northern Syria proceeded, Malik Shah later installed governors of his own choosing in Aleppo, Antioch, and elsewhere.
The first signs of instability in Saljuq rule began to appear when Nizam al-Mulk was assassinated (October 1092). Malik Shah’s relationship with the ‘Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, who had originally legitimized the rule of the Saljuqs, deteriorated toward the end of the reign. It is possible that the sultan intended to depose the caliph, but he died while hunting in November 1092, in circumstances that are still disputed by historians.
Whether or not the sultan was murdered like his vizier, the deaths of its two most powerful men within such a short period plunged the Great Saljuq Empire into disarray. Malik Shah’s widow Terken Khatun had her young son Mahmud proclaimed sultan by the caliph, but this move was contested by another son, Barkyaruq, and by Tutush in Syria. The ensuing civil wars, which continued into the twelfth century, greatly limited the ability of the Great Saljuqs to respond effectively to the threat to Muslim Syria and Palestine that was presented by the First Crusade (1096-1099).
-Alan V. Murray
Bibliography
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Hillenbrand, Carole, “1092: A Murderous Year,” The Arabist: Budapest Studies in Arabic 15-16 (1995), 281-296.
World History
