Persian History · Chronicle VI of X
Turks & Mongols
Seljuk sultans, the Assassins of Alamut, and the Mongol storm that remade Iran.
The Great SeljuksMilitary
The Turkish Seljuks defeat the Ghaznavids at Dandanaqan and become masters of Khurasan and Iran.
Nomadic Oghuz Turks converted to Sunni Islam, the Seljuks under Tughril Beg swept across Iran and in 1055 entered Baghdad, freeing the caliph from the Shia Buyids. They ruled as sultans in the caliph's name, and their empire fused Turkish military power with Persian administration and culture.
The Great SeljuksPolitical
The Persian vizier Nizam al-Mulk governs the Seljuk Empire, founds the Nizamiyya colleges, and writes his manual of statecraft.
For thirty years Nizam al-Mulk ran the empire under Alp Arslan and Malik Shah, building a network of madrasas to train orthodox scholars and administrators. His Siyasatnama ('Book of Government') became a classic of Persian political thought. His assassination in 1092 signalled the empire's coming fragmentation.
The Great SeljuksMilitary
Alp Arslan crushes the Byzantine army at Manzikert, opening Anatolia to Turkish settlement.
The capture of the emperor Romanos IV shattered Byzantine defences and let Turkish tribes flood into Asia Minor, a turning point that would eventually lead to the Crusades and, much later, the Ottoman Empire. For Iran, Seljuk power was now at its zenith, stretching from the Mediterranean to Central Asia.
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The AssassinsReligious
The Ismaili leader Hassan-i Sabbah takes the mountain fortress of Alamut and founds the order of the Nizari 'Assassins.'
From Alamut and a chain of castles, the Nizari Ismailis waged a campaign of targeted killings against Seljuk and other rulers, striking fear far beyond their small numbers. European Crusaders brought home garbled tales that gave the word 'assassin' to the languages of the West.
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The Persian RenaissanceCultural
The polymath Omar Khayyam, famed for his quatrains and his solar calendar, dies at Nishapur.
Under Seljuk patronage Khayyam reformed the calendar to remarkable accuracy and advanced algebra. His Rubaiyat, later famous in the West through Edward FitzGerald's translation, capture a meditative, wine-tinged skepticism — one voice in the extraordinary Persian literary culture flourishing under Turkish rule.
The Mongol StormMilitary
The Mongols under Genghis Khan pour into the Khwarazmian Empire, unleashing devastation on the cities of Iran.
Provoked by the massacre of his envoys, Genghis Khan turned west with terrible force. Bukhara, Samarkand, Merv, Nishapur, and Herat were stormed and their populations slaughtered in numbers that scarred the Iranian world for generations. Irrigation systems and libraries built over centuries were destroyed in months.
The IlkhanatePolitical
Genghis Khan's grandson Hulagu destroys the Assassins of Alamut, sacks Baghdad in 1258, and founds a Mongol realm in Iran.
Hulagu's sack of Baghdad ended the Abbasid Caliphate and, by tradition, killed the last caliph. Yet his dynasty, the Ilkhans, settled into Iran and were gradually captured by its civilization — adopting Persian as the language of court and culture and rebuilding what the conquest had wrecked.
The IlkhanateCultural
The Ilkhan Ghazan adopts Islam and, with his vizier Rashid al-Din, reforms the state and sponsors a great flowering of art.
Ghazan's conversion completed the Mongols' absorption into the Iranian-Islamic world. His minister Rashid al-Din, a physician and historian, compiled the Jami al-Tawarikh, a pioneering world history, and Ilkhanid workshops produced sumptuous illustrated manuscripts blending Persian and East Asian styles.
FragmentationPolitical
With the death of Abu Sa'id and no clear heir, the Ilkhanate dissolves into rival successor states.
Dynasties like the Jalayirids, Muzaffarids, and Sarbadars carved up the Iranian lands, an age of disunity remembered for the exquisite lyric poetry of Hafez of Shiraz. This fractured landscape lay open to conquest — and out of Transoxiana a new world-conqueror was already rising.
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