Sultan Sanjar: Seljuk King of Kings Routed at Qatwan, Caged by the Oghuz

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Ahmad Sanjar was a son of Malik Shah I, born into the Seljuk dynasty of Oghuz Turks, steppe nomads who converted to Islam in the late 10th century and under Tughril and Alp Arslan conquered lands from the Hindu Kush to Anatolia. Their empire was trilingual: Turkic for the army, Persian for the court and bureaucracy, Arabic for scholars and law. When Malik Shah died in 1092, the family's appanage tradition set off a long succession war among his sons. From 1096 Sanjar governed Khorasan, and only in 1118 did he become sole paramount sultan. He ruled from Merv over a wealthy, Persianized state that paid its army through iqta land revenue grants.

Under his patronage artisans produced polychrome mina'i ware, stucco panels and illuminated astrological manuscripts, Persian poetry flourished, and the sultans took the ancient title Shahanshah. In 1141 he marched against the Qara Khitai at Qatwan near Samarkand, suffered his first major defeat, barely escaped, and lost everything east of the Syr Darya. In 1153 Oghuz Turkmen tribes, angered by taxes on their grazing lands, defeated and captured him. He escaped in 1156 to find Merv and Khorasan ruined and died in 1157. In 1221 Mongol forces under Tolui, son of Genghis Khan, sacked Merv and pulled his tomb down brick by brick.

• Iqta grants let officers collect taxes from a district directly in return for supplying equipped troops.
• At Qatwan Sanjar's wife was taken captive by the Qara Khitai.
• His Oghuz captors held him for three years, seating him on a throne by day and locking him in an iron cage at night.
• Unchecked Turkmen bands sacked the cities, treasuries and irrigation works of Khorasan.
• After his death the Khwarazmians took the eastern lands and the Sultanate of Rum carried the Seljuk line in Anatolia.