New Trends in the Political History of Iran Under the Great Saljuqs (11th-12th Centuries)

The political history of Iran during the rule of the Saljuq Turks has been the subject of early and high‐quality scholarship since the golden age of Orientalism. By 1970, the factual framework was well established when an invigorating revision of the classical interpretation of the events (the Saljuqs as the secular arm of a Sunni revival monitored by the Abbasid caliphate) was being made. In the next decades, however, the field has fallen in the doldrums. Since the beginning of the 21th century, a “revival” is under way, resulting in a significant reassessment of the imperial narrative and of the centralist view it conveyed. This article introduces three of the most fertile trends of research: the role of the nomads, mostly the Türkmens, often downplayed in the sources, but essential to understand military history and political culture; second, the role of the local elites in the “Saljuq order”, which relied on alliances made between Turkish and Iranian networks; third, the importance of regional logics, whether it be the major East/West divide or the rise of some regions over the period (Azarbaijan, Khwarazm), to explain the complex factual framework.