Rum’s sultans held Anatolia until Mongols came
After Manzikert in 1071, Seljuk Turks carved the Sultanate of Rum from Byzantine Anatolia—Rum meaning Rome. From Nicaea then Konya it peaked in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries before Köse Dağ in 1243 made it an Ilkhanid vassal.
Turkish herders hunting for pasture had been crossing Byzantine frontiers since the 1030s. After Manzikert, Suleiman ibn Qutalmish, a distant cousin of Alp Arslan, seized power in western Anatolia and broke from the Great Seljuks in 1077. He died after a failed bid for Aleppo in 1086, at the battle of Ain Salm, either in combat or by his own hand, and his general Abu’l-Qasim took Nicaea while young Kilij Arslan I sat in prison.
Freed after Malik Shah’s death in 1092, Kilij Arslan beat the People’s Crusade, lost to the First Crusade, regrouped at Konya, and smashed three crusade columns in 1101 before dying in 1107. His son Mesud I retook Konya in 1116 with Danishmend help and held nearly all central Anatolia when he died in 1156, having also faced the Second Crusade led by Louis VII and Conrad III. Kilij Arslan II finished the Danishmends and checked Manuel I Komnenos at Myriokephalon in 1176.
His sons then carved up the realm; one, Tughril, ruled Erzurum from 1192 to 1221. Suleiman II led an army put at 150,000 to 400,000 into Georgia’s Basiani valley, only to be surprised by Queen Tamar’s forces under her consort David Soslan. After his death in 1204, Kaykhusraw I retook Konya in 1205, and he, Kaykaus I, and Kayqubad I brought Seljuk Anatolia to its peak.
Kaykhusraw II’s struggle with the preacher Baba Ishak from 1239 weakened the army and cost the Crimean foothold before the Mongol victory of 1243. His three sons split the land along the Kızılırmak under Mongol oversight. In 1277 the Mamluk sultan Baibars routed the Mongols at Elbistan, and by the end Kaykhusraw III ruled only around Konya, while beyliks, the early Ottomans among them, honoured the sultan in name alone.
Source: Sultanate of Rum
