Tughril turned nomadic herders into masters of Baghdad and its caliph
Around 993 a boy named after a bird of prey was born among Oghuz Turks wandering the steppe for pasture. Within his lifetime Tughril led those herders out of Central Asia, crushed the Ghaznavids, entered Baghdad in 1055 and reduced the Abbasid caliph to a ceremonial figure.
Tughril's name is the Old Turkic word for a hunting bird, possibly the crested goshawk. Orphaned of his father Mikail, he grew up with his brother Chaghri under the care of their grandfather Seljuk, the dynasty's namesake, at Jand, where the family seems to have converted to Islam. In the 1020s the clan served the Kara-Khanids of Bukhara, and Mahmud of Ghazni imprisoned Tughril's uncle Arslan Isra'il after he asked to settle near Sarakhs.
When Mahmud's son Mas'ud treated the Turkic nomads as a threat, they fought back. In 1037 they forced the Ghaznavids to hand over Sarakhs, Abivard and Marw, and Tughril was proclaimed sultan, with the Friday sermon read in his name. The decisive victory at Dandanaqan in 1040 ended Ghaznavid control of Greater Khorasan. The caliph al-Qa'im then granted his request for a formal decree of authority.
Over the next fourteen years, with help from his half-brother Ibrahim Inal, he took much of Iran from the Buyids, making first Ray and then Isfahan his capital, and campaigned into Azerbaijan and Byzantine lands. Invited to Baghdad in 1055, he ended Buyid rule there, married his niece to the caliph, later executed Ibrahim Inal for rebelling, and defeated Arslan al-Basasiri, who was backed by the Fatimids. He himself wed the caliph's daughter despite the caliph's objections.
A committed Hanafi Muslim, Tughril funded mosques and madrasas, and with his vizier Amid al-Mulk Kunduri restricted rival sects. Accounts differ on whether he ruled justly or harshly. His lasting legacy was a model of government blending Turkic tradition, local administrative custom and Abbasid religious legitimacy, turning the sultan into an absolute ruler who overshadowed the caliph's worldly power. He died in 1063.
Source: Tughril I
