Seljuk Sultanate

Timeline

1. c. 1037–1063Khurasan and the Iranian Plateau · KhurasanSeljuk clan leader Tughril Beg defeated the remnants of the Ghaznavid dynasty, was invested by the Abbasid caliph as 'Sultan', and established the Great Seljuk Empire spanning Khurasan, Persia, and Iraq, with Isfahan as capital, using Sunni Islamic orthodoxy to integrate diverse peoples and laying the foundation for a Turkic–Persian–Arab composite polity.
2. 1063–1070eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus · AnatoliaAfter succeeding his uncle Tughril as sultan in 1063, Alp Arslan led Seljuk cavalry armies in a series of offensives against Armenia, Georgia, and the Byzantine Anatolian frontier, capturing Ani in 1064 and Ahlat in 1065, forcing local Christian polities to submit or migrate, and opening the strategic corridor for deeper penetration into Asia Minor and the Battle of Manzikert (1071).
3. 1060–1070Baghdad and the imperial center · MesopotamiaThe empire was governed through a hierarchy of sultan, vizier, and provincial governors (emirs); vizier Nizam al-Mulk implemented the iqta fief system to support the cavalry armies and founded Nizamiyya colleges to spread Sunni scholarship, while the military relied on mixed formations of Turkic ghulams and tribal cavalry, forming a composite administrative-military system of 'centralized authority alongside local fiefs' that sustained large-scale external expansion in the 1060s.