Kaykhusraw I ( or Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Kaykhusraw ibn Kilij Arslān; ), the eleventh and youngest son of
Kilij Arslan II, was
Seljuk Sultan of Rûm. He succeeded his father in 1192, but had to fight his brothers for control of the Sultanate, losing to his brother
Suleiman II in 1196. He ruled it 1192–1196 and 1205–1211.
Name
The name "Kaykhusraw" is based on the name of the legendary ''
Shahnameh
The ''Shahnameh'' (, ), also transliterated ''Shahnama'', is a long epic poem written by the Persian literature, Persian poet Ferdowsi between and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couple ...
'' hero
Kay Khosrow.
Background
Kaykhusraw's date of birth is unknown. He was the eleventh and youngest son of
Kilij Arslan II (). His mother was of
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...
ancestry; Christian Greek women were the dominant origin of the
slave-concubines in the
Seljuk harem.
[The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East. (2012). Storbritannien: Bloomsbury Publishing.] Kaykhusraw received a good education during his upbringing, learning other languages besides his native
Turkish, which was
Persian,
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
, and
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
.
Marriage
Kaykhusraw married a daughter of
Manuel Maurozomes. Manuel Maurozomes would hold the castles of Chonae and Laodicea as a vassal of Kaykhusraw.
Reign
In 1192/93, Kaykhusraw returned the Byzantine nobleman,
Theodore Mangaphas, to
Emperor Isaac II after receiving assurances of Mangaphas' treatment. With his brother,
Rukn ad-Din Suleiman Shah, quickly advancing towards
Konya
Konya is a major city in central Turkey, on the southwestern edge of the Central Anatolian Plateau, and is the capital of Konya Province. During antiquity and into Seljuk times it was known as Iconium. In 19th-century accounts of the city in En ...
, Kaykhusraw fled to
Constantinople
Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...
in 1196. He lived in Constantinople from 1197–1203, possibly even being baptised. A ''
mathnawi
Mathnawi ( ), also spelled masnavi, mesnevi or masnawi, is a kind of poem written in rhyming couplets, or more specifically "a poem based on independent, internally rhyming lines". Most mathnawi poems follow a Meter (poetry), meter of eleven, or o ...
'' written by Kaykhusraw himself compares his destiny during that period to that of the legendary Iranian hero Jam (
Jamshid), who had to go into exile after losing his divine fortune (''
farr'').
After
Suleiman's death and
Kilij Arslan's ascension to the sultanate, Kaykhusraw forced his way into Konya, removed Kilij from power and was enthroned for a second time.
Kaykhusraw
seized Antalya in 1207 from its
Niceaen garrison which furnished the Seljuk sultanate with a port on the
Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...
. It was during this year, Kaykhusraw founded a mosque in Antalya.
Kaykhusraw was killed at the
Battle of Antioch on the Meander in 1211. His son
Kayqubad I, by Manuel Maurozomes' daughter, ruled the Sultanate from 1220 to 1237, and his grandson,
Kaykhusraw II, ruled from 1237 to 1246. Kaykhusraw's body was taken to Konya, where it was buried in the ancestral tomb of his family.
Identity
According to
Rustam Shukurov, Kaykhusraw I "had dual Christian and Muslim identity, an identity which was further complicated by dual Turkic/Persian and Greek ethnic identity".
Culture
Kaykhusraw wrote poetry in Persian.
Muhammad ibn Ali Rawandi (died after 1207) dedicated his historical chronicle of the
Seljuk Empire
The Seljuk Empire, or the Great Seljuk Empire, was a High Middle Ages, high medieval, culturally Turco-Persian tradition, Turco-Persian, Sunni Islam, Sunni Muslim empire, established and ruled by the Qiniq (tribe), Qïnïq branch of Oghuz Turks. ...
, ''
Rahat al-sudur wa-ayat al-surur'', to Kaykhusraw.
References
Sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaykhusraw 01
1211 deaths
Monarchs killed in action
Byzantine–Seljuk wars
Year of birth unknown
13th-century sultans of Rum
12th-century sultans of Rum
Persian-language poets
People of Byzantine descent