"Request for comment about the description of the Sultanate of Rum"

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Can the Sultanate of Rum be described as a "Turkic state"? पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 17:40, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes (per nomination) I am asking for comments, because I am stuck in a fruitless ping-pong with one user above. As is well-known, the Sultanate of Rum was culturally Turco-Persian, and followed Sunni Islam. Still, as a political entity, it was governed by a Turkic dynasty, and is therefore regularly described as a "Turkic state" or a "Turkish state" in the literature. I suggest we should incorporate that fact in the introduction so that political entity ("Turkic state"), culture ("Turco-Persian culture") and religion ("Sunni Islam") all be represented. I think the introductory sentence should be something like: "The Sultanate of Rum was a Turkic state, founded in Anatolia by the Seljuk Turks after the Battle of Manzikert (1071). It was culturally Turco-Persian, and followed Sunni-Islam."
Here are some references for "Turkic/sh state" being used as the primary descriptive for the Sultanate of Rum:

  • Houshisadat, Seyed Mohammad (5 October 2020). Iran's Regional Relations: A History from Antiquity to the Islamic Republic. Routledge. p. 95. ISBN 978-1-000-17882-1. In due course a new Turkish state, the Seljuk Sultante of Rum, was formed in Anatolia
  • Nicolle, David (23 February 2011). Cross & Crescent in the Balkans: The Ottoman Conquest of Southeastern Europe (14th–15th centuries). Casemate Publishers. p. 18. ISBN 978-1-84468-760-2. ...what would become the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum. The new Turkish states which had been established in conquered Byzantine territory during the late-eleventh century...
  • Holt, Andrew (30 June 2023). Religion and World Civilizations [3 volumes]: How Faith Shaped Societies from Antiquity to the Present [3 volumes]. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 296. ISBN 978-1-4408-7424-6. ...the Sultanate of Rum and other smaller Turkish states.
  • Ali, Zaheer (1 December 2023). Khilafat in History and Indian Politics. Taylor & Francis. p. 117. ISBN 978-1-003-83082-5. Subsequently, the Sultanate of Rum (Islamic variant of Rome) came into existence with its capital in Konya, which later emerged as a powerful Turkish state.
  • Wink, André (1990). Al-Hind the Making of the Indo-Islamic World: The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest : 11Th-13th Centuries. BRILL. p. 10. ISBN 978-90-04-10236-1. In due course, a new Turkish state, the Seljuq Sultanate of Rum ('Rome') was created in Anatolia , a distant precursor of the Ottoman Sultanate.
  • World and Its Peoples. Marshall Cavendish. September 2006. p. 772. ISBN 978-0-7614-7571-2. The Seljuk dynasty of sultans of Rum, a Turkish state that had taken over the Anatolian Peninsula in 1071.
  • Lewis, Bernard (1963). Istanbul and the Civilization of the Ottoman Empire. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-8061-1060-8. A powerful Turkish state, with its capital in the ancient city of Iconium, which the Turks called Konya. This dynasty, which with varying success ruled Turkish Anatolia until the beginning of the fourteeth century, was known as the Sultans of Rum.
  • LePree, James Francis; Djukic, Ljudmila (9 September 2019). The Byzantine Empire [2 volumes]: A Historical Encyclopedia [2 volumes]. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 174. ISBN 978-1-4408-5147-6. ...This allowed Kilij Arslan to establish an independent Turkish state, called the Sultanate of Rum.
  • Roberts, John Morris (1997). A Short History of the World. Oxford University Press. p. 173. ISBN 978-0-19-511504-8. Under the Seljuks, a true Turkish state at last came into being in Iran and Anatolia (where the Turks called their new province the Sultanate of Rum)
  • A ́goston, Ga ́bor; Masters, Bruce Alan (21 May 2010). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. Infobase Publishing. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-4381-1025-7. The Rum Seljuks established the strongest and most important Turkish state in Asia Minor in the 1070s.

पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 17:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

No: What does "Turkic state" imply here other than that the dynasty was of Turkic ancestry (which goes without saying and already appears in the lede)? OP claims that it has to do with their "political" aspect, which is not mentioned and thus sheer WP:SYNTH and contradicts the fact that the vast majority of WP:RS agrees that about every aspect, politically, culturally, etc (excluding their origins) of the Sultanate of Rum was Persian(ate)/Perso-Islamic/Greco-Roman (cited down below here, list will increase gradually, otherwise extensively shown in the Culture section of this article), thus meaning that OPs suggestion goes against WP:NPOV. Moreover, 5 of those cited sources are completely unrelated to this topic (Source 3, 4, 5, 6, 9. 6 is not even WP:RS), clearly demonstrating that OP is cherrypicking whatever passing mentions they can find from Google ebooks, not even taking a moment to actually read about this entity. A moment ago they didn't even know what "Turco-Persian" meant, mainly basing their argument on a flawed interpretation of its meaning [1], despite getting the opportunity to read it up thrice. It's also worth noting that OP is notorious for engaging in WP:SYNTH/WP:OR/making up their own rules, as well as abusing the WP:RFC system, as they recently did in Talk:Maurya Empire, creating multiple RFCs, which they were called out for [2].

  • "It is generally assumed that the Rum Seljuq sultans adopted the government system and institutions established by their Great Seljuq cousins and consequently the Perso-Islamic concept of legitimate kingship. This concept was the result of the synthesis of the ancient Iranian concept of kingship and Islamic notions and norms which resulted in the ideology usually called ‘Perso-Islamic autocracy’. While it is true that Islamic notions and norms were especially static and resistant to change, it cannot be said that they remained the same. Different ideological options, though not entirely novel, were developed as the result of historical, political and economical changes. The Rum Seljuqs adopted the Perso-Islamic concept of the ideology of kingship as it was formulated under their Great Seljuq cousins, but they had to adapt it taking into account the political realities of their time. A compact formulation of the Perso-Islamic ideology as promoted by the Great Seljuqs is given in an inscription of the third Great Seljuq sultan Malikshāh on the Friday Mosque in Isfahan" / "The honorific titles used here are stereotypical for the description of a Perso-Islamic ruler and were used by the Great Seljuqs and their successor states to express their ideology of kingship." / Thus this rebellious branch of the Turkish Seljuqs was transformed into a ‘Perso-Islamic state’ with a developed court and capital. pp. 64–65 and 74, The Seljuqs: Politics, Society and Culture, Edinburgh University Press
  • "It has been the basic administrative technique of Persian statecraft that had been given its Islamic character under the Great Seljuks in Persian in the mid-eleventh century. The system was passed on to the Ottomans through the Seljuks of Rum...." --Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition, Norman Itzkowitz, University of Chicago Press, page 48.
  • "...it is perhaps not surprising that Iranian cultural, political, and literary traditions permeate the mirrors of early thirteenth-century Anatolia." --Turkish Language, Literature, and History, ed. Bill Hickman, Gary Leiser, Routledge, page 278
  • "Meanwhile, the intensive Islamicization of Anatolia resulted in the spread and conslidation of two fundamental elements of Persianate Islam: the spread of Sufism from below and the imposition of Persianate monarchy, statecraft, and political ethics from above." - Revolutions of the End of Time: Apocalypse, Revolution and Reaction in the Persianate World, Saïd Amir Arjomand, Brill Publishers
  • "Moreover, their administrators and the religious elite in their cities were Persian. And with the terrifying thirteenth-century Mongol invasions of the eastern Islamic world, a mighty torrent of Persian refugees poured into Anatolia, particularly Konya. The Rum Seljuq state – with a diverse population of Byzantine Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Turcomans and Persians – was especially successful in the period from 1220 to 1250 and laid the foundations for the subsequent Islamisation of Anatolia." / "Quite paradoxically, the Byzantine practice of qualifying Muslim Anatolia as Persia closely matches contemporary scholarly inter pretations of the Anatolian Muslim space as ‘Persianate’. Muslim Anatolian culture is sometimes defined as Persianate due to the outstanding role of the Persian language, textual culture and art. Persian was the language of belles-lettres and of the royal courts throughout Muslim Anatolia; the Seljuq sultans not only spoke Persian and issued orders and commands in it, but also compiled verses in that language. The Seljuq administrative structure imitated that of the Iranian Seljuqs." - page 15 and 150, The Seljuqs and their Successors: Art, Culture and History, Edinburgh University Press
  • "As with other twelfth- and thirteenth- century Middle Eastern states ruled by a Turkish military elite, then, the Seljuqs of Anatolia modelled themselves closely on Persian–Islamic government traditions. These in turn drew on ancient pre-Islamic Iranian models, whose touchstone of excellence was the Sasanian machinery of rule and the religious norms and forms of Islam. Together these created an enduring symbol of good government.", page 203, The Medieval Turks: Collected Essays, Robert Hillenbrand, Edinburgh University Press
  • "There also seems to be evidence for emulation by the Ottomans of the Persian system of government, as applied by the Seljuqs and Ilkhans." - page 210, Khanbaghi, Aptin (2016). "Champions of the Persian Language: The Mongols or the Turks?". In De Nicola, Bruno; Melville, Charles (eds.). The Mongols' Middle East: Continuity and Transformation in Ilkhanid Iran. Brill Publishers
  • "We cannot yet follow in detail the indirect and tortuous path through which the Perso-Islamic tradition of state as interpreted by the Seljuks and Ilkhanids became part of the developing Ottoman government described in the few remaining documents and hints in the chronicles." - p. 19, Living in the Ottoman Ecumenical Community, The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage, Volume: 39, Linda Darling, Brill Publishers --HistoryofIran (talk) 18:00, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply