TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

ureaucracy in order to maintain political order, and the need to preserve settled subjects
in order to secure and develop the economic basis of the state; thus they should protect
sedentary civilization from the extortion of the nomads. For example, when the Seljuks
first entered Khorasan and conquered Nishapur in 1038, their leader, Toghril, had
difficulty in restraining his brothers from looting the city. He had to point out that as the
conquerors and new rulers of the land, they were in fact now destroying their own
property. 159
On the one hand, this second stage marks the beginning of the conquered
civilization’s conquest of the conquerors. On the other hand, it also marks the beginning
of the alienation of the founder tribal elements to the governing elite, which was now
heavily influenced by local sedentary elements, and to the newly emerging bureaucracy.
Realizing the fact that ‘tribal nomads can easily demolish the governmental apparatus of
the state, but can never construct it’, the new ruling dynasty, though itself was of tribal
nomadic origin, does not hesitate to take stand in favor of sedentary institutions.
The following example is one of many in the history of Middle East, Inner Asia,
and Iran. Forty years after conquering Iran, the Mongols were just beginning serious
attempts at regular government during the reign of Ghazan Khan (1195-1204). His
appeal to his fellow tribesmen underscores their serious inability to comprehend even
the simplest principles of governing a sedentary state:
I am not on the side of the Tazik ra’iyyat (Persian peasant). If there is any
purpose in pillaging them all, there is no-one with more power to do this than I.
in the Middle East”, in Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner, eds., Tribes and State Formation in the
Middle East, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1990, 109-126; Lawrence
Krader, “The Origin of the State among the Nomads of Asia”, Pastoral Production and Society,
Cambridge, 1979, 231-4.
159 C. E. Bosworth, “The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000-1217)”, in J. A.
Boyle, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, The Seljuq and Mongol Period, Cambridge, 1968, pp.
20-21.
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