33. The Turks Take Over From the Arabs
With the Arab Abbasid Caliphate in decline, the hitherto subjugated Turks began to take over and fill vacuum of power. In the eleventh century, a branch of the Oghuz Turks established the Seljuk Empire. Reducing the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad to a figurehead puppet, Seljuk Turk sultans ruled a vast Islamic state that absorbed other Turkic principalities and dominated the heart of the Muslim Middle East.
With the bow and arrow as their symbol of authority, the Seljuks extended their rule over Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and after crushing the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, much of Anatolia. At its greatest extent, Seljuk dominion stretched from western Anatolia and the Levant to the Hindu Kush in the east, and from Central Asia in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south. The Turks were thus established in the Middle East, and began their transition from Steppe nomads to a settled state.