This chapter investigates the emergence of imperial space in the early Islamic world, 7th–12th centuries, and Muslim notions of empire in this period. It examines how an imperial space was conquered under the Prophet Muhammad, Rashidun Caliphs and Umayyad dynasty, reaching its height in c.740, followed by its fragmentation under the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258). The role of jihad in this expansion is examined, along with the institutions that bound the empire together and the reasons for its disintegration. The expansion of the frontiers of the Islamic world only began again under Turkish dynasties, the Seljuqs, Qarakhanids and Ghaznavids in the 11th century, when parts of Anatolia, Central Asia and India were conquered. Finally, this chapter considers how imperial space was visualised and represented in this period, examining the evidence of maps in manuscripts of works by Arabic geographers of the 10th–11th centuries.

Under the year 652 /1254, several medieval Arabic chronicles mention the death of a certain Kamal al-Din Ibn Talha, the former khatib (chief mosque preacher) of Damascus, who is uniformly described as virtuous, learned and ascetic. Ibn Talha's claim to fame was that he was appointed vizier by the Ayyubid ruler al-Nasir Yusuf in 648/1250, but resigned the post after two days, instead embracing a life of asceticism; according to some accounts, even rejecting the position after the document of appointment had been formally drawn up. We are given, then, an idealised picture of an ‘alim, who if briefly tempted by the vanities of this world soon rejected them. This picture is, however, undermined by references elsewhere in the chronicles to Ibn Talha's earlier involvement in Ayyubid politics, serving as an emissary in the 636/1238 peace negotiations between the Ayyubid princes al-Jawad and al-Salih. Moreover, the notices in al-Safadi and al-Dhahabi conclude with an intriguing and critical comment: ‘He entered into perdition and error and made a circle of letters, claiming he could interpret knowledge of the unknown and of the final hour.’ This alludes to the ‘science of letters’ (‘ilm al-huruf ), the proponents of which believed that the letters of the Arabic script and the Qur’an encoded occult knowledge in their numerical values.

The most detailed account of Ibn Talha's career comes in Ibn ‘Imad's Shadharat al-dhahab, and refers to the same allegations, which, however, Ibn ‘Imad seeks to defuse. He calls Ibn Talha ‘one of the great preeminent men and leaders’ (ahad al-sudur wa’l-ru’asa’ al-mu‘azzamin), and reports that he was born in 582/1186, and studied hadith in Nishapur with the famous transmitters al-Mu’ayyad and Zaynab al-Sha‘riyya. He became a faqih, ‘and excelled at jurisprudence, usul and disputation’. Ibn Talha, he says, also wrote diplomatic correspondence for kings (tarassala ‘an al-muluk), and served as qadi in Nusaybin, his home town, before becoming khatib of Damascus. Ibn ‘Imad mentions Ibn Talha's famous two-day vizierate, and also reports that ‘he is attributed with a preoccupation with the science of letters (‘ilm al-huruf ) and [future] times, and predicting things from the unknown (al-mughibat). But it is said that he repented.’

This chapter considers the emergence of one of the main vehicles for the diffusion of new ideas of religiosity, literary Turkish. In contrast to previous studies which have claimed the emergence of Turkish as an expression of a proto-nationalism, this chapter argues that the emergence of Turkish must be seen against the twin background of the interest of Sufis, especially Jalal al-Din Rumi and his circle, in multi-lingual communication, and the new political circumstances thrown up by the Mongol invasions. Turkish is initially only used extensively for literary works in new cultural centres emerging in his period – the Mongol garrison town of Kırşehir, and the Turkmen principalities of the coastal peripheries. In the old Seljuq urban centres of Anatolia, Konya, Kayseri, Sivas, Persian remains the dominant if not the only form of literary language into the fifteenth century. Turkish thus seems to be a medium not just to communicate with an audience unversed in Persian, but an expression of political and religious aspirations.

The Mongol invasions coincided with a process of Islamisation that had been gathering speed in Anatolia since the second half of the twelfth century. This was accelerated both directly, if not necessarily always intentionally, by Mongol policies and indirectly by the changes Mongol rule wrought on Muslim society. Mongol rule redrew the political landscape of Anatolia, with the collapse of Seljuq authority leading to the emergence of new powers such as the beyliks. From the 1270s, Anatolia became increasingly integrated into the Ilkhanid empire, both through the Mongol military presence there but also the residence of scholars, bureaucrats and even relatively humble artisans such as members of futuwwa organisations from Iran. The marginalisation and eventual abolition of the traditional source of political authority in Anatolia, the Seljuq sultanate, in addition to the broader crisis of authority brought about by the end of the Abbasid Caliphate, forced Anatolia’s new rulers, both Turkmen and Mongol, to seek alternative means to justify their rule. A political rhetoric centred on belief and unbelief took hold, and with the Mongol conversion to Islam its use only increased. Incidents of persecution of non-Muslims, although not systematic, begin to be attested in the sources as the Mongols sought to assert their adherence to the new faith and justify their rule in Islamic terms.

This chapter considers the changes wrought by the Mongol invasions. It first examines briefly the development of Muslim politics and literature in the pre-Mongol period, demonstrating how until the middle of the thirteenth century textual productionfocused largely on the Seljuq court. It then looks at the impact of Mongol rule, concentrating in particular on the political and religious consequences - the crisis of legitimacy caused by the Seljuq collapse and, the position of the Mongols before and after their conversion, and the persecution of Christians that intensified under Mongol rule.As a result, political discourse was infused with a new concern with unbelief, absent in the Seljuq period.

This chapter considers the new vernacular literature that circulated in the Mongol period, both Turkish works and those expressed in a simple accessible Persian aimed at a wide audience beyond the court. It shows how the concern with the battle against unbelief penetrated not just political but also increasingly religious discourse, as attested by this religious literature which is both evidence for and a product of the process of Islamisation. Concern with holy war (ghaza) were not limited to the Ottomans’ frontier with Byzantium, as is widely thought, but permeated works produced across Anatolia, including those written by Sufis. It thus argues against the widespread paradigm that sees Sufism as a more ‘Christian-friendly’ bridge to Islam.

This chapter considers the emergence of one of the main vehicles for the diffusion of new ideas of religiosity, literary Turkish. In contrast to previous studies which have claimed the emergence of Turkish as an expression of a proto-nationalism, this chapter argues that the emergence of Turkish must be seen against the twin background of the interest of Sufis, especially Jalal al-Din Rumi and his circle, in multi-lingual communication, and the new political circumstances thrown up by the Mongol invasions. Turkish is initially used extensively only for literary works in new cultural centres emerging in his period – the Mongol garrison town of Kırşehir, and the Turkmen principalities of the coastal peripheries. In the old Seljuq urban centres of Anatolia, Konya, Kayseri and Sivas, Persian remained the dominant if not the only form of literary language into the fifteenth century. Turkish thus seems to have been a medium not just to communicate with an audience unversed in Persian, but an expression of political and religious aspirations.

This chapter examines the relationship between political and Sufi elites. Sufis relied on the financial support of Seljuq and Mongol officials, as is amply demonstrated by the correspondence of Jalal al-Din Rumi. It is often suggested that such support is rooted in practical advances for political elites such as legitimacy through association with Sufi saints. I argue that in fact the theology of Sufism itself could provide crucial legitimation to political elites, which helps explain its popularity. In the writings of Sultan Walad, Rumi’s son, we find the theory that the ruler can himself be not just a wali, one of God’s friends, as the saints were known, but even the qutb, the leader of the Sufi hierarchy, but will only be recognised as such by a Sufi saint, forming the ideological groundwork for this alliance. However, not all Sufis were automatically aligned with the status quo, and some sought temporal power for themselves; this chapter also takes up the story of the descendants of the rebel saint Baba Ilyas, and shows that despite his failure to seize secular power, his descendants succeeded in establishing a cult around his shrine that was sufficiently powerful to impress the Ottomans in the fifteenth century.

The Introduction lays out the state of the art of scholarship on history and religious change in medieval Anatolia, arguing that historians’ preoccupation with the Seljuq and Ottoman periods has led to neglect of the rich source material for the Mongol period. It considers approaches by previous scholars such as Vryonis, Köprūlü, Ocak and Kafadar.