Seljuk Empire in the context of "Persia"

Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran to the east; Iraq, Syria, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south; and the Aegean Sea, Greece, and Bulgaria to the west. Turkey is home to over 85 million people; most are ethnic Turks, while Kurds are the largest ethnic minority. Officially a secular state, Turkey has a Muslim-majority population. Ankara is Turkey's capital and second-largest city. Istanbul is its largest city and economic center. Other major cities include İzmir, Bursa, and Antalya.

First inhabited by modern humans during the Late Paleolithic, present-day Turkey was home to various ancient peoples. The Hattians were assimilated by the Hittites and other Anatolian peoples. Classical Anatolia transitioned into cultural Hellenization after Alexander the Great's conquests, and later Romanization during the Roman and Byzantine eras. The Seljuk Turks began migrating into Anatolia in the 11th century, starting the Turkification process. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, when it disintegrated into Turkish principalities. Beginning in 1299, the Ottomans united the principalities and expanded. Mehmed II conquered Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in 1453. During the reigns of Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire became a global power. From 1789 onwards, the empire saw major changes, reforms, centralization, and rising nationalism while its territory declined.

Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, and the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a population of over 90 million, Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population and is the sixth-largest country in Asia. Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city, and financial center.

Home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations, most of Iran was first united as a nation by the Medes under Cyaxares in the 7th century BC and reached its territorial height in the 6th century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the 4th century BC. An Iranian rebellion in the 3rd century BC established the Parthian Empire, which later liberated the country. In the 3rd century CE, the Parthians were succeeded by the Sasanian Empire, who oversaw a golden age in the history of Iranian civilization. During this period, ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanization, religion, and administration. Once a center for Zoroastrianism, the 7th century CE Muslim conquest brought about the Islamization of Iran. Innovations in literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art were renewed during the Islamic Golden Age and Iranian Intermezzo, a period during which Iranian Muslim dynasties ended Arab rule and revived the Persian language. This era was followed by Seljuk and Khwarazmian rule, Mongol conquests and the Timurid Renaissance from the 11th to 14th centuries.

Islam is by far the most practiced religion in Turkey. Most Turkish people are Sunni Muslims, and most of them belong to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence. Smaller numbers belonging to the Alevi, Ja'fari and Alawite minorities. The established presence of Islam in the region that now constitutes modern Turkey dates back to the later half of the 11th century, when the Seljuks started expanding into eastern Anatolia.

While official records indicate the population of Turkey to be 99.8% Muslim, most surveys estimate the percentage to be around 85 to 95%. The Hanafi school of fiqh (maddhab) of Sunni Islam makes up about 90% of the Muslim population, with the remaining Muslim sects consisting of Alevis (close to 10%), Ja'faris (representing 1%) and Alawites (with an estimated population of around 500,000 to 1 million, or about 1%). With a sizeable part of population being Cultural Muslims, there is also a minority of Sufi and non-denominational Muslims.

Antalya is one of the largest cities in Turkey and the capital of Antalya Province, the fifth-most populous province. Recognized as the "capital of tourism" in Turkey and a pivotal part of the Turkish Riviera, Antalya sits on Anatolia's southwest coast, flanked by the Taurus Mountains. The urban population of the city is around 1.5 million, with a provincial population of 2,722,103.

The city was formerly known as Attalia and was founded in around 200 BC by King Attalus II of Pergamon. Attalia was soon conquered by the Romans. Roman rule saw the city thrive, including the construction of several new monuments, such as Hadrian's Gate, and the flourishing of nearby ancient cities such as Patara, Xanthos and Myra in the Lycia region; Perga, Aspendos and Side in Pamphylia; and Sagalassos, Antioch and Termessos in Pisidia. These cities were already significant centers before Roman influence. Antalya has changed hands several times, including to the Seljuk Empire in 1207 and an expanding Ottoman Empire in 1391. Ottoman rule brought relative peace and stability for the next five hundred years. The city was occupied by Italy for three years in the aftermath of World War I, but was returned to Turkey during the Turkish War of Independence.

The Sultanate of Rum, or Seljuk Empire of Rum, was a culturally Turco-Persian Sunni Muslim state, established over conquered Byzantine territories and peoples (Rum) of Anatolia by the Seljuk Turks following their entry into Anatolia after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The name Rum was a synonym for the medieval Eastern Roman Empire and its peoples, as it remains in modern Turkish. The name is derived from the Aramaic (romī) and Parthian (frwm) names for ancient Rome, via the Greek Ῥωμαῖοι (Romaioi) meaning Anatolia. It is considered to be the beginning of Turkish history in Anatolia.

The Sultanate of Rum seceded from the Seljuk Empire under Suleiman ibn Qutalmish in 1077. It had its capital first at Nicaea and then at Iconium. It reached the height of its power during the late 12th and early 13th century, when it succeeded in taking key Byzantine ports on the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. In the east, the sultanate reached Lake Van. Trade through Anatolia from Iran and Central Asia was developed by a system of caravanserai. Especially strong trade ties with the Genoese formed during this period. The increased wealth allowed the sultanate to absorb other Turkish states that had been established following the conquest of Byzantine Anatolia: Danishmendids, House of Mengüjek, Saltukids, Artuqids.

The Crusades were a series of military campaigns launched by the papacy between 1095 and 1291 against Muslim rulers for the recovery and defence of the Holy Land (Palestine), encouraged by promises of spiritual reward. The First Crusade was proclaimed by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095 in response to a Byzantine appeal for aid against the advancing Seljuk Turks. By this time, the papacy's position as head of the Catholic Church had strengthened, and earlier conflicts with secular rulers and wars on Western Christendom's frontiers had prepared it for the direction of armed force in religious causes. The First Crusade led to the creation of four Crusader states in the Middle East, whose defence required further expeditions from Catholic Europe. The organisation of such large-scale campaigns demanded complex religious, social, and economic institutions, including crusade indulgences, military orders, and the taxation of clerical income. Over time, the crusading movement expanded to include campaigns against pagans, Christian dissidents, and other enemies of the papacy, promoted with similar spiritual rewards and continuing into the 18th century.

The Crusade of 1101, the earliest papally sanctioned expedition inspired by the First Crusade, ended in disastrous defeats. For several decades thereafter, only smaller expeditions reached the Holy Land, yet their role in consolidating and expanding the Crusader states was pivotal. The fall of Edessa, the capital of the first Crusader state, prompted the Second Crusade, which failed in 1148. Its failure reduced support for crusading across Latin Christendom, leaving the Crusader states unable to resist Saladin's expansion. Having united Egypt and Muslim Syria under his rule, Saladin destroyed their combined armies at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. The Crusader states survived largely owing to the Third Crusade, a major campaign against Saladin, though Jerusalem remained under Muslim control. Initially directed against Egypt, the Fourth Crusade was diverted to the Byzantine Empire, culminating in the Sack of Constantinople and the establishment of the Latin Empire in 1204. The Fifth Crusade again targeted Egypt but failed to conquer it in 1219–21. By this period, crusade indulgences could also be obtained through other campaigns—such as the Iberian, Albigensian, and Northern Crusades—thereby diminishing enthusiasm for expeditions in the eastern Mediterranean.

The history of Anatolia (often referred to in historical sources as Asia Minor) can be roughly subdivided into: Prehistory of Anatolia (up to the end of the 3rd millennium BCE), Ancient Anatolia (including Hattian, Hittite and post-Hittite periods), Classical Anatolia (including Achaemenid, Hellenistic and Roman periods), Byzantine Anatolia (later overlapping, since the 11th century, with the gradual Seljuk and Ottoman conquest), Ottoman Anatolia (14th–20th centuries) and the Modern Anatolia, since the creation of the Republic of Turkey.

Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is its capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east and is narrowly separated from Pakistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. It has a population of more than 10.7 million people.

The territory was previously home to cultures of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, including the Oxus civilisation in west, with the Indo-Iranians arriving during the Andronovo culture. Parts of country were part of the Sogdian and Bactrian civilisations, and was ruled by those including the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great, the Greco-Bactrians, the Kushans, the Kidarites and Hephthalites, the First Turkic Khaganate, the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the Samanid Empire, the Kara-Khanids, Seljuks, Khwarazmians, the Mongols, Timurids and Khanate of Bukhara. The region was later conquered by the Russian Empire, before becoming part of the Soviet Union. Within the Soviet Union, the country's borders were drawn when it was part of Uzbekistan as an autonomous republic before becoming a constituent republic of the Soviet Union on 5 December 1929.

The Ghaznavid dynasty (Persian: غزنویان Ġaznaviyān) was a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Turkic mamluk origin. It ruled the Ghaznavid Empire or the Empire of Ghazni from 977 to 1186, which at its greatest extent, extended from the Oxus to the Indus Valley. The dynasty was founded by Sabuktigin upon his succession to the rule of Ghazna after the death of his father-in-law, Alp Tigin, who was an ex-general of the Samanid Empire from Balkh.

Sabuktigin's son, Mahmud of Ghazni, expanded the Ghaznavid Empire to the Amu Darya, the Indus River and the Indian Ocean in the east and to Rey and Hamadan in the west. Under the reign of Mas'ud I, the Ghaznavid dynasty began losing control over its western territories to the Seljuk Empire after the Battle of Dandanaqan in 1040, resulting in a restriction of its holdings to modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India.