Kaykhusraw II

Kaykhusraw II was a sultan of the Seljuks of Rum, son and successor of Kaykubad I, who came to the throne in 634/1237. ² The Encyclopaedia of Islam says that the very power his father had built lay at the root of some difficulties of his reign, and that these, together with the Mongol invasion of his day, led to the catastrophe from which the Seljuk state never recovered. ²

Kaykhusraw II was not the heir Kaykubad had named: for political reasons Kaykubad had chosen one of the two sons he had by an Ayyubid wife. Kaykhusraw was nevertheless the eldest son and the only one who already held real power. ² The article on the palace of Kaykubadiyya notes that Kaykhusraw ascended the throne at the palace of Kaykubadiyya, near Kayseri, where his father had died. ³ The article calls his accession a "usurpation". It was followed by executions: his half-brothers and their mother were strangled, many amirs and high dignitaries were put to death, and the Khwarazmians settled in Asia Minor had to flee. Even Sa'd al-Din Köpek, his counsellor in all this, was done away with. ² The article presents this as a sharpening of Kaykubad's own policy against the aristocracy. ²

The article says that, like his father at the end of his reign, Kaykhusraw II tried above all to push his Ayyubid rivals back from the south-eastern frontier, and perhaps to build a bulwark against the Mongols in the east. The deaths of the two powerful Ayyubids al-Kamil and al-Ashraf favoured him. Allied with the many enemies of al-Kamil's son al-Salih, he took Amid, the strategic key to the upper Tigris, in 639/1241. ² He married a Georgian princess and, in return for an obligation of military help, obtained a degree of suzerainty over the Ayyubids of Aleppo, the Armenians of Cilicia and the empire of Trebizond, while negotiating with the Latins of Constantinople about a marriage. ² The missionary Friar Simon of St. Quentin, who was in Rum at the time and was well received by the sultan, never tires of praising his wealth. ⁴

The article sees weaknesses beneath this success. The executions had thinned the aristocracy and, even more, the Turkmens, and there had always been a gap between the urbanised, Islamic and partly Iranicised officials of the regime and the semi-nomadic Turkmens, who stood closer to ancestral custom than to the demands of a settled state. The pressure of the Khwarazmians and the Mongols had swollen their numbers and troubles. They were open to religious propaganda such as the Baba'i movement, which kept the best Seljuk troops busy for three years in central Asia Minor before it was apparently crushed with the help of Frankish mercenaries; the root of the problem, says the article, remained. ⁴

Soon afterwards the first real Mongol army ever seen on the frontier of Rum appeared under the command of Baydju. In winter, helped by treacheries prepared in advance, the Mongols took Erzurum, and in spring they began to conquer Asia Minor proper. ⁴ The page text gives the winter as "1243-4", which cannot be right for events that preceded the battle of June 1243; the museum records the point as unresolved.

Kaykhusraw II asked his Muslim and Christian neighbours, brought together by the common danger, for every possible reinforcement. The impatience of some and the panic of others led him to face the Mongols without waiting for all these contingents, with an already very mixed army. ⁴ He was utterly defeated on 6 Muharram 641/26 June 1243 at Köse Dagh, between Erzincan and Sivas. Some days later the Mongols took Sivas and Kayseri. The sultan hastily gathered his treasures and withdrew to Antalya in western Anatolia. ⁴ See also the museum's card for the battle, Battle of Köse Dağ.

In a way, says the article, he outlived his own power. His vizier Muhadhdhab al-Din managed to conclude an agreement of protection with the Mongols, but the heavy tribute promised and the loss of the sovereign's prestige prepared the ruin of the state, and Turkmen revolts broke out on the frontiers. Kaykhusraw II did take some revenge on King Hethum of Cilicia, with the help of an Armenian rebel, for having handed the queen-mother of Rum over to the Mongols. ⁴ He died in the winter of 1245-6, about forty years old, leaving behind only sons who were minors. ⁴ One of them was Kaykaus II. ⁵

This card rests on the article in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, and its page text is damaged in places, so some clauses are read with care. The article gives no place of death and no Hijri year for it.