The Formation of Islam Religion and Society in the Near East, 600–1800

It is conventional to speak of a “Sunni revival” in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. According to this view, militantly Sunni regimes such as that of the Saljuqs responded to the challenge of the “Shici century,” that period between the mid-tenth and mid-eleventh centuries when much of the central Muslim world was dominated by Shici regimes (the Fatimids, the Buyids) of varying stripes, by vigorously re-asserting – reviving – Sunni identity and claims to dominance. Like many grand historical themes, this one is perhaps a bit too neat and simple. On a political level, for example, the Saljuq seizure of power in Baghdad was not a restoration of a pre-Buyid political patterns. It is true that the Buyid amirs, whom the Saljuqs replaced, were Shicis, but their power had been in decline for some time previously. Moreover, relations between them and the cAbbasid caliphs, still the symbol of Sunni legitimacy, were often cordial; indeed, as the Saljuq armies approached Baghdad in 1055, the caliph intervened with the Saljuq leader, Toghril Beg, seeking protection for the Buyid amir al-Malik al-Rahim. Relations between the Saljuq leader and the cAbbasid caliph were hardly warm at the outset: Toghril Beg had been in Baghdad for thirteen months before he met the caliph.

If the notion of a Sunni “revival” is in some ways misleading, there were nonetheless extremely important developments at work that shaped the character that Sunni Islam would carry into the modern period.