Qutalmish

Qutalmish (Old Anatolian Turkish: قُتَلمِش, Persian: قتلمش‎) (alternative spellings: Qutulmush, Kutalmish, Kutalmış) was a Turkic prince who was a member of Seljukid house in the 11th century. His son Kutalmışoğlu Suleiman, founded the Sultanate of Rum in what is now Turkey.

Qutalmish
Ancestor of the Seljuq sultans of Rum
Reign	? –
Predecessor	Arslan Yabgu
Successor	Suleiman ibn Qutulmish
House	House of Seljuq
Father	Arslan Yabgu
Religion	Sunni Islam

Sultanate of Rûm

Kutalmish was the son of Arslan Isra'il and a cousin of Tughril and played a vital role in the conquests of the Seljuk Turks. In 1046, he was sent with an army by Tughril to force back the Byzantine army at Ganja and was victorious.[1]

He supported a rebellion against Tughril and contested the succession to the throne with Alp Arslan. (see Battle of Damghan (1063)) According to the historian Ali ibn al-Athir, Kutalmish knew the sciences of the stars.[2] His son, Suleiman, was recognized as Sultan of Rûm by Malik Shah I in 1084.[3]

Legacy

Kutalmış is a very rare Turkish given name for boys, which is used in memory of Kutalmish.

References

1. Martin Sicker, The Islamic World in Ascendancy: From the Arab Conquests to the Siege of Vienna, (Greenwood Publishing, 2000), 53.
2. Institutionalisation of Science in the Medreses of pre-Ottoman and Ottoman Turkey, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Turkish Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Ed. Gürol Irzik and Güven Güzeldere, (Springer, 2005), 267.
3. Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad. The Seljuks of Anatolia: their history and culture according to local Muslim sources. Salt Lake City, Utah: Univ. of Utah Press,(1992), 72.