Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 08.djvu/387

LEFT SELINUS 331 SELKIRK SELINTJS, one of the most important of the Greek colonies in Sicily, founded probably about 628 B. c. on the S. W. coast of that island. Thucydides mentions its great power and wealth, and the rich treasures of its temples. It was con- quered by the Carthaginians in 409, and in 249 destroyed by them. There are still important ruins of ancient Greek temples here. SELJUKS, a division of the Ghuzz con- federacy of the Turkish tribes, who were settled on the Jaxartes and in Transox- iana in the 11th century, when they be- came converts to Islam. Togrul Beg, grandson of a chief named Seljuk (whence the name of the several succes- sive dynasties), severely crippled the em- pire of Ghazni (1040) ; then turning W. conquered all Persia, and 10 years later he marched on Bagdad, to the assistance of the Abbasside Caliph, a mere "do- nothing" sovereign, who existed by the favor and protection of a powerful fam- ily of the Shiite faith. The head of this family (the Bowides) was, however, the master rather than the protector of the caliph. Togrul seized and supplanted him and being of the orthodox Sunnite faith, was nominated by the caliph "Com- mander of the Faithful." Dying in 1063, Togrul was succeeded by his nephew, Alp Arslan. This sovereign wrested Syria and Palestine from the rival Fatimite caliph of Egypt, and in 1071 defeated the Byzantine emperor Romanus Diogenes, and captured him. The price of his re- lease was a heavy ransom and the ces- sion of great part of Anatolia or Asia Minor to the Seljuk. Alp Arslan was stabbed by a captive enemy in distant Turkestan (1072), and was succeeded by his son Malik Shah. His reign is chiefly remarkable for the enlightened rule of his grand vizier, Nizam ul-Mulk, the schoolfellow of Omar Khayyam, the poet, and of Hassan ben Sabbah, the founder of the Assassins (q. v.). This statesman founded a university at Bagdad, an ob- servatory, and numerous schools and mosques, and with the help of his old friend Omar Khayyam revised the astro- nomical tables and introduced a new era, the Jelalian. After the death of Malik (1092) the ex- tensive empire began to break up into smaller kingdoms. But already during his lifetime, and even that of his prede- cessors, powerful tributary princes had ruled over separate provinces in Syria, in Kerman (beside the Persian Gulf), and in Asia Minor. During the first half of the 12th century the most powerful of these provincial rulers was Sin jar, who governed Khorassan, with Merv for his capital. He spent his life fighting against the Ghaznevids, against the Turkestan chiefs, and latterly against the Mongols. But a stronger and more immediate in- terest attaches to the province of Syria and that of Asia Minor, or Rum, as the Seljuks preferred to call it. It was the rulers of these two provinces or kingdoms who persecuted the Christian pilgrims and so provoked the Crusades (q. v.), and it was the rulers of the same two kingdoms against whom the crusaders of Europe principally fought. The capi- tal of Rum was fixed at Iconium (Konieh) in the first half of the 12th century. This dynasty reached the acme of its power under Kaikavus (1211-1234), who ruled over nearly the whole of Asia Minor and extensive territories in Mesopotamia and northern Persia. During the reign of his son Kaikhos- rau II. the poet Jelad-ed-Din Rumi flour- ished and the various orders of dervishes arose; and at the same time the Mon- gols began to threaten the E. borders of the state. Indeed from about 1243 the real sovereign power of that part of Asia was in the hands of the Mongol chiefs, Hulagu and his successors, till the rise of the Ottoman princes. These last, Turks like the Seljuks, had re- treated W. before the all-conquering Mon- gols about the middle of the 13th cen- tury, and at the end of it they entered the service of the Seljuk ruler of Asia Minor. After that the name Osmanli or Ottoman soon superseded that of Seljuk as the appellative of the Turkish rulers and ruling classes in Asia Minor. And out of the Ottoman supremacy grew the empire of Turkey. The Seljuks, however, had centuries before, while they were still settled in Transoxiana, lost a good many of their peculiarly Turkish characteristics and had become "Turkomans," i. e., "Like the Turks"; and with their conversion to Islam they also adopted the Perso- Arabian civilization and customs, though still retaining their own language as well as using those of the peoples they had conquered. SELKIRK, ALEXANDER, a Scotch adventurer; born in Largo, Scotland, in 1676. He was a skilful seaman, and made several voyages to the South Sea, in one of which, having quarreled with his com- mander, he was put ashore on the island of Juan Fernandez, with a few neces- saries, a fowling-piece, gunpowder, and shot. Here he lived alone during four years and four months, and was then rescued by Captain Woodes Rogers. Dur- ing the time of his remaining on the island he had nearly forgotten his native language. He returned to England in 1711, and is said to have given his papers to Defoe, who took from them his story