Tughril Beg (2 January 1010 – 4 September 1063) was the Sultan of the Great Seljuk Empire from 1037 to 1063, founding the empire. He won the Battle of Dandankan (present-day eastern Turkmenistan) to defeat the Ghaznavid Empire and confirm the Seljuks as the champions of Islam, and under his rule they seized Baghdad in 1066 and pushed towards the west when he died. His son Alp Arslan succeeded him as the second sultan.
Biography[]
Tughril Beg was born on 2 January 1010, and was the son of Mikail Seljukoglu. He was a Turkish Sunni Muslim, and he was the brother of Chagri Beg. Tughril Beg was the grandson of Seljuk, the leader of the Oghuz Confederation who formed a loose and opportunistic alliance united by Islam. Tughril and Chagri began their first raids on the northern frontier of the Ghaznavid Empire in the 1030s in the name of Muhammad, although the Ghaznavids were fellow Muslim Turks. In 1040, his army of 20,000 troops defeated a larger army of 50,000 Ghaznavids under Musud I of Ghazni, and the forces of the brothers Tughril and Chagri united the tribes of Turkestan under their ancestor Seljuk's name, creating the Great Seljuk Empire.
Tughril Beg seized Baghdad in 1055, taking the enfeebled Abbasid caliph al-Qa'im under his protection. The Seljk sultans would rule jointly with the caliphs from this point onwards, and the empire was dedicated to the strictest principles of Sunni Islam and to the punishment of infidels of every kind. Tughril Beg was the Sultan of the Great Seljuk Empire until his death in 1063, upon which his nephew Alp Arslan succeeded him as Sultan.