In the first half of the 11th century, a new power swept into the Islamic world.

Originally a semi-nomadic pastoralist society, eking out a living on the Central Asian steplands. Under the leadership of a series of hard-headed charismatic rulers, a single

dynasty of August Turks, known as the Seljuks, swiftly conquered close to the

entirety of the Middle East and Anatolia in just a few short decades, establishing themselves

as the new overlords of much of the Islamic world.

Whilst much of the urbanised population of the Middle East had become relatively peaceful over the long centuries since the initial Arab invasions of the 7th and 8th centuries,

inhabiting a diverse plethora of cities and provinces from Africa to Afghanistan.

These horse-backed newcomers quickly made themselves known as a highly militarised and ambitious group,

before long portraying themselves as the saviours of

Sunni Orthodox Islam against the newly ascendant Shiite faith of the Fatimis of Northern Africa,

who had just recently seized control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, as well as the

important sites of Jerusalem and the Levant.

By the mid-11th century, after overcoming their regional rivals in Khorasan and Persia,

the Seljuks set about usurping the long-standing state infrastructures of the region,

including control over the

heartlands of the previously all-powerful Abbasid Caliphate, which was now a mere shadow

of its former self, having suffered a gradual disintegration of its authority over the years. Town by town, city by city, the Seljuks gradually increased their own power,

always emphasising their sunny struggle against the Shiite Fatimids,

and in doing so, forged themselves one of the largest empires the world had ever known.

The Great Seljuk Empire burned brightly, and dimmed just as quickly.

By the late 11th century, it had found itself embroiled in a bitter conflict, not only with the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt, but also with the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire that still doggedly clung onto its last remaining territories in Asia Minor, having already lost vast swathes of territory to Turcoman tribesmen operating on the fringes of the Seljuk state.

By this time, the once mighty Seljuk Empire, at its height, stretching from Africa to India,

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