Atabeg

An atabeg was a father-lord: ata, father, and beg, lord. The compound was old in Turkic usage. It became a title and an office in the Seljuk state of the eleventh century. Everything later descends from there.^[1]

The office belongs to a period after the khaganates. It still has an article here, because it is a beg with a word in front of it. The way that word changed the rank says something about what a beg had been.

The office

When a sultan parcelled the empire out among his family, the princes who received provinces were often children. The sultan appointed an atabeg to each such prince as guardian and tutor. The atabeg saw to the boy’s upbringing and instruction. He governed the province in the boy’s name.^[1] The men chosen were the senior and influential begs, or commanders who had risen to the rank of great emir by proving their loyalty and their competence. The sources are explicit that care was taken that they should be Turks.^[1]

That is an office and not merely an honour. The distinction matters: an atabeg held a charge, with duties attached, and the title followed the charge.^[2]

The first holder

The first man to hold it among the Seljuks was Nizam al-Mulk, the vizier.^[2] The sources disagree on the occasion. One account has Malikshah, who reigned from 1072 to 1092, leave all business to his vizier with full independence. In that account, he granted him the title of atabeg among others.^[2] A second account has Alp Arslan appoint Nizam al-Mulk as atabeg for his son Malikshah after the battle of Manzikert.^[2] Atabegs were normally chosen from among the great commanders. That a man who was not a soldier held the office at all says how far his standing reached.

Later history

The arrangement had a flaw that was visible from the start. The atabeg held the troops, the revenue and the administration. The prince held the name. Where a prince stayed a child, or stayed weak, the atabeg simply went on governing. In several provinces the guardianship turned into a dynasty.

The clearest case is Azerbaijan. The Seljuk sultanate of Iraq was formally founded in 1120. From then on, the pressure its commanders put on its sultans grew past bearing. Independent political structures appeared at Mosul, in Azerbaijan, at Erbil, in Khuzistan, at Shahrizor and at Maragha.^[3] Ildeniz was sent to govern Nakhchivan in 1141.^[3] The strong Seljuk commanders in Azerbaijan had died, and Ildeniz filled the vacancy. Within a short time he was the most powerful man in the region. In 1160 he set his stepson Arslanshah on the throne of the Iraq Seljuks and began to govern the state in his name. He did so for some sixteen years, until his death in January 1176.^[3] In the same years he built in Azerbaijan a state that his sons and grandsons would rule for half a century.^[3] The Ildenizid line ended as it had begun, in the collapse of the authority it had borrowed.^[4]

Outside the Seljuk lands

The title travelled. In Georgia it entered the kingdom’s own order of rank in the thirteenth century. Queen Tamar granted it to Ivane Mkhargrdzeli after the death of his brother Zakaria in 1212.^[5] It passed to the Mankaberdeli and then to the Jaqeli. Their principality of Samtskhe was known as the Saatabago, the atabegate.^[5] What crossed the border was not a word but a working arrangement: a great officer who governs in a ruler’s name and inherits the governing.

Place in the steppe order

The atabeg is a beg to whom fatherhood has been added. The addition is not sentimental. In the steppe order, the khan held the Kut and the begs held their tribes. Authority came from above and from descent. In the Seljuk order, the atabeg holds his charge from the sultan and holds it over a member of the ruling house. The father-word makes the guardianship legible in the older vocabulary: this man stands to the prince as a father. That older vocabulary is what allowed the arrangement to be taken for granted until the guardians had become the rulers.

References

^ a b c Subaşı 2017, p. 509
^ a b c d Subaşı 2017, p. 510
^ a b c d Kayhan 2018, p. 45
^ Kayhan 2017
^ a b Guven 2024, p. 63

Literature

Ömer Subaşı, XIII. Yüzyılda Güney Kafkasya'da Selçuklu İzleri: Atabeglik Müessesesi ve Atabegler (2017)
Hüseyin Kayhan, Azerbaycan Atabeyliği'nin Kuruluşu ve Atabey İldeniz (2018)
Hüseyin Kayhan, Azerbaycan Atabeyleri İldenizlilerin Yıkılışı (2017)
Onur Guven, Seljuk Traces in Medieval Georgia: Title of Atabeg (2024)