Seljuks Seize Samarkand from the Qarakhanids

1089

At the invitation of Transoxiana's religious scholars - the ulama, fed up with Qarakhanid misrule - Sultan Malik Shah's Seljuk forces marched into Samarkand and ended the Western Qarakhanid Khanate's independence. The Qarakhanid khan was reduced to a Seljuk vassal, and Transoxiana's famed madrasas and markets now answered to Isfahan. Central Asia's Turkic fragmentation continued: every dynasty that rose seemed destined to be absorbed by a larger Turkic empire.