Who are the Turks and where did they come from? The successive empires that they created in a whirlwind of conquests from China to North Africa led one chronicler to call the waves of mounted Turkic warriors a 'storm on horseback.' This is the story of the Seljuk Turks of Anatolia who created the first Turkish state. The Seljuk period - when Anatolia, which had been for the most part Greek and Christian and became predominantly Turkic and Muslim - was one of the great cultural transformations in Middle Eastern history. "Storm on Horseback" is both a dramatic history and, uniquely, a traveller's guide to the extraordinary heritage of the Seljuks in Turkey.John Freely takes the reader from Istanbul throughout eastern Anatolia, describing the surpassingly beautiful monuments with which the Seljuks adorned their cities, as well as the music, dance, prose and poetry of the period. Though the Seljuks themselves did not survive as rulers, their cultural heritage lives on in the deepest roots of Turkish life, just as their magnificent monuments still adorn the landscape of Turkey.
- ISBN10 1845117034
- ISBN13 9781845117030
- Publish Date 30 July 2008
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 4 March 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint I.B. Tauris
- Edition Rebrand to Tauris Parke on reprint
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 240
- Language English