On December 14, 2012 Dr. Ori Z.Soltes, professor of theology, philosophy and art history at Georgetown University spoke about Seljuk history and architecture at the offices of the Turkic American Alliance. Dr. Soltes emphasized the importance of the Seljuks for the development of human civilization and pointed out that Seljuks were a great balancing power in midst of three continents.
Dr. Soltes also emphasized the importance of writers and scholars from the Seljuk period, in particularly Rumi and Omer Hayyam. He discussed how Rumi had created a new language of love within the Islamic mystical tradition of Sufism, and how his mystical poetry took a spiritual, metaphysical approach to the physical world’s interaction with the intangible. Dr. Soltes also examined the ways in which the idea of God and the human being were represented in Seljuk architecture. He further pointed out that the Seljuks are known to have established the first commercial insurance scheme in the world, a part of their significant array of achievements in the field of expanding regional trade and commerce.
