NOTE: Kayqubad II's profile has been confused with that of his brother, Kaykaus II. Kayqubad and Kaykaus are BROTHERS, not the same person, so please do not merge the profiles.

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Kayqubad II (Old Anatolian Turkish: كَیقُباد, Persian: علاء الدين كيقباد بن كيخسرو‎‎, ʿAlāʾ ad-Dīn Kayqubād bin Kaykhusraw) was the youngest of the three sons of the Seljuq Sultan of Rûm Kaykhusraw II. As son of the sultan’s favorite wife, the Georgian princess Tamar, he was designated heir. He had a weak constitution and was likely seven years old at the time of his father’s death in 1246, being born ca. 1238/39.

Reign

The vizier Shams al-Din al-Isfahani, seeking to defend a degree of Seljuk sovereignty in Anatolia from the Mongols, put Kayqubad on the throne together with his two elder brothers, Kaykaus II and Kilij Arslan IV.

In 1254 the Mongols asked that Kaykaus, now nineteen years old, come in person to Möngke, the Great Khan. The brothers, at a conference in Kayseri, decided that Kayqubad should go to in his stead. The voyage to Möngke’s capital at Karakhorum would be arduous. Kayqubad delayed his trip until at least 1256. He witnessed Bayju assembling his horsemen for the migration to Anatolia and sent messages advising his brothers to comply with the Mongol’s demands. One day on the road Kayqubad was found dead. The vizier Baba Tughra’i, who had joined the embassy en route, was accused but nothing came of it. Kayqubad was buried somewhere in the wastes between Anatolia and Mongolia.

Sources

• Claude Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey: a general survey of the material and spiritual culture and history, trans. J. Jones-Williams, (New York: Taplinger, 1968) 271-277.