Byzantine–Seljuk wars: Seljuk Turks led by Alp Arslan captured Byzantine emperor Romanos IV at the Battle of Manzikert.

The Byzantine–Seljuk wars were a series of conflicts in the Middle Ages between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Sultanate. They shifted the balance of power in Asia Minor and Syria from the Byzantines to the Seljuk dynasty. Riding from the steppes of Central Asia, the Seljuks replicated tactics practiced by the Huns hundreds of years earlier against a similar Roman opponent but now combining it with new-found Islamic zeal. In many ways, the Seljuk resumed the conquests of the Muslims in the Byzantine–Arab Wars initiated by the Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates in the Levant, North Africa and Asia Minor.

The Seljuk dynasty, or Seljukids alternatively spelled as Saljuqids or Seljuk Turks, was an Oghuz Turkic, Sunni Muslim dynasty that gradually became Persianate and contributed to Turco-Persian culture.

Alp Arslan, born Muhammad Alp Arslan bin Dawud Chaghri, was the second sultan of the Seljuk Empire and great-grandson of Seljuk, the eponymous founder of the dynasty and the empire. He greatly expanded Seljuk territories and consolidated his power, defeating rivals to the south, east and northwest. His victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 ushered in the Turkoman settlement of Anatolia.

The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, it endured until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The term 'Byzantine Empire' was coined only after its demise; its citizens used the term 'Roman Empire' and called themselves 'Romans'.