No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The secret history of Germiyan, or a reassessment of the debates on the origins of the Germiyanids
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 July 2024
Abstract
In the early fourteenth century, decades before the Ottomans became the sole rulers of Anatolia, the Germiyanid beylik stood as a dominant force among the principalities that had emerged in western Anatolia following the demise of the Seljuks (1307). Nonetheless, to date, the exact origins and ethno-cultural background of the Germiyanids remain unclear. This article re-evaluates previous theories and posits that the embryo of what eventually became the Germiyanids formed between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries in the lowlands between Malatya and Lake Van, and that the name “Germiyan” was of Kurdish origin. It also suggests that an intense proto-Yedizi proselytism took place in eastern Anatolia before the Germiyanids migrated to western Anatolia. Beyond its significance to the history of the Seljuks, the Ottomans, the Mongols, and Byzantium, this paper challenges the prevailing narrative that views the emergence of the beyliks as an exclusively Turkic phenomenon and sheds light on the role played by non-Turkic people, including Kurds and Arabs, in their formation.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London
References
1 Cahen, Claude, “Notes pour l'histoire des Turcomans d'Asie Mineure au XIII siècle”, Journal Asiatique 239, 1951, 335–54Google Scholar.
2 Cahen, “Notes”, 354.
3 Köprülü, M.F., Les origines de l'empire ottoman (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1935)Google Scholar; Köprülü, M.F., Türk edebiyatında ilk mutasavvıflar (Ankara: Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, 1976)Google Scholar; Köprülü, M.F., The Seljuks of Anatolia: Their History and Culture according to Local Muslim Sources, trans. Leiser, Gary (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Wittek, P., Das Fürstentum Mentesche: Studie zur Geschichte Westkleinasiens im 13.–15. Jh (İstanbul: Universum Druckerei, 1934)Google Scholar; Wittek, P., The Rise of the Ottoman Empire: Studies on the History of Turkey, 13th–15th Centuries, ed. Heywood, Colin (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar. In the 1980s Lindner revived the debate and was soon followed by other scholars. See, among others, Lindner, R.P., Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Uralic and Altaic Series 144. Bloomington: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1983)Google Scholar; Kafadar, C., Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Darling, L.T., “Reformulating the Gazi narrative: when was the Ottoman state a Gazi state?”, Turcica 43, 2011, 13–53Google Scholar.
4 Ibn Battuta, Kitāb Riḥlat Ibn Baṭūṭah: Al-Musammāh Tuḥfat al-Naẓẓār Fī Gharā'ib al-Amṣār Wa-ʻajā'ib al-Asfā (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā' al-ʻUlūm, 1987), 296.
5 Cahen, “Notes”, 352.
6 Varlık, M.Ç., Germiyanoğulları Tarihi (Ankara: Sevinç Matbaası, 1974), 3–4Google Scholar.
7 Flemming, B., Landschaftsgeschichte von Pamphylien, Pisidien und Lykien im Spätmittelalter (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1964), 78Google Scholar.
8 Petry, C.F., The Cambridge History of Egypt, Vol. 1 (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2008), 527Google Scholar; van Bruinessen, M., Agha, Shaikh, and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1992), 161Google Scholar.
9 Cahen, C., La Turquie pré-ottomane (Istanbul: Institut franc̜ais d’études anatoliennes d'Istanbul, 1988), 106Google Scholar.
10 On the French “Roman National”, see Avezou, L., Raconter la France: Histoire d'une histoire (Armand Colin, 2013)Google Scholar. Many scholars have discussed, at length, the goals, and ambitions of the early Republican Turkish nationalist school of history. See, among others D. Gürpınar, “Anatolia's eternal destiny was sealed: Seljuks of Rum in the Turkish national(ist) imagination from the late Ottoman Empire to the Republican era”, European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey, May 2, 2012; E. Sönmez, “A past to be forgotten? Writing Ottoman history in early Republican Turkey”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 48/4, 8 August 2021, 753–69. See also the introduction in A.D. Beihammer, Byzantium and the Emergence of Muslim–Turkish Anatolia, ca. 1040–1130, (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2017). A slightly different, yet very informative, case study on the Karamanids can be found in S.N. Yıldız, “Karamanoğlu Mehmed Bey: Medieval Anatolian warlord or Kemalist language reformer? History, language politics, and the celebration of the language festival in Karaman, Turkey, 1961–2008”, in J. Nielsen (ed.), Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood in the Former Ottoman Space (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 147–70.
11 See M. van Bruinessen, “The Kurds as objects and subjects of historiography: Turkish and Kurdish nationalists struggling over identity”, in Fabian Richter (ed.), Identität, Ethnizität und Nationalismus in Kurdistan. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Prof. Dr. Ferhad Ibrahim Seyder (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2016), 13–61.
12 A notable recent exception is M. Ersan and M. Şeker (eds), Uluslararası batı Anadolu Beylikleri tarih, kültür ve medeniyet sempozyumu: Germiyanogulları Beyligi, 8–10 Mayıs 2014, Kütahya, Turkey (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2017).
13 A.C.S. Peacock and S.N. Yıldız, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013); D. Korobeinikov, Byzantium and the Turks in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); S. Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs: Evolution of a Dynasty (London and New York: Routledge, 2016); R. Shukurov, The Byzantine Turks 1204–1461 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016); Beihammer, Byzantium and the Emergence of Muslim–Turkish Anatolia; A.C.S. Peacock, Islam, Literature and Society in Mongol Anatolia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
14 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, fi al-Umūr al-’Alā’iyya, ed. Jaleh Mottahedin (Tehran: Pizhūhishgāh-i ʻUlūm-i Insānī va Muṭālaʻāt-i Farhangī, 2011).
15 Ibn Bībī, Mukhtaṣar, Histoire des Seldjoucides d'Asie Mineure d'apres Ibn Bibi, ed. T. Houtsma (Leiden: Brill, 1902; reprint Tehran, 1971).
16 S. Album, A Checklist of Islamic Coins (Santa Rosa, CA: S. Album, 2013); L. Kalus, Thesaurus d'Epigraphie Islamique (TEI), XI–XIIe livraisons, 2013, n. 2115 ‹http://www.epigraphie-islamique.org› [accessed 7 April 2022], 3794.
17 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 440; Ibn Bībī, Mukhtaṣar, 308.
18 See notably the discussion in Ibn Bibi, Les Turcs seldjoukides d'Anatolie du XIe au XIVe siècle: une anthologie des sources premières. Volume I, trans. H.W. Duda, M. Balivet, H. Lessan Pezechki and R. Mounier (Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence, 2017), 276, n. 811.
19 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 447.
20 Ibn Bībī, Mukhtaṣar, 309; 355.
21 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 472.
22 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 622; 624; Ibn Bībī, Mukhtaṣar, 358.
23 See, among many others, Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 590; Ibn Shaddād, Tārīkh al-Malik al-Ẓāhir, ed. A. Hutait (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag and Druckerei de Lagna, 1983), 177; Ali Yazıcıoğlu, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Selcuk, ed. A. Bakır (Istanbul: Çamlıca Basım Yayın, 2017), 634.
24 Al-ʿUmarī, al-Taʻrīf bi-al-muṣṭalaḥ al-sharīf, ed. M.H. Shams al-Din (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʻilmīyah, 1988), 22, 23, 24.
25 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 442; 447; 472; 598; Aqsarāyī, Musāmarat al-akhbār va musāyarat al-akhyār, ed. O. Turan (Tehran: Asāṭīr, 1983), 151.
26 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 624.
27 G. Pachymeres, Relations historiques, livres X–XIII, ed. A. Failler, trans. V. Laurent, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 24/1–2, 2 vols (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1984), livres X–XIII, ed. and trans. A. Failler, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 24/3–5, 3 vols (Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1999–2000), X: 25, 365; N. Gregoras, Byzantina Historia, ed. L. Schopen, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, 38–9, 2 vols (Bonn: Weber, 1829–30), VII: I, 214. See also Kantakouzenos, III: 12, 82. “Alishir the satrap of Kütahya”, (Ἀλησέρῃ τῷ Κοτυαɛίου σατράπῃ) and Chalkokondyles, who often confuses Germiyanids and Karamanids (Καραμᾶνον τὸν Ἀλισούριον). L. Chalkokondyles, The Histories, ed. and trans. A. Kaldellis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), I: 168, 294.
28 Pachymeres, Relations historiques, XI: 21, 463; Gregoras, Byzantina Historia, VII: I, 214.
29 On Yāqub and his (possible) descendance, see R. Shukurov, “Yakuplar: Bizans hizmetindeki Türk soyu”, trans. Ayşe Dietrinch, OTAM Ankara Üniversitesi Osmanlı Tarihi Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi 21, no. 21 (April 1, 2007), 241.
30 Kalus, TEI, 3794.
31 Kalus, TEI, 1116; 3406.
32 Matthew of Edessa, Chronicle, trans. R. Bedrosian (Long Branch, NJ: Sources of the Armenian Tradition, 2017), 126.
33 See E. Dulaurier, Bibliothèque historique arménienne, ou, choix des principaux historiens arméniens (Paris: A. Durand, 1858), 459; C. Defrémery, “Review of Récit de la première croisade, extrait de la chronique de Matthieu d'Edesse et traduit de l'arménien”, in l'Athenaeum Français: Journal universel de la littérature, de la science et des beaux-arts, 1, 1852, 24–5; Cahen, “Notes”, 352. Varlık, Germiyanoğulları Tarihi, 2.
34 R. Thurin, “‘Wolves and sheep drank and grazed together’: a case study on the formation of the Anatolian Beyliks”, in A.D. Beihammer and A. Nicolaou-Konnari (eds), Crusading, Society, and Politics in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of King Peter I of Cyprus (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), 418.
35 H. Rix and M. Kümmel, LIV, Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben: die Wurzeln und ihre Primärstammbildungen (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2001), 219–20.
36 J. Blau, Dictionnaire kurde–français–anglais (Brussels: Centre pour l’Étude des Problèmes du Monde Musulman contemporain, 1965), 91.
37 Blau, Dictionnaire kurde, 259.
38 B. James, “Le « territoire tribal des Kurdes » et l'aire iraqienne (xe–xiiie siècles): Esquisse des recompositions spatiales”, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 117–18, July 23 2007, 27.
39 Ibn al-Athīr, Al-kāmil fī al-tārīkh, ed. M.Y. Daqqaq (Beirut: Dar al-Kotob al-Ilmiyah, 1998), X: 475.
40 Ram'icho’, “Document inédit du XVe siècle, sur le couvent nestorien de Mar-Youhanan et d'Icho’Sahran et les Yézidis, écrit par le moine Ram'icho’ du couvent de Beith Abé”, trans. J. Tfinkdji, Revue de l'Orient chrétien 20, 1915–17, 188.
41 On Matthew of Edessa's work, see, T.L. Andrews, Mattʿēos Uṙhayecʿi and his Chronicle: History as Apocalypse in a Crossroads of Cultures (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
42 Matthew of Edessa, Chronique de Matthieu d’Édesse [962–1136]. Continuée par Grégoire le prêtre [jusqu'en 1162.] [D'après trois manuscrits de la Bibliothèque impériale de Paris], trans. E. Dulaurier (Paris: A. Durand, 1858), 303.
43 Matthew of Edessa, Chronique, 304.
44 Matthew of Edessa, Chronique, 304.
45 Kartlis Tskhovreba: Histoire de la Georgie, trans. M.F. Brosset (St Petersburg: Académie impériale des Sciences de Russie, 1849), 387.
46 Kartlis Tskhovreba: Histoire de la Georgie, 414. It is worth noting the most recent English translation of the Georgian Chronicles, produced by a group of Georgian scholars, omits these two references to the Turkmens of Germiyan. However, both Brosset's French translation and the 1959 Georgian edition of the text include them. Brosset's translation, the new English translation, and the 1959 Georgian edition are all based on different manuscripts of the original text. Despite being more recent, the English translation is not a critical edition so people who, like myself, cannot read Georgian, should use it in conjunction with Brosset's French translation. Considering the presence of these two mentions of the Turkmen of Germiyan in the 1959 Georgian edition, which was read to me by a Georgian-speaking colleague, I have decided to adopt Brosset's reading in this article. However, these issues will persist until an authoritative critical edition and subsequent translation of the text is produced, and caution should therefore prevail when studying the Georgian Chronicles. See S.F. Jones and R. Metreveli (ed. and trans.), Kartlis tskhovreba: A History of Georgia (Tbilisi: Artanuji Publishing, 2014). For the Georgian text, see S. Qauxčʻišvili, K'art’lis c'xovreba. T. 2 (Tbilisi: Sabšot'a Sak'art’velo, 1959), II: 6; 38.
47 Kartlis Tskhovreba: Histoire de la Georgie, 512.
48 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 383.
49 M. Thevenin, “Kurdish transhumance: pastoral practices in south-east Turkey”, Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 1/1, December 2011, 1–24.
50 Ibn Battuta, Kitāb Riḥlat Ibn Baṭūṭah, 296.
51 P.G. Kreyenbroek, Yezidism: Its Background, Observances, and Textual Tradition (Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1995), 50. See also Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām wa-wafayāt al-mashāhīr wa-al-aʻlām, ed. U. Tadmurī (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʻArabī, 1987), 457; 323.
52 Kreyenbroek, Yezidism, 50.
53 Cited in Kreyenbroek, Yezidism, 50.
54 Cahen, “Notes”, 352.
55 Varlık, Germiyanoğulları Tarihi, 4.
56 Aqsarāyī, Musāmarat al-akhbār, 151.
57 Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 503.
58 See notably his chapter on the Turkmens of Rum. Al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmiyah, 2010), 213.
59 Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī Ibn Shaddād, Description de la Syrie du nord, trans. A.-M. Eddé (Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1984), 67. On Arab settlements in the region, see A. Ter-Ghevondyan, The Arab Emirates in Bagratid Armenia (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1976), 32.
60 Al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār, III: 203.
61 G.Ö. Bezer, “Harput'ta bir Türkmen beyliği Çubukoğulları”, Belleten 61, no. 230, 1997, 67–92.
62 C. Cahen, “Selǧukides, Turcomans et Allemands au temps de la Troisième Croisade”, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 56, 1960, 23.
63 Cited in B. Açikyıldız, The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 37.
64 Al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār, III: 203.
65 Ram'icho’, “Document inédit du XVe siècle”, 196.
66 Sharaf Khān Bidlīsī, Sharafnāmah, tārīkh-i mufaṣṣal-i Kurdistān, ed. M. ʿAbbasi and V. Vladimirovich Velʹiaminov-Zernov (Tehran: Asāṭīr, 1999), 14.
67 Ram'icho’, (trans. J. Tfinkdji), “Document inédit du XVe siècle”, 152.
68 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 441.
69 See Simon de St Quentin, Historia Tartarorum, ed. J. Richard (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1965), 65. Tandem audientes quod Paparoissole tali modo et cum tam paucis quasi cepisset victoriam de Turcis obtinere, animati quamplurimum ex debilitate Turcorum, in anno sequenti Turquiam integre invasere. A similar argument is made by the anonymous Seljuk historian who claims that the revolt exhausted the Seljuk armies, leading Baiju to conclude that the armies of Rum were weak: Bājū bā Jūmīkhān guft, lashkar-i Rūm rā ghūvat nīst. Anonymous Historian, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq dar Ānāṭūlī, ed. N. Jalali (Tehran: Persian E-Books Miras Maktoob, 1999), 58.
70 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 442.
71 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 472.
72 Thurin, “Wolves and sheep”, 438; Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 598.
73 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 537.
74 Hebraeus, Bar, The Chronography, Translated by W. Budge, The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2003), 425Google Scholar.
75 Bar Hebraeus, The Chronography, 425; Ram'icho’, “Document inédit du XVe siècle”, 191. The Syriac version of Bar Hebraeus’ text refers to Ma'daye, “Medes”, an ambiguous term often used to designate Arab nomads but sometimes used as a generic term for nomads. The abridged, Arabic version of the text, however, makes it clear that the Ma'daye were Arabs (ʿaskaran min al-Akrād wa al-Turkmān wa al-ʿArab): Hebraeus, Bar, Tārīkh mukhtaṣar al-duwal, ed. al-Manṣūr, K. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah, 1997), 233Google Scholar.
76 Bar Hebraeus, Gregorii Barhebraei Chronicon Ecclesiasticum: The Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Barhebraeus, ed. T.J. Lamy, tr. J.B. Abbeloos, 1872, 725–6; Bar Hebraeus, The Chronography, 425; Ram'icho’, “Document inédit du XVe siècle”, 191.
77 The Syriac text claims that Kaykāwus gave Ḥiṣn Ziyād to Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad whereas the abridged Arabic version makes reference to Kharpūt or Khartabirt in Arabic. These two names are often used interchangeably for the same place. See Bar Hebraeus, The Chronography, 425; Bar Hebraeus, Tārīkh mukhtaṣar al-duwal, 233.
78 Bar Hebraeus calls him “son of Sheikh ʿAdī [II]”, which implies that Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad was al-Ḥasan's brother and not his son. However, the biographical dictionary of Al-Dhahabī, which has been traditionally considered to be more reliable by scholars of Yezidism makes it clear that Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad was al-Ḥasan's son. See Bar Hebraeus, The Chronography, 425; Bar Hebraeus, Tārīkh mukhtaṣar al-duwal, 233; Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 457: 323. See also, Kreyenbroek, Yezidism, 33–4; Açıkyıldız, The Yezidis, 43.
79 See C. Allison, “YAZIDIS i. GENERAL”, Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2004, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/yazidis-i-general-1 (accessed 2 April 2022).
80 Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, 525–6.
81 Guest, J.S., Survival among the Kurds: A History of the Yezidis (London and New York: Kegan Paul International; Distributed by Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1993), 22Google Scholar.
82 See the discussions in A.C.S. Peacock, “From the Balkhān-Kūhīyān to the Nāwakīya: nomadic politics and the foundations of Seljūq rule in Anatolia”, in J. Paul, Nomad Aristocrats in a World of Empires (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2013), 55–81.
83 Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon ecclesiasticum, 525–6.
84 Ibn Bībī, Al-Awāmir al-‘Alā’iyya, 555.
85 See, for example, Shikari, Karāmānname, ed. M. Sözen and N. Sakaoğlu (Karaman: Karaman Valiliği, 2005), 104.
86 Korobeinikov, Byzantium and the Turks, 255.