One of the first great turning points of the Crusades came in the summer of 1100 near Melitene, in the region of present-day Malatya. Bohemond, who had founded the Principality of Antioch out of the gains of the First Crusade, marched north to help an Armenian lord and was taken prisoner in an ambush laid by Danishmendid forces. For the Latins, who had gathered victory upon victory since the start of the expedition, this was the first serious defeat. For the Danishmendid beylik, which had absorbed Amaseia and was growing around Sivas, Tokat and Niksar, it was an event that showed how much weight a young state now carried in Anatolia. The captive prince's imprisonment, lasting nearly three years, gave rise to a web of bargaining that stretched from Antioch to Constantinople and from Konya to Baghdad, while a great Crusader army that set out to free him was broken on Amasya's own soil, in the district of Merzifon.

The accounts of the event were written in different languages and with different interests. Latin chroniclers relate Bohemond's fate as a disaster, Armenian and Syriac sources bring local balances of power to the fore, and Islamic sources see the episode as part of Turkmen politics in Anatolia. Even the name of the Danishmendid commander varies from source to source. Known as Gümüştekin Gazi, Melik Gazi or Emir Gazi, he was, in the prevailing view, the son of the dynasty's founder, Danishmend Gazi; in some Turkish accounts, however, the deed is attributed directly to Danishmend Gazi himself. The Amasya historian Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar sets out yet another reading, centred on Amasya and distinct from all of these, in which the captivity becomes part of a quarrel between the emir of Kayseri and the dynasty's seat. Read side by side, these voices reveal not only what happened at Melitene but also how, and through whose eyes, it came to be remembered.

The Danishmendids and Amaseia

The Danishmendids were among the strongest of the Turkmen beyliks that emerged in central and north-eastern Anatolia after the victory at Manzikert in 1071. The epithet of their founder, Danishmend Gazi, means "learned man" in Persian. Ibn al-Athir reports that his real name was Taylu and that he was known by this title because he had served as a teacher to the Turks. In the sources of the period his full name appears as "Melik-i Muazzam Dânişmend Ahmed Gazi bin Ali et-Türkmâni". According to the view established in Turkey, he came from a Turkmen family that had lived in Azerbaijan, entered the service of Sultan Alp Arslan in 1064 and became one of his favoured emirs; after Manzikert he conquered Sivas, which had been granted to him as an iqta, and so formed the first nucleus of the beylik.

Information about his origins nonetheless remains disputed. Albert of Aix and William, Archbishop of Tyre, state that the dynasty was of Turkish descent; Matthew of Edessa and Niketas Choniates, on the other hand, call the beylik "Tanismanios" and "Persarmen Taismanios", raising the possibility of an Armenian or Persian-Armenian origin. Niketas even attributes an Arsacid lineage to him. Other accounts present him as a nephew of Sultan Malikshah, as a maternal uncle of Süleyman bin Kutalmış, founder of the Anatolian Seljuks, or as one of the Seljuk commanders who fought at Manzikert. The Dânişmendnâme, an epic based on oral tradition, makes him, like Battal Gazi, a warrior native to Malatya. Tahsin Yazıcı points out that most of these stories of origin carry a legendary colouring. The debate has not been settled to this day.

With his emirs, Danishmend Gazi added Amasya, Tokat, Niksar, Kayseri, Zamantı, Elbistan, Develi and Çorum to his beylik. The sources do not agree on the dynasty's first capital. Some accounts name Niksar, others Amaseia; in the later period Sivas comes to the fore. Hüsameddin plainly regards Amasya as the seat of the Danishmendid government and describes the city as the residence of Danishmend's eldest son, Melik İsmail Gazi. The Halife Gazi Tomb in Amasya is counted among the buildings of the Danishmendid period and keeps the city's link with this beylik alive as an architectural trace. Amaseia, an important fortress town in Byzantium's defence of northern Anatolia, became under Danishmendid rule part of a Turkmen beylik's policy of expansion to the west and south.

The beylik's first encounter with the Crusaders came before Melitene. During the First Crusade the Danishmendids supported Kılıç Arslan, who had lost Nicaea. The allied Turkish forces, joined also by Hasan, emir of Kayseri, clashed with the Crusaders on the plain of Eskişehir, at Dorylaeum, on 30 June 1097. The Crusaders won that battle, yet as they advanced into the interior of Anatolia they lost a large part of their forces to the attacks of Turkish units. The Danishmendids thus reached the year 1100 as a power that had already seen the Crusaders' marching order and their weak points.

Who Was Gümüştekin Gazi

The identity of the Danishmendid commander at Melitene is as disputed as the event itself. The prevailing view holds that Gümüştekin (Gümüştegin), the son who succeeded Danishmend Gazi at the head of the beylik after his death, strengthened the dynasty, enlarged its domain by exploiting the rivalries between the Anatolian and Syrian Seljuks, and fought as an ally of the Anatolian Seljuk sultan against Byzantium and the Crusaders. Tahsin Yazıcı's interpretation differs. He assigns the name "Amir Gazi Taylu Gümüştigin Ahmad Danishmend" to a single person, holds that the founder of the dynasty lived until his death in 1104, and accepts that it was he himself who captured Bohemond. The phrase "Danishmend Gazi captured Bohemond" found in some Turkish accounts agrees with this reading.

Hüsameddin advances a third possibility. He maintains that Gümüştigin, the emir of Kayseri called "Ibn al-Danishmend", that is, Danishmend's son, in most Arabic histories, was in fact not his son but his adopted son: a slave whom he loved as a child of his own. His evidence is a waqf deed dated 500 (1106/07), drawn up while Gümüştigin was emir of Kayseri, in which his name appears as "el-Emîrü'l-Kebîr el-Mücâhid Alemüddîn Gümüştigin bin Abdullah". Hüsameddin treats this document, which carries "bin Abdullah" in place of a father's name, as legal proof that Gümüştigin was not Danishmend's own son. In another volume of his History of Amasya, too, Gümüştekin is named as the slave to whom Danishmend entrusted part of the army he had equipped at Malatya, charging him with the conquest of Kayseri.

Gümüştekin's name also lived on in Amasya's administrative geography. According to Hüsameddin, the Gümüştekin Nahiye, which covered the western parts of the district of Merzifon, was named after Gümüştekin Gazi, son of the Danishmendid ruler Melik Ahmed Danishmend Gazi. The nahiye was first attached to the district of Bulak and was later joined, with its villages, to Merzifon. Gümüştekin's coins are also striking. With a nimbed figure of Christ on one face and a Greek inscription calling him "the great amir" on the other, they deliberately borrow Byzantine imagery to build a language of authority addressed to the Christian population of the region.

The Siege of Malatya

Malatya had long been the city the Danishmendids most wanted to take, and they were not the only power with that aim. In the spring of 1097, when the Crusaders besieged Nicaea, the Anatolian Seljuk sultan Kılıç Arslan I was besieging Malatya; on hearing that the Crusader army had arrived before Nicaea, he lifted the siege and turned west. Once the struggle with the Crusaders lay behind them, Gümüştekin laid siege to the city himself. The siege is recorded as lasting about three years. Gabriel, the Armenian who held Malatya, is thought to have earlier preserved the city's autonomy with the tolerance, and even the help, of the Danishmendids; by 1100, however, the former allies had come face to face. Kılıç Arslan's continuing designs on Malatya would later become one of the sources of tension between Gümüştekin and the Seljuk sultan.

Bohemond and Antioch

Bohemond, Prince of Taranto, was among the best known of the Norman nobles of southern Italy. He had taken part in the First Crusade and played a decisive role in the capture of Antioch in 1098. Once master of the city, he argued that the oath sworn to the Byzantine emperor Alexios Komnenos was no longer valid, on the grounds that the emperor had failed to help the Crusaders during the siege of Antioch. Count Raymond of Toulouse opposed this claim, but in January 1099 he left the city to Bohemond and the Crusaders marched on towards Jerusalem. Bohemond thus took the title of Prince of Antioch.

In 1100 Bohemond's position was far from comfortable. Alexios was pressing him to hand Antioch over, and the Byzantine fleet was taking the ports of Seleukeia and Korykos on the Cilician coast from him. In response Bohemond had deposed the Greek patriarch of Antioch, John the Oxite, and installed the Latin Peter of Narbonne in his place. Just as Byzantium was shrinking the principality's lands in this way, an opportunity for expansion appeared in the north. A call for help came from Gabriel, the Armenian ruler of Melitene.

Gabriel, Lord of Melitene

Gabriel had been one of the officers of the Byzantine general Philaretos Brachamios and had been installed in Melitene by him as dux, that is, military governor. William of Tyre describes him as Greek by religion but Armenian by race, language and custom. After Philaretos's death in 1086 the city slipped entirely out of Byzantine control, and Gabriel remained as an independent ruler. Yet he did not give up his Byzantine titles. On the lead seals of his that survive he styles himself "protokouropalates, emir and dux" and, on another example, "protonobelissimos and duke of the city of Melitene". The obverse of the seals shows three saints standing side by side: Saint Nicholas, Saint George in military dress holding his spear, and Saint John the Baptist carrying a long cross. The appearance of the word "emir" beside a Byzantine title shows the kind of language Gabriel used in a frontier city where the Greek, Armenian and Turkish worlds met. The letter in which he asked Bohemond for help is thought to have been sealed with a seal of this kind.

The Syriac patriarch Michael does not portray Gabriel favourably. In his account Gabriel secured his power by killing with his own hand the bishop who wished to surrender the city to the Seljuks, after the guard refused to do it. It is hard to call this account impartial; still, the picture of Gabriel as a harsh ruler determined to keep hold of the city agrees with other sources. His conduct towards the city's Syriac notables would decide Melitene's fate a few years later.

Gabriel sought closer ties with the Crusaders. One of his daughters had married Thoros, the Armenian ruler of Edessa. Thoros and his wife were killed in 1098, and Baldwin of Boulogne became master of Edessa. Gabriel's other daughter, Morphia, married Baldwin's kinsman Baldwin of Le Bourcq in 1101 and later became Queen of Jerusalem. Gabriel is said to have given a dowry of 50,000 gold bezants. According to some sources Melitene had been taken from the Danishmendids in May 1100, and Gümüştekin Gazi, emir of Sivas, was preparing a campaign to recover it. Learning of these preparations, Gabriel asked Bohemond for help and, according to the story, offered him his daughter Morphia in marriage.

The Ambush

Bohemond left Antioch to his cousin Tancred and marched north with about 300 knights and a small body of infantry. The accounts differ on the size of the force: Albert of Aix speaks of 300 knights, while Ibn al-Athir mentions 5,000 men. With him were his cousin Richard of Salerno and the Armenian bishops of Marash and Antioch.

Against Danishmendid forces who knew the region well, the Crusader column made a serious mistake. It sent out no scouts on the march and fell into an ambush in broken country. The Turkish horsemen surrounded them on every side. Bohemond managed to get a single soldier out of the encirclement to ask Count Baldwin of Edessa for help, but he himself was taken prisoner. According to the accounts most of the Crusaders were killed; the Armenian bishops were among the dead. Bohemond and Richard were taken alive. The sources differ on the date: accounts based on Western sources give August 1100 and the day of 15 August, whereas the Turkish encyclopaedic literature uses Ramadan 493, that is, July 1100.

The captive prince was first taken to Sivas. By the time Baldwin received the call, Bohemond was already a prisoner. Learning that the count of Edessa was approaching, Gümüştekin lifted the siege of Malatya and withdrew to Sivas. Baldwin reached Melitene and pursued the Danishmendids for three days, but could not rescue Bohemond. When he returned to Melitene, Gabriel swore allegiance to him, and Baldwin left fifty knights for the city's defence. Thus, despite the defeat, the fall of Melitene was averted for the time being.

Baldwin's arrival at Melitene became entangled with another development in the Latin world. News of the death of Godfrey of Bouillon in Jerusalem reached Edessa shortly after Baldwin's return from Melitene. Leaving his kinsman Baldwin of Le Bourcq in his place, Baldwin set out for Jerusalem on 2 October 1100 with some two hundred knights and a few hundred foot soldiers. He refused the request of the people of Antioch that he act as regent. Bohemond's captivity thus formed the backdrop to changes of government in both Antioch and Edessa.

Captivity and the Ransom Bargain

Bohemond was taken in chains from Sivas to Neocaesarea, today's Niksar, and held there until 1103. Niksar was one of the principal centres of Danishmendid rule. The sources diverge on Richard's fate. In one account he too was held at Niksar; in another, Gümüştekin sent him to Emperor Alexios, and Richard remained a prisoner in Constantinople until his release in 1103.

Alexios was furious that Bohemond had made Antioch his own. On learning of his capture he offered Gümüştekin 260,000 dinars and asked for the prisoner to be handed over to Byzantium. When Gümüştekin's ally, the Seljuk ruler Kılıç Arslan I, heard of the offer, he demanded half of it and declared that he would attack if it were not paid. Meanwhile Bohemond proposed to pay his own ransom directly to Gümüştekin. The sources give the outcome of the bargaining in different figures. In one account the agreement was made for 130,000 dinars and the two sides swore friendship to each other; some historians of the Crusades, however, speak of a settlement of 100,000 bezants and write that the money was raised by Bohemond's allies. According to Matthew of Edessa the Armenian Kogh Vasil played an important part in raising the ransom and contributed a large sum himself, and he is said later to have adopted Bohemond. Turkish accounts write that Danishmend Gazi released Bohemond for 260,000 dinars and note that this step set him at odds with Kılıç Arslan. This inconsistency among the sources shows that it is not clear to which stage of the negotiations the figures belong.

The date of the release also varies between May and August 1103. Bohemond returned to Antioch in August 1103 through Baldwin's mediation. According to Tahsin Yazıcı the ransom agreement was crowned by an alliance: the Danishmendid ruler and Bohemond pledged to act together against Emperor Alexios and Kılıç Arslan, but the alliance came to nothing with the Danishmendid ruler's death soon afterwards. Kılıç Arslan, for his part, reacted sharply both to being denied a share of the ransom as an ally and to the emergence of a new Crusader-Danishmendid rapprochement in the region. He abandoned his planned campaign against Antioch, marched against Gümüştekin and defeated him near Marash in August 1103. What set the two Turkish rulers who had fought the Crusaders side by side against each other was the price of the prisoner at Niksar.

Throughout Bohemond's three-year absence Tancred had governed the principality, campaigned against Byzantium and added Tarsus, Adana and Mamistra in Cilicia to its lands. With Bohemond's return his authority came to an end.

Richard of Salerno, Bohemond's cousin, had been with the Crusader army since 1097 and was known, together with Tancred, as one of the few Crusaders who could speak Arabic, a skill left over from contacts with the Arab population of Sicily. After his release Tancred appointed him governor of Edessa in the winter of 1104, and Richard ruled the city until 1108. The people of Edessa found him cruel and greedy and never liked him.

The Captivity Remembered in the West

Bohemond's deliverance from his prison at Niksar was told in Western Europe as a miracle. The prince attributed his release to the intercession of Saint Leonard, regarded as the patron of prisoners and captives of war. After returning to Europe he visited the abbey of Noblat in the Limousin region of France and made an offering there in thanksgiving for his release. Bishop Walram of Naumburg, who was present at this visit, wrote a new life of Leonard recounting his posthumous miracles, Bohemond's among them.

The cult of Leonard, of whom there had been scarcely any earlier trace in literature or liturgy, spread rapidly in the twelfth century after Bohemond's offering, first through the Frankish lands. The gifts that followed his example made possible the building of the Romanesque church at Noblat and its prominent bell tower; in the same period the town also became a stage on the pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela. The depiction of Saint Leonard as an abbot holding chains, fetters and manacles is the visual counterpart of the cult's tie to this story of captivity. In this way a captivity in Danishmendid lands contributed, indirectly, to the rise of a pilgrimage centre in the heart of France.

Hüsameddin's Account

Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's History of Amasya tells of Bohemond's captivity within a framework quite different from that of the Western sources. In his account the Crusader commander "Count Bemind", who had forced Kılıç Arslan to retreat in the region of Nicaea, marched on Kayseri with a great force, and while trying to take the city was defeated in battle with its governor, Alemüddin Gümüştigin, and taken prisoner. Drawing on the history of Baybars, Hüsameddin writes that after this defeat the Crusader troops took Ankara, advanced into the region of Çorum and were scattered in an ambush laid by Melik İsmail Gazi, ruler of Amasya, and Fetih Han, governor of Ankara. In this narrative the name Melitene never appears, and the events are placed in the year 491 (1097/98). This does not agree with the chronology that the Latin, Byzantine and Syriac sources trace together; it gives the impression that Hüsameddin combined separate events, the echoes in Anatolia of the First Crusade and of the expedition of 1101, with Bohemond's captivity in a single frame.

What is most striking about the account is the way it describes the captivity's effect on Danishmendid internal politics. According to Hüsameddin, after taking Bohemond prisoner Gümüştigin grew proud and his loyalty to the seat at Amasya weakened. Two issues set him against Melik İsmail Gazi. The first was Ankara: Gümüştigin wanted the city added to his own emirate because he had helped to save it, while İsmail Gazi wished to leave Ankara to its former governor, Fetih Han. The second was Bohemond himself. The Crusaders were offering an enormous sum to free the prince. İsmail Gazi refused to consent to his release, reasoning that a Bohemond freed for money would step up his violence against the Muslims to recover what he had paid; Gümüştigin, however, mindful of his soldiers' need for money, handed Bohemond over to the Crusaders on certain conditions in return for the large sum he received.

In Hüsameddin's telling, this dispute ended in a rupture. İsmail Gazi settled the matter in his own favour by appointing Fetih Han governor of Ankara. Gümüştigin in turn declared himself the senior successor of Danishmend Ahmed Gazi, proclaimed his independence and, around 492 (1098/99), seized Sivas, Malatya and their surroundings in compensation for Ankara, driving out Danishmend's second son, İbrahim Bey. Hüsameddin connects with this situation the entry in the Masalik al-Absar reading "the emir of Kayseri, lord of Sivas and Malatya in 493, known as Ibn al-Danishmend, Gümüştigin bin Tablu", and sees here the reason why Arabic histories took Gümüştigin to be Danishmend's son. According to the account, İsmail Gazi complained of Gümüştigin to the Seljuk sultan Berkyaruq; Berkyaruq, to calm the dispute, appointed Gümüştigin shihna of Baghdad in 494 (1100/01) and called him to his side, leaving Kayseri and Malatya in his hands and giving Sivas to İbrahim Bey. Dismissed from his post after Berkyaruq's death, Gümüştigin returned to Kayseri, submitted to İsmail Gazi because he had lost his former influence, and died in Kayseri in the year 500 (1106/07).

The dynastic relations and dates of this account conflict considerably with both the Turkish encyclopaedic literature and the Western sources. Elsewhere Gümüştekin's place and year of death are given as Sivas and 1104, and the Danishmendid capture of Malatya is placed after Bohemond's captivity. Hüsameddin himself states openly that he does not claim his Danishmendid chronology as historical fact but presents the conclusions he has drawn from the records available to him. Even so, the quarrel between the emir of Kayseri and the seat at Amasya over the price of the captive prince recalls the Gümüştekin-Kılıç Arslan rivalry found in the other sources, and tells from Amasya's vantage point how the ransom turned into a problem of sharing among the Turkish rulers.

The Crusade of 1101

Bohemond's captivity caused a great stir in Europe. Pope Paschal II summoned to a new expedition those who had abandoned the Holy Land or had never set out. One of the aims of the Crusade of 1101 was to free Bohemond from his captivity at Neocaesarea. When the Lombards reached Constantinople and learned that Bohemond had been taken prisoner, they made his rescue their goal. Most of the host consisted of undisciplined people. The Italian Lombards wanted to march straight to Niksar, while Raymond of Toulouse proposed the old road to Jerusalem through Byzantine territory. According to Anna Komnene, Emperor Alexios too advised them to follow the coastal road taken by earlier armies, but the Normans insisted on turning east and marching on "Khorasan"; the emperor then gave them Raymond and his commander Tzitas as advisers. In the end the Lombards' insistence prevailed. The Crusader army set out from Kibotos near İzmit on 3 June 1101, took Ankara on 23 June and returned it to Byzantium, and then, by way of Çankırı, crossed the Kızılırmak and entered Danishmendid territory with the aim of reaching Amasya and Niksar.

The army was marching towards Mersivan in five columns. In front came the Lombards and Italians under Anselm, Archbishop of Milan; after them Raymond escorted by Pecheneg horsemen, the Burgundians, the German contingents and, at the rear, the French. Communication between the columns of the huge army was slow, and the horses and the marchers were exhausted. Anna Komnene describes what happened in a small town inhabited by Greeks after the crossing of the Kızılırmak: the townspeople had sent their priests out in sacred vestments, carrying the Gospel and crosses, to meet their fellow Christians, and the Normans put the priests and the other Christians to the sword and went on their way in the direction of Amaseia. The princess records the episode as inhuman and merciless violence.

Meanwhile the Turks put their long experience of war to use. According to Anna they seized and burned all the villages and food supplies and wore the Crusaders down with hunger and thirst. A Turkish force of about 20,000 men had gathered under Gümüştekin, Kılıç Arslan, Ridwan, the Seljuk ruler of Aleppo, and Karaja, emir of Harran. In August 1101 the army was surrounded at Mersivan in the district of Merzifon. On the second day Conrad, at the head of the German contingent, tried to break through the Turkish lines, failed, and took refuge in a nearby castle. On the Sunday nothing of importance happened. The following day Anselm preached with the Holy Lance from the siege of Antioch, and the Italians attempted a sortie to the east but fell back with heavy losses. On the fifth day Kılıç Arslan was joined by some Danishmendid beys and by Ridwan, emir of Aleppo. Reinforced, the Turkish army attacked the weary and demoralised Crusaders and largely destroyed them.

In Anna Komnene's narrative, in the final clash the Turks no longer bothered with spears or arrows but drew their swords and turned the battle into a hand-to-hand fight, and the Normans were forced back to their camp. The commanders left behind the beasts of burden, the tents and all the infantry and fled on horseback towards the coast of the Armeniakon theme and Paurae, that is, Bafra. The Turks seized the abandoned camp, then overtook the infantry and destroyed it almost entirely. The survivors reached Constantinople by way of Bafra and Sinop. In the same year two more Crusader armies advancing by way of Konya and Ereğli suffered heavy losses against the combined forces of Kılıç Arslan and Gümüştekin. The end of the expedition launched to rescue Bohemond was thus decided around Merzifon, within the borders of Amasya.

Amasya's local historiography also remembers Crusader armies reaching the city. According to Hüsameddin a Crusader force of Germans and Frenchmen coming from the direction of Sinop crossed the Kızılırmak and marched on Amasya. Melik İsmail Gazi fought a pitched battle at Argun, that is, Suluova, and when he could not win, he burned and laid waste everything and withdrew to the mountains with the population, wearing the enemy down with irregular warfare and night raids. The Crusaders camped in Amasya at a place still known as "Filingir", that is, the Franks, and after staying about three months withdrew, destroying the town of Ziyare as well. Hüsameddin also attributes the ruins of the city's old churches and palaces largely to these Crusader troops. He places the account immediately after the death of Danishmend Gazi, in the years 490-491; although the dating does not agree with the Western sources, Anna Komnene's statement that the Normans marched in the direction of Amaseia and that the Turks burned the villages and food supplies creates a striking resemblance between the two narratives.

The Fall of Melitene

While the Crusaders were bargaining over Bohemond's ransom, the Danishmendids laid siege to Melitene again. Gabriel once more asked the Crusaders for help, but since they were negotiating with the Danishmendid emir for Bohemond's release, they sent none. The situation inside the city also worked against Gabriel. His harsh treatment of the population, and above all his having the Syriac notables put to death, fuelled the anger of a people already suffering famine because of the siege. According to the Turkish encyclopaedic literature, Syriac soldiers finally opened the gates and surrendered the city to Gümüştekin on 18 September 1102. Accounts based on Western sources place the city's fall in 1103. After entering the city Gümüştekin distributed food to the people, gave seed and oxen to the farmers and restored order in Malatya.

Gabriel was captured. One of his fortresses continued to resist. Gabriel was taken to the castle of Qatya, defended by his wife, and pressure was put on her to surrender. Because she refused, according to Michael the Syrian, he was killed by being torn apart by dogs. The date of Gabriel's death is given in the sources as 1102 or 1103.

Gümüştekin's Death and the Later Course of the Beylik

Some time after the defeat at Marash, Gümüştekin Gazi died at Sivas (1104). His death dealt the Danishmendids a severe shock. Malatya was surrendered to the Seljuks, on a date given as 2 September 1105 or 1106. Struggles for the throne broke out among members of the dynasty; according to Matthew of Edessa, Emir Gazi, the eldest son who took the lead of the beylik, had all his brothers killed. Emir Gazi at first recognised the Seljuks as his overlords, but after the death of Kılıç Arslan I in 1107 he took advantage of the resulting vacuum to try to restore the beylik to its former strength. He secured the Seljuk throne for his son-in-law Mesud in 1116. Bohemond, for his part, was defeated at the Battle of Harran, returned to Europe at the end of 1104 in search of reinforcements and married Constance, daughter of King Philip of France.

The account between Bohemond's house and the Danishmendids carried into the second generation. When Bohemond II, Prince of Antioch, marched into Cilicia to take advantage of the death of the Armenian prince Thoros of Cilicia, Emir Gazi also took the field. The Danishmendids won the battle fought on the plain of Anazarba in 1130, and Bohemond II was killed. Emir Gazi sent the prince's embalmed head, together with gifts, to the Abbasid caliph al-Mustarshid. The son of the prince whose father had been freed by a ransom bargain at Niksar lost his life at the hands of the same dynasty.

The defeat at Melitene marked the limit of the Crusaders' advance into the interior of Anatolia. Bohemond's capture tested the unity and resources of the Latin states of the East; for the Turkish lords of the region, too, it had become clear that the Crusaders were not invincible.

The Danishmendids survived until 1178. Emir Gazi's successes against the Byzantines, the Crusaders and the Armenians made him the most influential ruler in Anatolia. The Abbasid caliph al-Mustarshid and the Great Seljuk sultan Sanjar sent envoys to confer on him the title of "melik" and the insignia of sovereignty; when the envoys arrived Emir Gazi lay ill, and upon his death they gave these insignia to his son Muhammad. This grant of the title is associated in the sources with the year 1134. The beylik's coins bore Greek inscriptions and a figure slaying a dragon; this figure is thought to represent Saint George and shows how closely the beylik was interwoven with Byzantine tradition. With the death of Melik Mehmed Gazi in 1142 the lands were divided among his brothers; the Sivas and Malatya branches were ruled separately. Kılıç Arslan II brought the beylik to an end in the 1170s, and with the capture of Malatya in 1178 the Danishmendid era closed. In popular memory all the Danishmendid beys are called "Melik Gazi", and the "Melik Gazi" tombs in places such as Niksar, Bünyan and Kırşehir often belong to different Danishmendid rulers.

Chronology

1064: Danishmend Gazi enters the service of Sultan Alp Arslan.

1071: After the victory at Manzikert, Turkmen beyliks are founded in Anatolia and the Danishmendids emerge.

1086: Philaretos Brachamios dies; Melitene, under Gabriel, slips entirely out of Byzantine control.

30 June 1097: The Danishmendids fight the Crusaders on the plain of Eskişehir alongside Kılıç Arslan.

1098: The Crusaders take Antioch and Bohemond becomes master of the city; Gabriel's son-in-law Thoros of Edessa is killed.

July-August 1100: Battle of Melitene; Bohemond and Richard of Salerno are taken prisoner, and Bohemond is taken first to Sivas, then to Niksar.

August 1101: The Crusader army that set out to free Bohemond is destroyed at Mersivan; in the same year Morphia marries Baldwin.

1102-1103: The Danishmendids take Melitene (18 September 1102 in the Turkish literature), and Gabriel is killed.

1103: Bohemond is released for a ransom; Kılıç Arslan defeats Gümüştekin near Marash (August).

1104: Gümüştekin Gazi dies at Sivas; Bohemond is defeated at Harran.

1105 or 1106: Malatya passes to the Seljuks.

1130: Emir Gazi kills Bohemond II on the plain of Anazarba.

1178: With the capture of Malatya the Danishmendid era comes to an end.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1, p. 407 (the Gümüştekin Nahiye); vol. 2, pp. 296-311 (the Danishmendids, the Crusaders and Bohemond's captivity), Amasya Municipality e-book amasya.bel.tr
  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 9, pp. 517-521 (Danishmend Gazi and Gümüştekin), Amasya Municipality e-book

Other sources

  • Tahsin Yazıcı, "Dānešmand", Encyclopaedia Iranica, VI/6, 1993, pp. 654-655
  • Anna Komnene, Alexiad, Book XI, English translation by Elizabeth A. Dawes (1928), Fordham University Internet Medieval Sourcebook sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu
  • Gabriel, Protokouropalates, Ameras and Dux (of Melitene) and Gabriel Protonobellisimos and Dux of Melitene, lead seal records, Armenian Numismatic Research Organization
  • Battle of Melitene, Wikipedia (David Eggenberger, An Encyclopedia of Battles, 1985; Nicholas Morton, The Crusader States and Their Neighbours; Harold S. Fink, The Foundations of the Latin States, 1099-1118) en.wikipedia.org
  • Bohemond I of Antioch, Wikipedia
  • Gazi Gümüshtigin, Wikipedia (Christopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East, 2008; Kedar, Phillips and Riley-Smith, Crusades 11)
  • Leonard of Noblac, Wikipedia
  • Crusade of 1101, Wikipedia
  • Gabriel of Melitene, Wikipedia (Matthew of Edessa, Michael the Syrian, Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades)
  • Richard of Salerno, Wikipedia
  • Danishmendids, Wikipedia; Dânişmendliler, Turkish Wikipedia
  • Ruth, First Crusader Loss: Melitene, 1100, All Things Medieval

Online sources