The period that stretches from Ilkhanid rule to Ottoman administration, a little over half a century, is both the most turbulent chapter in the history of Turkish Amasya and the one that decided the city's later fate. After the Battle of Kösedağ in 1243, the Mongols, who now held Anatolia, took the city, and Amasya came to be governed by Mongol governors. From then on it passed between the principalities that emerged in the region and the emirs who gathered strength around Sivas and Tokat. Known in the Seljuk age by the title "Dâr al-Izz", the city became a contested ground for small dynasties, and it regained a lasting order only when it was joined to Ottoman lands in the time of Bayezid the Thunderbolt.

Amasya under Ilkhanid Rule

After serving as the capital of the Danishmendids and as an important city of the Anatolian Seljuks, Amasya had lived through the upheaval of the Babai revolt of 1240. In the wake of the movement begun by Baba Ishak, the deputy of Baba Ilyas, Baba Ilyas was captured and executed on the bastions of Amasya Castle. Three years later the defeat of the Seljuk army at Kösedağ brought the city within the Mongol sphere of influence. In this period the governors and noyans who served in the name of the Ilkhanid ruler held authority in Anatolia, and the emirs who administered Amasya were links in that chain. For a time the city came under Tâceddin Altınbaş, son of Ghiyath al-Din Mesud II, the last Seljuk sultan, but this did not last.

Mongol rule did not halt the city's building activity. The Gümüşlü Mosque (1326) and the Dârüşşifâ (1308), both still standing, belong to this age and show that Amasya remained a centre known for worship and medical care under the Ilkhanids. The political structure of Anatolia, however, was steadily weakening. The poor administration of governors sent from the centre and the raids of Turkmen and Mongol tribes left the land in the hands of semi-independent emirs. The Eretnids, and then their emirs, took advantage of this vacuum.

The Eretnid Principality and Amasya

Alâeddin Eretna, the founder of the Eretnid principality, was of Uyghur Turkish origin and one of the noyans who had come to Anatolia with the Ilkhanid army. When the governor of Anatolia, Timurtash, fled to Egypt after the killing of his father Emir Chupan in 1327, he left his brother-in-law Eretna in his place, and Eretna went on to administer Sivas, Kayseri, Aksaray and Niğde as the deputy of later governors. The death of the Ilkhanid ruler Abu Said Bahadur Khan in 1335 and the fragmentation of the realm allowed Eretna to turn his deputyship into an independent rule. After having the sermon read for a time in the name of the Mamluk sultan, Eretna finally cut his ties with the Mamluks, declared his independence, and struck coins in his own name, first at Sivas and then at Kayseri. The entry of Amasya under this principality is given as 1341; a local summary of the city's history places the same event in 1342, stating that the city fell to Eretna, the deputy at Sivas, and that the emir Hacı Şadgeldi later came to dominate it. By swiftly suppressing the anarchy that had long persisted because of the poor administration of the Ilkhanid commanders and governors, Eretna established his authority and took most of the former Anatolian Seljuk lands.

Alâeddin Eretna died at Kayseri in March 1352 and was buried in the tomb in the courtyard of the Köşkmedrese. At his death, besides Sivas and Kayseri, Amasya, Tokat, Çorum, Zile, Canik, Ankara, Niğde, Aksaray and Erzincan were also under his rule; Amasya was one of the important cities of this broad territory in the north of the principality. After his death, the struggle for the throne between his sons Cafer and Mehmed rapidly wore the state down. Mehmed Bey defeated his brother at the Battle of Yalnızgöz in 1355 and took the principality back into his own hands. Yet he failed in his struggle against the Mongols and lost the trust of his own emirs, and in October 1365 he was killed at Sivas in a plot carried out by Hacı Şadgeldi, Hacı İbrahim and Kılıcarslan. It is noted that his vizier Kadı Burhâneddin also came under suspicion in this affair, though his role has never been established with certainty. His thirteen-year-old son Alâeddin Ali Bey, who was placed on the throne in his stead, could not halt the disintegration of the state. The emirs were now acting independently in their own provinces: Hacı Şadgeldi in Amasya, Mutahharten in Erzincan, Tâceddin in Niksar, Hacı İbrahim in Sivas, Şeyh Necib in Tokat, Kılıcarslan in Şarkîkarahisar. Only the emirs in Kayseri remained nominally loyal to Ali Bey. According to the same source, this rivalry disturbed public order, dimmed intellectual and cultural life, and led part of the population of Anatolia to migrate to Aleppo, Antep, western Anatolia and the Marmara region.

Hacı Şadgeldi and the Emirate of Amasya

The emergence of a separate emirate at Amasya is not told in the same way in all sources. One study states that Hacı Şadgeldi took advantage of the disorder in the Eretnid principality, separated from it in 1360, and became an independent lord in the region. The entry on the Eretnids names Şadgeldi among the perpetrators of the assassination of 1365 and mentions his independent position at Amasya in connection with the collapse of state authority under Alâeddin Ali Bey. The first account presents Şadgeldi as an emir who was acting on his own account around 1360, the second as a power that settled in Amasya in the years when Eretnid authority dissolved. The exact date has not been determined.

According to the entry on Amasya, Şadgeldi took the city after defeating the Eretnid Ali Bey. After his death he was succeeded by his son Ahmed. The structure known in the city today as the Tomb of Şadgeldi Pasha preserves the memory of this dynasty. The emirs of Amasya made alliances with their neighbours amid the balance of power in the region and at times sought Ottoman support. The city had to keep its balance between two sides: on one hand Kadı Burhâneddin at Sivas, on the other the Ottoman and Candarid power advancing from the west. The policy of Amasya in this period was that of a small emirate that looked for a powerful patron when its own strength was not enough.

The Rise of Kadı Burhâneddin

Kadı Burhâneddin Ahmed was born at Kayseri on 8 January 1345 into a family in which all the known ancestors had served as judges. In his youth he went to Damascus and Cairo and studied jurisprudence, hadith, Qur'anic exegesis and the mathematical sciences, and in 1364 he returned to Kayseri. When the Karamanid Alâeddin Bey captured Kayseri in 1375, his recovery of the city brought him to the front in the Eretnid state, and in May 1378 he was raised to the office of vizier. On his advice Alâeddin Ali Bey launched campaigns against Amasya, Niğde, Aksaray, Niksar and Erzincan to restore the authority of the state, but because he did not follow the policy the vizier had laid out, he failed. Ali Bey caught the plague during his second Amasya campaign and died in 1380.

When Ali Bey's seven-year-old son Mehmed II was placed on the throne, Kılıcarslan, of the Seljuk dynasty, was appointed his regent. The struggle for power between Kadı Burhâneddin and Kılıcarslan ended on 9 February 1381 with Kılıcarslan's killing. This time Kadı Burhâneddin became regent himself, and he then removed Hacı Şadgeldi, the lord of Amasya, whom he regarded as his chief rival. In the records of the TDV Encyclopedia, Şadgeldi's death is placed in the autumn of 1381, and it is followed by Kadı Burhâneddin's proclamation of his own sultanate at Sivas, with the sermon read and coins struck in his name. Thus Eretnid rule came to an end and the state of Kadı Burhâneddin, centred on Sivas and Kayseri, was founded.

Şadgeldi's death did not end the independent existence of Amasya. His son Ahmed Bey set out to avenge his father. When Kadı Burhâneddin besieged Tokat in 1382, the commander of the castle had made an agreement with the Mongols and put him in difficulty, and when the emir of Amasya broke his word and attacked, Kadı Burhâneddin's army was routed and scattered. In 1383 Ahmed Bey moved again with the support of the Candarid Kötürüm Bayezid, but this time he was beaten. Having married his sister to the lord of Tokat Castle, Kadı Burhâneddin marched against Amasya in 1384 with the support he thereby gained and defeated the emir repeatedly. The struggle thus continued for several years as an exchange of attacks and counterattacks.

The Ottoman Advance in Anatolia and Amasya

Meanwhile the Ottomans were advancing from the west. In the time of Murad I, Ottoman rule was established over the lands of the Candarids and the Germiyanids. One study relates that when Murad I learned that Osmancık, Gümüş and Amasya had accepted Ottoman sovereignty, he sent Prince Bayezid to the region, and that in 1386 Bayezid came to Amasya and bound the principality to the Ottoman state; with this duty Bayezid is counted as the first sanjak governor of Amasya. The TDV entry on Bayezid, by contrast, says that this opinion was drawn from the relations of 1384 to 1388, when the emir of Amasya, Ahmed, and Çandarlı Süleyman Bey accepted Ottoman sovereignty against Kadı Burhâneddin, and from the entry of certain districts under Ottoman administration. In other words, Bayezid's first governorship is cited as an opinion and does not rest on a firm document.

The real turning point came after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Bayezid, who ascended the throne on the death of his father Murad, crossed into Anatolia and brought the principalities of western Anatolia under Ottoman administration. Kadı Burhâneddin, who until then had got along well with the Ottomans, had now gone over to the other side and had taken Kırşehir. Allied with the Karamanids and the Candarids, he frustrated the Ottoman campaign of 1391. In 1392 Bayezid marched once more against the Candarid Süleyman Bey and took Osmancık, but he was defeated by Kadı Burhâneddin at the place called Çorumlu and withdrew. Emboldened by this victory, Kadı Burhâneddin raided as far as Sivrihisar and Ankara and also laid siege to Amasya.

The emir of Amasya, under siege, surrendered the city to the Ottomans in 1392; a local summary of the city's history presents this surrender as a step taken by Ahmed Bey under pressure from Kadı Burhâneddin and gives the date 1393. The following year Bayezid came to the region, entered Amasya and took the city over in person, and local lords such as the Tâceddinids of the Çarşamba valley, the Taşanids of the Merzifon area and the lord of Bafra recognized his sovereignty. This is why the sources give different years between 1392 and 1398 for the passage of Amasya to Ottoman administration. The handing over of the city by the emir, Bayezid's entry into it, and the complete passing of the region into Ottoman hands with the liquidation of the state of Kadı Burhâneddin are separate stages of the same process. The TDV entry on Amasya takes the last stage as its basis and states that the city was joined to Ottoman lands in 1398 and that its administration was left to his son Çelebi Mehmed.

The End of the State of Kadı Burhâneddin

The end of Kadı Burhâneddin came not at the hands of the Ottomans but through his defeat by Karayülük Osman, the Akkoyunlu chief, one of his Turkmen rivals. Kadı Burhâneddin had had his nephew and the governor of Kayseri, Şeyh Müeyyed, killed (1396) despite Karayülük Osman's entreaty, and this had estranged the two. The tension grew when Karayülük asked for a summer pasture for his flocks and Kadı Burhâneddin said he could give one only until autumn. In 1398 Karayülük defeated Kadı Burhâneddin, who had set out in pursuit, in a sudden ambush, took him captive and had him killed. The notables of Sivas brought in his son Alâeddin Ali Çelebi in his place, but faced with the threat of Timur and the Turkmens they asked Bayezid for help. Bayezid sent his son Süleyman Çelebi to Sivas; Karayülük Osman was defeated, and Sivas, Tokat, Niksar and Kayseri passed under Ottoman rule. Alâeddin Ali Çelebi later entered Ottoman service, took part in a campaign against the Karamanids in the time of Murad II, and died in 1442.

Kadı Burhâneddin was not only a statesman but also a poet with a divan. When Timur, having taken Tikrit in October 1393, demanded obedience from the Anatolian lords, he rejected the demand and sent copies of the letter to the Mamluk Sultan Barquq and to Bayezid. Bayezid, Barquq, the Khan of the Golden Horde Toqtamish and Kadı Burhâneddin formed an alliance against Timur. That he paid no heed to these threats is clear from his own poetry. When the danger from Timur receded for a time, he marched against Ahmed Bey, the emir of Amasya, who was attacking his lands, and in 1394 burned and destroyed everything in his path. The Ottoman settlement in the region took place in the aftermath of this struggle.

Çelebi Mehmed and the Province of Rum

Bayezid sent his son Çelebi Mehmed as governor in June 1399 to organize the province of Rum, which comprised Amasya, Tokat, Sivas and Ankara and had formerly been the land of the Eretnid dynasty. Mehmed had been born in 1386 or 1387 and was the fourth son of Bayezid by a concubine named Devlet Hatun. One study relates that during his sanjak governorship of Amasya, Mehmed had a palace built in 1396 on a site bought from Gümüşlüzâde Hoca Celâleddin Çelebi, and that this building was later known as the Palace of the Princes. This date is not compatible with the record that Mehmed was sent to the region in 1399, so no firm judgment can be given on the year the palace was built.

At the Battle of Ankara in 1402 Bayezid was defeated by Timur and taken captive. Çelebi Mehmed, who had fought in the battle, withdrew with his forces to Amasya. The Ottoman state was dragged into a civil war between brothers, the Interregnum. While Süleyman and Mûsâ governed Rumelia from Edirne, Mehmed held Tokat, Amasya and Bursa in Anatolia between 1402 and 1413. For him Amasya was a base of operations and the centre of the struggles he waged against his brothers Îsâ and Süleyman. Mehmed took Bursa and defeated Îsâ, but after his struggle with Süleyman Çelebi he lost Bursa and Ankara and had to fall back on his Tokat-Amasya base. During this time he encouraged Mûsâ to go to Rumelia, and Mûsâ crossed to Wallachia in 1406.

Mehmed's position in the region did not rest on military superiority alone. After the Battle of Ankara, local dynasties such as Kara Devletşah, the Kubadoğlu, Mezid Bey and the Taşan family had accepted Timur's sovereignty and defied Ottoman rule. By recognizing Timur's sovereignty Mehmed too legitimized his authority around Tokat and Amasya. It is noted that in his struggle against his rivals he had the support of the ulema and the notables of the cities, while the local lords lacked the legitimacy that an Ottoman prince possessed. He also confirmed the property in the lands of the lords who accepted his sovereignty. This inheritance would become a significant problem over property and timar once Ottoman centralization was re-established. The Turkmen and Tatar troops of these lords formed an important force in Mehmed's army and stood with him in the war against Mûsâ in 1413.

After two attempts against Mûsâ in 1411 had failed, Mehmed defeated his rival on 5 July 1413 with the alliance of the frontier lords and the vassal states and ascended the throne at Edirne as the sole ruler. He appointed his tutor Yörgüç Pasha as beylerbey of Amasya. When the Black Tatars and the lords of Kastamonu, Canik and Erzincan caused disturbances in the region, Prince Murad, who had been born in Amasya during his father's sanjak governorship, was sent to the city at the age of twelve with his tutor Yörgüç Pasha as sanjak governor. Murad remained in this post until his father's death in 1421 and ascended the Ottoman throne in the same year.

Works Surviving from the Age of the Principalities

In spite of the political turmoil, building in the city continued through these centuries as well. Among the works that have survived are the Burmalı Minare Mosque (1237-1247), the Gökmedrese Mosque (1266-1267), the Gümüşlü Mosque (1326), the Hızır Pasha Mosque (14th century) and the Saraçhane Mosque (1372); the Tomb of Şadgeldi Pasha is also among the monuments that remain from this age. These structures show that worship and learning went on at Amasya even in years when rule changed hands often. After Ottoman sovereignty was established, new works rose in the city, such as the Beyazıt Pasha Mosque (1414-1419) and the Yörgüç Pasha Mosque (1430); in 1486 the Mosque and Complex of Bayezid II was built.

The Beginning of the Tradition of Princes

When Amasya entered Ottoman administration it became the seat of a sanjak of the same name. This sanjak was an important administrative unit of the province of Rum, which also included Tokat and Sivas, and in the early period it was the seat of the province. Çelebi Mehmed's adoption of the city as a base increased the value Amasya held for the dynasty. Its proximity to the eastern frontier had made it suitable to entrust the city to a prince against the danger of Timur, and the idea that successes won on the frontier would be a great advantage on the road to the throne also played a part in this choice. After Çelebi Mehmed, Murad II, Bayezid II and other princes in turn gained administrative experience in this sanjak. The city lost its character as a princely sanjak in the middle of the 16th century; the TDV ties this to the rising importance of princely sanjaks nearer the capital after the killing of Prince Mustafa, while the Amasya Governorship dates it to after Prince Bayezid's flight to Iran in 1559.

Mehmed the Conqueror's sanjak governorship in Amasya, on the other hand, is not certain. One account relates that Mehmed, the eight-year-old fourth son of Murad II, was appointed to the sanjak after the death of Ahmed the Elder at Amasya in 1438. Halil İnalcık notes that this claim is doubtful. The TDV entry on Amasya, however, counts the Conqueror among the princes who served as sanjak governors at Amasya.

The bond that began in the time of Bayezid the Thunderbolt and Çelebi Mehmed soon became a lasting practice. The city that had given Mehmed shelter and a base of operations in the hardest years of the Interregnum came to be seen by the dynasty as a reliable hearth. The records of the governorship likewise state that princes who later became sultans, such as Çelebi Mehmed, Murad II, the Conqueror and Bayezid II, served at Amasya, and that there were also princes who died there. The age of the principalities is the preparatory stage of this process; in the following century Amasya would cease to be an ordinary sanjak seat and would win the title City of Princes.

Chronology

1240: The Babai revolt; Baba Ilyas was executed on the bastions of Amasya Castle.

1243: After the Battle of Kösedağ the Mongols took Amasya.

1308: Date of construction of the Dârüşşifâ.

1327: When the governor of Anatolia, Timurtash, fled to Egypt, Alâeddin Eretna rose to authority in the region as his deputy.

1335: The Ilkhanid ruler Abu Said Bahadur Khan died.

1341: Alâeddin Eretna declared his independence; Amasya came under Eretnid rule.

1352: Alâeddin Eretna died at Kayseri.

c. 1360: According to one source, Hacı Şadgeldi separated from the Eretnid principality and founded an independent emirate at Amasya (the date is disputed in the sources).

1365: The Eretnid Mehmed Bey was killed at Sivas by Hacı Şadgeldi and other emirs.

1378: Kadı Burhâneddin rose to the vizierate.

1380: Alâeddin Ali Bey died during his second Amasya campaign.

1381: Kadı Burhâneddin removed Hacı Şadgeldi and proclaimed his sultanate at Sivas.

1384: Kadı Burhâneddin defeated the emir of Amasya.

1389: The Battle of Kosovo; Bayezid ascended the throne.

1392: The besieged emir of Amasya surrendered the city to the Ottomans.

1393: Bayezid entered Amasya.

1398: Kadı Burhâneddin was killed and his state came to an end; the TDV gives this date as the joining of Amasya to Ottoman lands.

1399: Çelebi Mehmed was sent as governor to the province of Rum.

1402: The Battle of Ankara; Çelebi Mehmed withdrew to Amasya and the Interregnum began.

1413: Çelebi Mehmed defeated Mûsâ and became sole ruler.

1421: Prince Murad's sanjak governorship of Amasya ended with his father's death.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Online sources