The day a city passes into Turkish rule sits in the calendar like a single leaf, but behind that leaf there is always a name. For Amasya the name is Danishmend. The sources often mention him in no more than a few lines, yet in popular memory he is the hero of an epic that has been told for centuries. These two Danishmends have to be kept apart. One is a Turkmen emir whom medieval chronicles, coins and Crusader histories mention with caution, and whose details remain obscure in many places. The other is the hero of the Danishmendname, a legendary figure who befriends the grandson of Battal Gazi, receives instructions from the Prophet in a dream, and takes Anatolia one fortress at a time. Both accounts appear below, and each time it will be made clear which is which.

His Name and Identity

The sources give his full name as "Melik-i Muazzam Dânişmend Ahmed Gazi (Taylû) b. Ali et-Türkmânî." Dânişmend is a word of Persian origin meaning scholar, a man of learning. In local writing and in everyday speech he is called "Melik Ahmed Gazi," "Danişmend Ahmed Gazi," or simply "Melik Gazi." As for where the epithet came from, the account in the Danishmendname is clear: by day Ahmed learned the use of arms from Sultan Turasan, and by night he studied the religious sciences until he reached the rank of scholar, and for this reason he was called Dânişmend. Some historians, arguing that a man of the pen could not have been a commander, have maintained that the epithet shows only that he could read and write. The relevant entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi rejects this objection and notes that Danishmend Gazi may well have been one of those exceptional figures who were both scholar and warrior.

The sources disagree about his origin. Ibn al-Athir writes that Danishmend's real name was Taylû, that he taught the Turkmens, and that over time he rose to rulership. Albertus Aquensis, one of the Latin historians of the Crusades, calls him "Donimannus, the Turkish ruler," while William of Tyre, archbishop of Tyre, uses the phrase "the mighty Turkish emir Danishmend." These accounts plainly show that the dynasty was of Turkish descent. His contemporary Matthew of Edessa, however, contradicts himself: in one place he says Danishmend was born in Armenia or was of Armenian origin, and in another he calls him the Persian emir Danishmend, lord of Sivas and of the whole land of the Rûm. The Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates traces the dynasty to the Arsacid line. Ibn Hamdun and Ibn Shaddad, for their part, record that Danishmend Gazi was the maternal uncle of Süleyman Shah, the founder of the Anatolian Seljuk state. What emerges from reading these sources together, according to the TDV entry, is that Danishmend Gazi belonged to a Turkmen family living around Arran in Azerbaijan, that he both taught the Turkmens and campaigned against the Christians alongside Turkmen emirs.

Some modern accounts add that his ancestors came from Khwarazm and served the Seljuks, that his father was a teacher, adviser, envoy and atabeg named Ali, and that he died in Isfahan around 1055. These details do not appear in the medieval texts on which the Danishmend Gazi entry rests, and they have not been verified. The Danishmendname, by contrast, presents him as born in Malatya, the son of Ali b. Mizrab and the daughter of Emir Ömer of Malatya, and as a man who knew Greek. The TDV entry describes this work as a legendary romance rather than a historical source; the Malatya birth and the genealogy are therefore a legendary identity and rest on no document.

In the Service of Alparslan

What the sources have in common is that Danishmend, during Sultan Alparslan's Caucasus campaign of 1064, came to the Seljuk camp together with other Turkmen chieftains, guided the army, and from that date entered the sultan's service. Through his wisdom and courage he soon found a place among the emirs Alparslan trusted. He is also said to have taken part in the sultan's campaign of 1068. Writers such as Rashid al-Din Fazlullah of Hamadan and Karim al-Din Aksarayi record that he took part in the Battle of Manzikert (1071).

An account transmitted by Rashid al-Din shows how much weight was given to this participation. When the Byzantine emperor Romanos Diogenes rejected his offers of peace, Alparslan surveyed the Byzantine camp from a height together with his emirs Artuk, Saltuk, Mengücek, Danishmend, Çavlı and Çavuldur, and asked for their opinions. Danishmend said that the day was Wednesday, that they should spend Wednesday and Thursday preparing their weapons, cleaning their garments and readying shrouds washed in zamzam water, and that on Friday, while the preachers in the pulpits prayed for the victory of the armies of Islam, they should shout the takbir and charge. All the emirs accepted this advice, and the battle was won on the day appointed. The story cannot be confirmed by a contemporary document, but it shows that Danishmend was remembered as a spiritual counsellor as much as a commander.

After the battle, Alparslan told his emirs to undertake conquests in Anatolia and announced that the lands they took would be granted to them as iqta. According to the twelfth-century writer Zahir al-Din Nishapuri, Erzurum and its surroundings went to Saltuk Bey, the Mardin and Harput region to Artuk Bey, Erzincan, Kemah and Şebinkarahisar to Mengücek Gazi, the area around Maraş to Emir Çavuldur, and Sivas, Tokat, Amasya and Kayseri to Danishmend Gazi. The same sources mention the sultan's pledge to exempt the lands to be conquered from tax, to impose no obligation on the sons of Danishmend, and to keep Seljuk princes from interfering in his territory. Danishmend took Sivas, which Romanos Diogenes had ravaged during the Manzikert campaign, without much resistance and founded the Danishmendid dynasty. The TDV dates this event to 1071; in some sources the foundation date also appears as 1072 or 1075.

Using Sivas as his base, Danishmend took the surrounding towns one by one with the help of emirs such as Çaka, Turasan, Kara Doğan, Osmancık, İltegin and Kara Tegin. Amasya, Tokat, Niksar, Kayseri, Zamantı, Elbistan, Develi and Çorum appear on this list. One of the first Turkmen principalities of Anatolia thus came into being.

The Taking of Amasya

Since antiquity Amasya had been the rocky riverside fortress of Pontus, Rome and Byzantium. Who built the citadel is not known with certainty; it is understood to have developed as a fortress city in antiquity. There is a strong local tradition that Danishmend Gazi took this city from the Byzantines, and the history published by the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism likewise states that Amasya and its surroundings were conquered by Danişmend Ahmet Gazi, beginning the era of Turkish rule. The TDV's Amasya entry is more cautious: there is no certain information on when the city was taken by the Turks, though it is clear that it was under Danishmendid rule.

The problem of the date arises here as well. The year 1075 is commonly given. In his off-agenda speech to the Turkish Grand National Assembly on 16 February 2022, Mustafa Levent Karahocagil, deputy for Amasya, citing early historians who relied on the Danishmendname, says that in the year 467 of the Hijra (1075 CE) the city was first besieged by raiders, that after a siege lasting months it fell to the Turks at the beginning of spring, and that the day of the conquest was 14 February 1075. The speech, however, cites no primary source or scholarly authority. The Danishmendname presents Amasya (Harşana) as Danishmend's last conquest, whereas the TDV's Danishmend Gazi entry lists Amasya among the cities taken after Sivas without giving an order. For this reason it is better not to write the conquest with a fixed year and day, but to say that Danishmend brought Amasya under Danishmendid rule in the years after Manzikert, and that the exact year and day cannot be supported by a contemporary document.

The consequences of the event, on the other hand, are clear. Amasya entered a period of Turkish rule that would last about a century. The traces of Byzantium in the region were not erased at once, but the administrative language and order of the city changed.

Amasya under the Danishmendids

The Danishmendids ruled Amasya for roughly a hundred years. According to the TDV's Amasya entry, the mosque built by Danişmendoğlu Melik Gazi on the site of today's Şamlar Mosque, just east of the citadel, is the oldest known Turkish structure in the city. Whether this Melik Gazi was Danishmend Gazi himself or a later member of the dynasty is uncertain, since the title Melik Gazi was borne by more than one Danishmendid. Considering that Emir Gazi was also called Melik Gazi, it is possible that he was the one who built it.

Amasya also figured in the dynasty's internal struggles. When the Anatolian Seljuk sultan Mesud I died in 1155 and was succeeded by Kılıçarslan II, of Mesud's two Danishmendid sons-in-law Yağıbasan had been given Amasya, Ankara and Cappadocia, and Zünnûn the rich city of Kayseri together with Sivas. Yağıbasan, known as the melik of Sivas and Amasya, also took Ünye, Samsun and Bafra on the Black Sea coast. One of the most influential rulers of the dynasty, he was buried, when he died in 1164, in the cemetery of the madrasa he had built in Niksar. An inscription dated 552 (1157) in Niksar lists his titles and ancestry: son of Melik Gazi, grandson of Melik Danishmend. According to some historians, Yağıbasan's son Cemâleddin Gazi ruled around Tokat and Amasya for two years before being removed by his cousin Ibrahim.

The Sivas branch of the Danishmendid state was weakened after Yağıbasan's death by internal quarrels, shifting alliances with Byzantium and the Zengids, and a famine in Sivas. In the summer of 1175 Kılıçarslan II seized Sivas, Niksar, Comana, Tokat and the other Danishmendid lands; the history of the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism states that the city passed to Seljuk rule in this year. The Malatya branch of the Danishmendids came to an end on 25 October 1178, when Kılıçarslan took Malatya. The Byzantine emperor Manuel Komnenos, who regarded the Danishmendids as a counterweight to the Seljuks, wanted them to recover their lands and sent his commander Gavras to Amasya and Niksar with an army of 30,000, but nothing came of it.

Amasya's Seljuk period is remembered through the buildings that followed the Danishmendids. When Kılıçarslan divided his realm among his sons late in his reign, the city fell to Nizâmeddin Argun Shah, but his brother Rükneddin Süleyman, the lord of Tokat, seized it by force. The great Seljuk works such as the Halifet Gazi Complex (1209-1210) and the Burmalı Minare Mosque (1237-1247) are therefore the work not of Danishmend Gazi but of a century or two after him. Popular memory readily attributes all of Amasya's old stones to its conqueror; history keeps the history of the stones apart.

The Dynasty from Gümüştegin to Melik Muhammed

The date of Danishmend Gazi's death is also uncertain. Michael the Syrian says that in 1085 he held sway over Cappadocia. Taking into account reports that his son and successor Gümüştegin Gazi seized certain places in Anatolia after the death of the Anatolian Seljuk ruler Süleyman Shah in 1086, and the coins struck in his name, the TDV says it is possible to state that Danishmend Gazi died in 477 (1085); some accounts give 1084. It is generally accepted that he died in Niksar and was buried there. Some popular accounts show him rushing to the aid of Kılıçarslan against the Crusaders around 1097; this date does not fit the known date of his death. According to the sources, the Danishmendid emir who fought beside Kılıçarslan in that year's battle on the Eskişehir plain was his son Gümüştegin.

The dynasty grew stronger under Gümüştegin Gazi. Taking advantage of the struggles between the Anatolian and Syrian Seljuks, he extended his sphere of authority and played an important role as an ally of the Seljuk sultan in wars against Byzantium and above all the Crusaders. On 30 June 1097, together with Hasan, the emir of Kayseri, he fought the Crusaders on the plain of Eskişehir, but was forced to withdraw before the Crusader army of armoured troops. He then besieged Malatya, and during this siege, which lasted three years, he ambushed and defeated the forces of Bohemond, Prince of Antioch, who had come to its relief; he took Bohemond prisoner and carried him first to Sivas and later to Niksar (July 1100). In 1101 a new Crusader army made up of Lombards, French and Germans took Ankara and then turned toward Amasya and Niksar; Gümüştegin, with a Turkish force of some 20,000 under the command of Kılıçarslan I, Ridwan and Karaca, defeated them near Merzifon in August 1101.

Malatya surrendered to Gümüştegin on 18 September 1102. His release of Bohemond for a ransom (1103), however, angered Kılıçarslan, who as an ally claimed a share of the ransom. Kılıçarslan defeated Gümüştegin near Maraş in August 1103. Shortly after this defeat, in 1104, Gümüştegin died in Sivas. After his death Malatya passed to the Seljuks and quarrels over the throne broke out within the dynasty. His eldest son Emir Gazi, according to Matthew of Edessa, had his brothers killed when he came to power. In later years Emir Gazi restored the Danishmendids to their former strength, secured the Seljuk throne for his son-in-law Mesud in 1116, and until his death (1134) was regarded as the most influential ruler in Anatolia. His son Melik Muhammed died in Kayseri in 1143; the Great Mosque of Kayseri is his work.

Names such as Çaka, Turasan, Kara Doğan, Osmancık, İltegin and Kara Tegin, who appear around Danishmend Gazi, are counted in modern publications as his partners in conquest. The first centre of the principality was Sivas; Niksar, Kayseri and Malatya gained importance later. Which city counted as the capital at which time varies according to the sources.

The Legacy of the Dynasty

Judging by their coins, the Danishmendids were ready to live alongside the Christian population around them. The first Danishmendid ruler to strike coins in his own name was Gümüştegin; his coins and those of some later rulers bear Greek and Greek-Arabic inscriptions, and some coins carry entirely Christian symbols. There are also coins with a lion emblem and with ruler portraits. The sources do not state where they were struck. Cities such as Sivas, Malatya, Kayseri, Niksar and Tokat became important economic and social centres under Danishmendid rule and also acquired their character as Turkish-Islamic cities in this period.

Their relations with the Seljuks were at once alliance and rivalry. Gümüştegin and Kılıçarslan I fought the Crusaders together and then fell out over Malatya. Emir Gazi put his son-in-law Mesud on the throne and extended his power over a stretch of Seljuk land reaching from Malatya to the Sakarya; in 1129 he controlled Ankara, Çankırı, Kastamonu and the Black Sea coast. The rise of Kılıçarslan II reversed this balance. According to the TDV, the Danishmendid princes who came to power after Yağıbasan and fought one another became tools of Byzantium and of the Zengid atabeg Nur al-Din Mahmud, and were used as a card against the Seljuks. Even so, the names of Danishmend Gazi, Gümüştegin, Emir Gazi and Melik Muhammed were mentioned with respect among the people for centuries and became the subject of epics.

After the fall of the dynasty, the tribes attached to it dispersed across Anatolia, and some were settled in Rumeli. The Karesids, who ruled in the Balıkesir and Çanakkale region from 1296 to 1360, are thought most probably to have descended from Danishmend Gazi; on a gravestone in the Tokat museum the lineage of Kutlu Melek Hatun of the Karesid house is traced to Melik Danishmend Gazi. A subdistrict called Danişmend in the Balya district of Balıkesir, two Danişmend settlements near Gönen and Lapseki, and village names such as Danışman and Yağıbasan show that these traces survive today.

The Danishmendname and the Birth of the Epic

Danishmend's historical outline is short and bare. What carried him to such a place in popular memory is the Danishmendname. After the Battalname and the Ebû Müslimname, the work is regarded as the first heroic epic composed in Anatolia whose hero is a Turk. In some manuscripts it also appears under the titles Kıssa-i Melik Dânişmend, Kıssa-i Dânişmend Gazi or Kitâb-ı Melik Dânişmend.

According to the view, based on Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî's Mirkâtü'l-cihâd and accepted by nearly all scholars, the work was written down in 1245 by Ibn Alâ, a secretary of the chancery, at the order of the Anatolian Seljuk sultan Izzeddin Keykavus II, who was interested in the tales of Melik Danishmend that were still on people's lips, by gathering the stories circulating among the ghazis. Osman Turan argues that the sultan was Izzeddin Keykavus I rather than II, which pushes the date of composition further back; Mükrimin Halil Yinanç accepts only the fourteenth century as the date of writing. No manuscript of Ibn Alâ's text has survived. All the manuscripts we have reflect the second redaction by Ârif Ali, warden of the citadel of Tokat, who reworked the text, divided it into seventeen sessions (meclis) and added verse passages. Mustafa Âlî dates this to 1360-61, that is, the early years of Murad I; nearly all scholars, beginning with Fuad Köprülü, accept the reign of Murad II. To what extent Ârif Ali stayed faithful to Ibn Alâ's text remains unresolved to this day.

The work begins with Melik Ahmed's birth in Malatya. In a dream he sees the Prophet and receives from him the command to wage jihad and ghaza; the same night Sultan Turasan sees his grandfather Seyyid Battal Gazi in a dream. Together they go to Baghdad and ask the caliph for permission, and the caliph hands them the banner of Battal Gazi and the standard of Abu Muslim al-Khurasani. Thus in the year 360 (970-71) they begin ghaza in the land of the Rûm. They repair the ruined citadel of Sivas and make it their base. Danishmend defeats the Greek warrior Artuhi, converts him to Islam and makes him his closest friend. He sends Turasan to take Constantinople, but Turasan falls as a martyr at Alemdağı. Danishmend then turns to the conquest of the Yeşilırmak basin: Yankoniya (Çorum), Sisiya (Gömenek), Dokiya (Tokat), Karkariye (Zile) and Harsanosiya (Niksar) are taken. Amasya is left to the last in the epic. The fortress of Harşana is in the hands of Shah-i Shettat, the father of Efromiya, who has become a Muslim and married Artuhi. Wounded on the road while heading toward Canik, Danishmend returns to Niksar and dies there. His sons continue his conquests.

The chronology of the legend does not fit known history. Malatya had been under Christian rule since 934, so it is impossible that such a band of mujahids could have come out of it in 970-71. The TDV's Danishmend Gazi entry states plainly that the epic has no connection with known historical fact. Even so, the features of the work are of interest. Apart from a few appearances of Khidr, the supernatural motifs of the Battalname and the Ebû Müslimname are almost entirely absent. The heroes are ordinary people; there are no jinn or fairies. Danishmend has a few miracles, but they are told as exceptional events. Efromiya is a warrior like the women of the old Turks and acts as Danishmend's right hand in many battles. The heroes pray five times a day and never drink; the epic carries a Sunni line of belief from beginning to end, and the slaughter of 150 horses at Danishmend's wedding is counted as the only motif reflecting the older Turkish beliefs. That the opposing sides know each other's languages, that they disguise themselves to spy on one another, and the devotion shown to the caliph, that is, Danishmend sending the caliph's share of the booty to Baghdad, are among the other notable features of the work. Evliya Çelebi writes that in the seventeenth century the tales of Danishmend were still alive among the people of the region.

The use of the epic as a historical source has passed through three stages. From the sixteenth century onward Ottoman historians such as Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, Cenâbî, Kâtib Çelebi, Müneccimbaşı and Hezarfen Hüseyin used it as a historical source without subjecting it to any criticism. While serving in Niksar, Âlî saw a copy of Ârif Ali's book and, giving it a new form, wrote what was practically a history of the Danishmendids. In the nineteenth century Orientalists such as P. Casanova, J. H. Mordtmann and Jean Laurent, and Turkish historians such as Necip Âsım, Halil Ethem and Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin, the author of Amasya Tarihi, followed the same path. Mükrimin Halil Yinanç, by contrast, in a completely opposite tendency, regarded the work as "a book of superstitions unfit for any argument." According to Yinanç, the Danishmendname attributes Artuk Bey's conquests in the Yeşilırmak basin to Danishmend; Artuhi is a reflection of this reality, and the place names are invented. Yinanç further claimed, relying on the ambiguous statements of certain late Armenian sources, that Danishmend was a convert of Armenian origin.

The critical study by Irène Mélikoff, published in Paris in 1960, balanced these two extremes. According to the TDV's Danishmendname entry, Mélikoff showed that the work is neither a genuine chronicle, as the older Ottoman historians believed, nor a book of superstitions, as Yinanç claimed. When she compared it with the principal native and foreign sources of the period, it turned out that the work contains important clues about Danishmend Gazi's personality, his conquests and geographical names. Osman Turan likewise noted that Yinanç had gone too far and argued that the work could be used as a historical source when compared with other sources. It would therefore not be right to fold every sentence taken from the epic into history without comparing it with the chronicles, but the work cannot be dismissed as a text to be ignored altogether either.

The Tomb and Commemoration

The tomb in the Melikgazi Cemetery south of Niksar is attributed to Danishmend Gazi. The building has no inscription, and no document exists on when it was built or by whom. Since many Danishmendid emirs bore the title Melik Gazi, it is also uncertain to which emir the tomb belongs. It is accepted by tradition that Danishmend Gazi lies here and his son Emir Gazi in the tomb at Pınarbaşı. Because the Danishmendname also says that its hero died and was buried in Niksar, the bond between popular memory and the building is strong. Melik Muhammed is said to lie in the tomb in the Melik Gazi Madrasa on the qibla side of the Great Mosque of Kayseri; this tomb too has no inscription.

The traces of Danishmend in Amasya lie more in memory than in monuments. His being remembered as the first Turkish conqueror of the city and the keeping alive of 1075 as the year of the conquest are part of this memory. No information has been found that any standing building in the city is dedicated to Danishmend Gazi or can be attached to him with certainty. His name enters the history of Amasya through stories more than through buildings.

Chronology

1064: Danishmend is reported to have guided the Seljuk army during Alparslan's Caucasus campaign and entered the sultan's service.

1071: Battle of Manzikert; Danishmend Gazi is reported to have taken part and, afterwards, to have been granted Sivas and its surroundings as iqta. The TDV dates the beginning of the Danishmendid state to this year.

1075: The date commonly given for the conquest of Amasya by Danishmend Gazi; the exact year and day have not been confirmed by a contemporary document.

1084 / 1085: Death of Danishmend Gazi (varies according to the sources); he is accepted as buried in Niksar. He is succeeded by his son Gümüştegin.

1097: Gümüştegin and Kılıçarslan meet the Crusaders on the plain of Eskişehir (30 June).

1100: Gümüştegin captures Bohemond, Prince of Antioch.

1101: Defeat of the Crusaders near Merzifon (August).

1104: Gümüştegin Gazi dies in Sivas.

1134: Death of Emir Gazi; Melik Muhammed succeeds him.

1155: Kılıçarslan II accedes to the throne; Amasya, Ankara and Cappadocia are given to Yağıbasan.

1164: Yağıbasan dies and is buried in the cemetery of his madrasa in Niksar.

1175: Kılıçarslan II takes Sivas, Niksar, Tokat and the other Danishmendid lands; Amasya passes to Seljuk rule.

1178: End of the Malatya branch of the Danishmendids (25 October).

1245: The Danishmendname is reported to have been written down for the first time by Ibn Alâ.

Sources

Academic studies

Official sources

  • Republic of Türkiye Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Tarihçe" (History), amasya.ktb.gov.tr.
  • Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, off-agenda speech by Mustafa Levent Karahocagil of 16 February 2022 (the conquest of Amasya), tbmm.gov.tr.

Other sources

  • Irène Mélikoff, La Geste de Melik Dânişmend: Étude critique du Dânişmendnâme, Paris 1960.
  • Mükrimin Halil Yinanç, Türkiye Tarihi, Selçuklular Devri I: Anadolu'nun Fethi, İstanbul 1944.
  • Osman Turan, Selçuklular Zamanında Türkiye Tarihi, İstanbul 1984.

Online sources